Why I consider myself a Millennial Survivalist

I am a Husband.

I am a Father.

I am a Son.

I am an Entrepreneur.

I am a Millennial Survivalist.

A Millennial Survivalist?

As I look around at my generation (People born between 1982 and 2004) I notice that we are very good at a lot of things. Going to college, starting trends, ending trends, deciding which craft beer is the best, and making veganism a real thing to name a few. However, I have noticed there are certain life skills that previous generations were required to learn as part of growing up that we may not have acquired. Skills such as cooking, cleaning, wilderness survival, typing full sentences, gardening, ironing, and driving a manual transmission are not part of a typical 18–35 year old’s repertoire.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not bad mouthing Millennials! Without us there would be no Facebook (or any existing social media for that matter), ecommerce would not be the force that it is, and we would not have the Mexican/Thai/Korean hybrid food truck. I just believe that if we fail to respect the hard work and skills of our predecessors we will not be able to be as strong and independent as previous generations.

While we are the largest segment of the population (75Million PLUS), are the most educated (63% having a Bachelors Degree), AND we control the most wealth as a buying group ($1.4 trillion) we are also living with our parents more than ever ( 40% live at home after college), have the lower real wages than our parents did at our age (Millennials Earn 20% less than baby boomers did at the same life stage), and net worth has dropped by 56% over the past 25 years (due to student loans).

However, I believe that we have so much going for us that, with a bit of tweaking, we can be a generation that embraces both the strengths of the past and engages in the. promise of the future.

First — Embrace our strengths. We are the most productive part of the workforce due to our skills with information technology. We are more interested in what a company stands for than the price of their product. We are very connected to others and to the world as a whole.

Second — Grow up. If you don’t want to be labeled as a precious snowflake, stop acting like one. The best thing to do is to learn how to really function in a world without “safe spaces.”

Lastly- Become Self-Sufficient. It looks like our generation has been sold a bill of goods that isn’t what it was cracked up to be. The mantra of go to school, get good grades and you’ll be fine isn’t working out the way we had hoped. We need to combine our technical savvy with tried and true principles of success to tackle the future.

Join me in the coming months as I learn new skills and teach some old ones, and you too can become a Millennial Survivalist.

Orignially posted on my blog at www.therealnickmorrow.com