Gdje je sreća? - part 1

Prije nego što kroz nekoliko sljedećih tekstova odgovorim na pitanje "Gdje je sreća?", ukoliko je to uopće moguće, ispričat ću vam priču o Lucy.

Lucy je dio generacije Y, generacije rođene u razdoblju između kasnih 70-ih i sredine 90-ih. Lucy je također dio yuppie* kulture koja velikim dijelom sačinjava generaciju Y. Yuppije u generaciji Y mogli bismo nazvati i GYPSYS iliti Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies (Protagonisti generacije Y i specijalni yuppiji). Radi se o jedinstvenom brendu yuppija koji misli kako je glavni akter u vrlo posebnoj priči. Lucy tako uživa u svom GYPSY životu i jako je zadovoljna činjenicom da je Lucy. Jedini problem je u tome što je Lucy nekako nesretna. Kako bi došli do toga zašto je naša protagonistica nesretna, moramo prvo definirati što nekog čini sretnim, odnosno nesretnim. Sve se svodi na jednostavnu formulu! Kada je realnost nečijeg života bolja od onog što očekuje, onda za tu osobu možemo reći da je sretna. Kada je nečiji život gori od njegovih/njenih očekivanja, onda je osoba nesretna.

Kako bi priči pružili kontekst, počnimo uvođenjem Lucyjinih roditelja u priču. Njeni roditelji rođeni su u 50- ima, oni su Baby Boomeri. Odgajani su od strane Lucyjinih baka i djedova koji su pripadnici G.I. Generacije ili “The Greatest Generation” (Najveće generacije) koja je odrasla tijekom Velike depresije i borila se u Drugom svjetskom ratu i koja svakako nije bila GYPSYS.

Lucyjini velikodepresivni bake i djedovi bili su opsjednuti ekonomskom sigurnošću te su odgajali njene roditelje da grade praktične, sigurne karijere. Htjeli su za svoje djecu bolji život od onog koji su oni imali, a njihova djeca su u skladu s time, u glavama imala viziju obečavajuće i stabilne karijere. Učili su ih da im na putu ne stoji ništa kako bi došli do te karijere. Međutim, nisu morali toliko patiti kako bi došli do nje. Nakon što su diplomirali hipičiologiju, Lucyjini roditelji bacili su se na građenje svojih karijera. Kako su prohujale 70-e, 80-e pa i 90-e, svijet je ušao u moment neviđenog ekonomskog prosperiteta. Lucyjini roditelji prošli su bolje nego što su očekivali. To ih je ostavilo zahvalne i optimistične. S lakšim, pozitivnijim životnim iskustvom nego vlastiti roditelji, Lucyjini roditelji odgajali su Lucy u optimističnom ozračju nepreglednih mogućnosti. I nisu bili sami, čitave grupe Baby Boomera diljem svijeta govorile su svojoj djeci iz Generacije Y da mogu biti što god požele, ugrađujući pritom identitet posebnog protagonista duboko u njihovu psihu. To je GYPSYjima ostavilo osjećaj ogromne nade do te mjere da im planovi njihovih roditelja o sretnoj budućnosti nisu više bili dovoljni. 

To nas dovodi do prve činjenice o GYPSY-ima:

1. GYPSYji su jako ambiciozni

GYPSYji trebaju više od karijere koja nudi prosperitet i sigurnost. Radi se o tome da na kraju zelena ledina od uspješne karijere nije tako posebna i jedinstvena za jednog GYPSYja. Dok su Baby Boomeri htjeli američki san, GYPSYji su sanjali o tome da žive svoj vlastiti.

Profesor na Sveučilištu u Georgetownu,Cal Newport ističe da je fraza "slijediti svoj san", fraza koja se u medijima koristi zadnjih 20 godina te dodaje: " Kako je izraz "sigurna karijera" izlazio iz mode, tako je "ispunjavajuća karijera" postajala sve više in. Da se razumijemo, GYPSYji kao i njihovi roditelji žele uspješne karijere, ali isto tako žele da su one ispunjavajuće, a to je aspekt o kojem njihovi roditelji nisu toliko razmišljali. Ali tu se dogodilo još nešto. Kako su ciljevi Generacije Y postajali precizniji i ambiciozniji, u Lucy je kroz djetinjstvo usađena još jedna poruka...

Ovo nas dovodi do druge činjenice o GYPSYjima..

