I’ve had the pleasure of spending the last 17 months working none stop, yep that’s right — “the pleasure.” Every day, I have an opportunity to put yesterday’s learnings and our prebuilt strategies to use.
As we start to prepare to scale, I’ve had to challenge myself to jump and learn things I’ve yet to do and just about every day during the past 17 months. I’ve learned something new, and I started to think… why is that we are so content with our lives? Why do most of us fail to challenge ourselves? Admittedly, I could have learned a lot of this in my earlier years.
One of the things we do here at ASDAL is called the circle of knowledge. Overall, we built this as a mentor and training model for interns and early-stage employees. However, I’ve found myself using this in my everyday life, but I asked myself, why, why has it taken me years to get to a point where I am continually learning?
I had one conclusion, and that’s the fact that I am stressed, but not in a negative way, but in a way that I have an opportunity. However, the stressful part is that there is no direction and when there is no direction you are responsible for setting the tone, level of education and commitment. Overall, it does create an enormous challenge, which requires consistent focus and willingness to learn, adapt, and react.
Now I am not saying most of society is lazy, because I believe the exact opposite is true. However, I am saying we’ve become conditioned. Conditioned to the point, we’ve become content because we are told: ‘we need to be conformable & happy’ and yes this is true to some extent, but our society has grown into a group of generalist, which I won’t get into why that is a problem, but if this sounds like you. I encourage you to read an article from Frizzle: Why You Can’t Afford to Be a Generalist.
If I had listened to my high school teachers or college professors; I might have also become a generalist who is afraid to speak up, take the initiative and go against “general society.”
The number one question that we as Americans are asking ourselves: What the hell happened to us? We used to be a tough & strong group of people, but where has it gone? Why do so many people fear hard work, learning, walking and working without instruction?
The problem is simple; society has given most of us ‘too much’ and those who haven’t received much, have had to earn it. Which, those very few individuals are now surpassing their peers.
Parents are so protective, soft and spoil their children to the point he or she has not experienced enough hardship or failures to test whom they’d like to become and as a result, they become a generalist.
It’s evident that how us millennials or and even generation Z have been raised differently compared to our parents and grandparents. However, it is true that every generation has abnormalities, but the most notable difference is that previous generations not only experienced stress but dealt with it appropriately.
Within our age, we are reluctant to talk about failure and hardship because they both are stressful. Nevertheless, we forget that failure and difficulties are an essential part of success. Experiencing stress and adversity offers so many benefits, that are unnoticed to the eye, but provide deep cleansing mentally and physically.
So, I encourage anyone to consistently welcome stress into your daily lives. Immerse yourself in learning, commit to something new, young professional should try new groups, stand up against social injustice, workout or join an organized sport. You should test your abilities every day and pay attention to what works, what does not and how you feel after you’ve completed your daily quest.
In doing, you will learn to develop an initiative and insight toward things you’d never thought you be able to do.
“Darrin Levine is the Founder of ASDAL. ASDAL provides operation teams with software that offers a robust Infrastructure with automation and reporting that allows brands to streamline management on Amazon stress-free.”
