I’m in my early twenties and my parents are baby boomers. Not a week goes through at home without the words “kids these days” from my mother and a “this generation” monologue from my father. This got me thinking, are millennials really that much to deal with. While my parents say you will never understand “the joy of small things” I say you’ll never know the power of a perfect picture. We have our difference of opinions but at the end of the day, I have come to terms that both the generation has something to learn from each other.

Here’s what the Millennials can learn from the baby boomers (aka from our parents) 

 

Private Life 

There is sharing and then there is over-sharing. The sliver-lining between these have been fading with all the gram we’ve got going lately. From story-ing private texts, convos, every meal, every outfit and rambling through the internet, Keeping Up With The Kardashians’ way of life has become the new normal living. We are in a constant need to showing our life to everyone as we feel we have to prove how great our lives are. I guess the boomers are happy when they are happy and don’t care if anyone else knows they are living life king size.

Consistency 

We have an entire generation that gets bored easily. No kidding, the educational institutes’ are investing so much on innovations to keep children interested. So it goes without saying doing anything for long is quite a task. One of the reasons why everything you see around, every type of business, have started stressing on variety. Be it in fitness, entertainment, food, fashion, it takes a constant change to keep the millennials interested. While an advantage of this is that they always stay current and adapt to change easily than the previous generations, consistency is the key to more sustainable success.

To Have Patience: 

Most of us now know the statistics. At least 21 percent of Millennials say they’ve changed jobs within a year. Millennials are off switching jobs every quarter of a year, for not making an “impact” or not having job satisfaction. Look at our parents who went to a job, not for “satisfaction” but to put food on the table. Wanting job satisfaction is not a bad thing, wanting it in a week or month of your job is what is wrong. Making an impact in an organisation comes with understanding it completely and that is going to take time.

Another proof of the current-gen not having patience comes from the rise of the term “binge”. Let’s be honest how many of you wait for a complete season to end only to binge watch it over the weekend? 

Living in the moment

Yes, millennials are very ambitious. This makes them constantly ponder about college life, career, jobs, traveling and more future goals. The younger generation is in a hurry to grow up fast and in the process missing out on what present has to give them. Even if they are out with friends they want to capture every moment of it to post it “later” or for creating “memories”. Why not stop for a minute look around and enjoy the day. Enjoy the present. Future will fall into place eventually, you do not have to overthink about it now. So next time you are out lunching jump right into your food like our parents do without the pressure of taking a picture.

Let us not forget that in the beginning, I mentioned “learning from each other”. While we have listed out a set of complaints, boomers have something that they can acquire from us too, you are never too late to learn. Curious about what our parents can learn from us? The listicle is on its way. Stay tuned!!