2.GYPSYji su sumanuti

Lucy su učili da će svatko moći ubrati svoju ispunjavajuću karijeru na zelenoj ledini karijera, a ona budući da je tako neobično divna, svojom karijerom i životnim putem, izdići će se iznad ostatka. Stoga, na tronu cijele generacije, zbog svog odlučnog cilja da dođe do blistave karijere, svaki individualni GYPSY misli kako je upravo on/ona predodređen/a za nešto bolje – šljokičastog jednoroga na zelenoj, cjetnoj ledini. A zašto je ova ideja tako sumanuta? Zato što svaki GYPSY misli da je definicija specijalnog nešto bolje, veće ili bar drugačije od uobičajenog. Prema toj definiciji, većina ljudi nije posebna jer inače "specijalan, poseban" ne bi značilo ništa.

GYPSY koji ovo upravo čita, sigurno misli: "Ima smisla, ali ja zaista jesam jedan/a od rijetkih". I upravo je u tome problem. Druga sumanuta GYPSY ideja javlja se kada GYPSY zakorači na tržište rada. Dok su Lucyjini roditelji očekivali da će godine teškog rada dovesti do velike karijere, Lucy podrazumijeva da je velika karijera nešto očito, samo je pitanje vremena i odluke u kojem smjeru će se krenuti. Nažalost, zanimljiva činjenica jest da svijet ipak nije tako lijepo mjesto, a karijere nisu tako lagane. Za velike karijere potrebne su godine krvi, znoja i suza, čak i za one bez cvjetića i jednoroga, a i mnogi jako uspješni ljudi rijetko rade išta veliko u srednjim dvadesetima. Međutim, GYPSYji neće to prihvatiti tek tako.

Profesor Sveučilišta u New Hampshireu i stručnjak za GYPSYje Paul Harvey, na temelju svojih istraživanja zaključio je kako Generacija Y posjeduje nerealistična očekivanja, jak otpor prema prihvaćanju negativnog feedbacka i prenapuhanu viziju sebe. On kaže da su neispunjena očekivanja najveći izvor frustracije za ljude koji posjeduju snažan osjećaj da na nešto imaju pravo. Isti često smatraju kako imaju pravo na nivo poštovanja i nagrada koji nisu u skladu s njihovim stvarnim mogućnostima i trudom. Prema tome, ne dobivaju dozu poštovanja i nagrada koje misle da zaslužuju. Za one koji zapošljavaju pripadnike Generacije Y, Harvey na intervjuima za posao predlaže pitanje: "Osjećate li se generalno superiornije nad svojim suradnicima/kolegama itd...i ako je tome tako zašto?" Ako kandidat na prvi dio pitanja odgovori s "Da", ali se bori s tim što bi odgovorio na drugi dio pitanja, izgleda da kod kandidata postoji problem s tim na što on misli da ima pravo. To je zato je su percepcije oko toga na što imamo pravo često bazirane na neutemeljenom osjećaju superiornosti i zasluženosti. GYPSY-i su navođeni da vjeruju kako su nešto posebno, vjerojatno zbog vježbi podizanja morala koje su dobivali u djetinjstvu i mladosti. Međutim, često ova vjera u vlastitu posebnost nema utemeljenja. Tako se par godina nakon završetka fakulteta Lucy nalazi nezavidnoj situaciji. Velike ambicije naše Lucy, u kombinaciji s arogancijom koja dolazi zajedno s bivanjem sumanutim oko ideje vlastite važnosti, ostavile su je s velikim očekivanjima i to već na početku studiranja. Njena realnost sada blijedi u usporedbi s tim očekivanjima, rezultirajući negativnim ishodom. 

Ali stvar može biti i gora jer GYPSYji imaju još jedan dodatni problem koji se tiče čitave njihove generacije...

3. GYPSYji su povrijeđeni
Zasigurno su neki ljudi koji su s Lucyjnim roditeljima išli u školu ili na fakultet na kraju bolje prošli, možda su ovi čak i čuli za te uspješnije slučajeve, ali nisu se previše zamarali time. S druge strane Lucy se konstantno nalazi povrijeđenom i uvrijeđenom jednim modernim fenomenom: mediji kreiraju svijet u kojem a) sve što svi ostali rade je vrlo otvoreno b) većina ljudi prezentira napuhanu verziju vlastite egzistencije c) ljudi koji se najviše hvale svojim karijerama su uglavnom oni čije karijere (i/ili veze) navodno najbolje idu, dok oni koji se bore ne otkrivaju svoje situacije. To Lucy nepravedno ostavlja u uvjerenju kao da svima ide odlično u životu. Zato se Lucy osjeća nesretno, frustrirano i neprikladno, neodgovarajuće. Možda je čak i počela svoju karijeru savršeno dobro, ali njoj se to čini razočaravajuće.

Evo nekoliko savjeta Lucy (i svima nama... sanjarima s velikim planovima):

1.Ostanite divlje ambiciozni – Svijet trenutno vrvi prilikama za mnoge ambiciozne ljude koji traže ispunjavajuće karijere na zelenoj ledini karijera. Specifičan smjer u kojem treba krenuti je možda nejasan, ali to će se već iskristalizirati. Samo uronite...u nekom smjeru!


2.Prestanite misliti da ste posebni- Činjenica je da niste posebni. Vi ste, kao i svi ostali, samo još jedana potpuno neiskusna osoba koja još uvijek nema što za ponuditi. Možete postati posebni jedino teškim radom kroz duži period.

        3. Ignorirajte sve ostale- To da nam se trava čini zelenijom na drugoj strani, nije novi koncept, ali u današnjem svijetu koji se bazira na plasiranju određene slike o sebi, trava s druge strane ograde, može izgledati ne samo zelenije nego i kao predivna livada. No, istina je da su i svi ostali jednako nesigurni, puni sumnje u sebe i frustirani, a ako ćete furati svoj film, nikad nećete imati razloga da zavidite drugima.

*yuppie -"young urban professional" ili "young upwardly-mobile professional", termin koji se odnosi na pripadnika više srednje klase ili visoke klase u svojim 20-ima ili 30- ima

izvor: http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-unhappy.html

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where is happiness- part 1

Before I answer the question "Where is happiness?"in next several texts, if that's even  possible, I'll tell you a story about Lucy.

Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y. There is also a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group—it's Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story.So Lucy’s enjoying her GYPSY life, and she’s very pleased to be Lucy. Only issue is this one thing:Lucy’s kind of unhappy. To get to the bottom of why, we need to define what makes someone happy or unhappy in the first place. It’s pretty straightforward—when the reality of someone’s life is better than they had expected, they’re happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they’re unhappy.

It comes down to a simple formula:

To provide some context, let’s start by bringing Lucy’s parents into the discussion. Lucy’s parents were born in the 50s—they’re Baby Boomers. They were raised by Lucy’s grandparents, members of the G.I. Generation, or “the Greatest Generation,” who grew up during the Great Depression and fought in World War II, and were most definitely not GYPSYs. 

Lucy’s Depression Era grandparents were obsessed with economic security and raised her parents to build practical, secure careers. They wanted her parents’ careers to have greener grass than their own, and Lucy’s parents were brought up to envision a prosperous and stable career for themselves. They were taught that there was nothing stopping them from getting to that lush, green lawn of a career, but that they’d need to put in years of hard work to make it happen. After graduating from being insufferable hippies, Lucy’s parents embarked on their careers. As the 70s, 80s, and 90s rolled along, the world entered a time of unprecedented economic prosperity. Lucy’s parents did even better than they expected to. This left them feeling gratified and optimistic. With a smoother, more positive life experience than that of their own parents, Lucy’s parents raised Lucy with a sense of optimism and unbounded possibility. And they weren’t alone. Baby Boomers all around the country and world told their Gen Y kids that they could be whatever they wanted to be, instilling the special protagonist identity deep within their psyches. This left GYPSYs feeling tremendously hopeful about their careers, to the point where their parents’ goals of a green lawn of secure prosperity didn’t really do it for them. A GYPSY-worthy lawn has flowers.

This leads to our first fact about GYPSYs:

1. GYPSYs Are Wildly Ambitious

The GYPSY needs a lot more from a career than a nice green lawn of prosperity and security. The fact is, a green lawn isn’t quite exceptional or uniqueenough for a GYPSY. Where the Baby Boomers wanted to live The American Dream, GYPSYs want to live Their Own Personal Dream. 

Cal Newport points out that “follow your passion” is a catchphrase that has only gotten going in the last 20 years, and “a secure career” has gone out of style, just as the phrase “a fulfilling career” has gotten hot. To be clear GYPSYs want economic prosperity just like their parents did—they just also want to be fulfilled by their career in a way their parents didn’t think about as much. But something else is happening too.While the career goals of Gen Y as a whole have become much more particular and ambitious, Lucy has been given a second message throughout her childhood as well:

This brings us to the second fact about GYPSYs:

2. GYPSYs Are Delusional

“Sure,” Lucy has been taught, “everyone will go and get themselves some fulfilling career, but I am unusually wonderful and as such, my career and life path will stand out amongst the crowd.” So on top of the generation as a whole having the bold goal of a flowery career lawn, each individual GYPSY thinks that he or she is destined for something even better— A shiny unicorn on top of the flowery lawn. So why is this delusional? Because GYPSYs think definition of special is something better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual. According to this definition, most people are not special—otherwise “special” wouldn’t mean anything.

Even right now, the GYPSYs reading this are thinking, “Good point…but I actually am one of the few special ones”—and this is the problem. A second GYPSY delusion comes into play once the GYPSY enters the job market. While Lucy’s parents’ expectation was that many years of hard work would eventually lead to a great career, Lucy considers a great career an obvious given for someone as exceptional as she, and for her it’s just a matter of time and choosing which way to go. Unfortunately, the funny thing about the world is that it turns out to not be that easy of a place, and the weird thing about careers is that they’re actually quite hard. Great careers take years of blood, sweat and tears to build—even the ones with no flowers or unicorns on them—and even the most successful people are rarely doing anything that great in their early or mid-20s. But GYPSYs aren’t about to just accept that.

Paul Harvey, a University of New Hampshire professor and GYPSY expert has researched this finding that Gen Y has ”unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback,” and “an inflated view of oneself.” He says that “a great source of frustration for people with a strong sense of entitlement is unmet expectations. They often feel entitled to a level of respect and rewards that aren’t in line with their actual ability and effort levels, and so they might not get the level of respect and rewards they are expecting.” For those hiring members of Gen Y, Harvey suggests asking the interview question, “Do you feel you are generally superior to your coworkers/classmates/etc., and if so, why?” He says that “if the candidate answers yes to the first part but struggles with the ‘why,’ there may be an entitlement issue. This is because entitlement perceptions are often based on an unfounded sense of superiority and deservingness. They’ve been led to believe, perhaps through overzealous self-esteem building exercises in their youth, that they are somehow special but often lack any real justification for this belief.” So a few years after finishing college Lucy finds herself in an unenviable situation. Lucy’s extreme ambition, coupled with the arrogance that comes along with being a bit deluded about one’s own self-worth, has left her with huge expectations for even the early years out of college.And her reality pales in comparison to those expectations, leaving her “reality – expectations” happy score coming out at a negative.

On top of all this GYPSYs have an extra problem that applies to their whole generation:

3. GYPSYs Are Taunted

Sure, some people from Lucy’s parents’ high school or college classes ended up more successful than her parents did. And while they may have heard about some of it from time to time through the grapevine, for the most part they didn’t really know what was going on in too many other peoples’ careers. Lucy, on the other hand, finds herself constantly taunted by a modern phenomenon. Social media creates a world for Lucy where A) what everyone else is doing is very out in the open, B) most people present an inflated version of their own existence, and C) the people who chime in the most about their careers are usually those whose careers (or relationships) are going the best, while struggling people tend not to broadcast their situation. This leaves Lucy feeling, incorrectly, like everyone else is doing really well, only adding to her misery. So that’s why Lucy is unhappy, or at the least, feeling a bit frustrated and inadequate. In fact, she’s probably started off her career perfectly well, but to her, it feels very disappointing.

So here’s advice for Lucy:

1) Stay wildly ambitious. The current world is bubbling with opportunity for an ambitious person to find flowery, fulfilling success. The specific direction may be unclear, but it’ll work itself out—just dive in somewhere.

2) Stop thinking that you’re special. The fact is, right now, you’re not special. You’re another completely inexperienced young person who doesn’t have all that much to offer yet. You can become special by working really hard for a long time.

3) Ignore everyone else. Other people’s grass seeming greener is no new concept, but in today’s image crafting world, other people’s grass looks like a glorious meadow. The truth is that everyone else is just as indecisive, self-doubting, and frustrated as you are, and if you just do your thing, you’ll never have any reason to envy others.

sources: http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-unhappy.html