We have all heard it before. Chances are we have all said it before. If you’re over the age of 45 then you have definitely said it, and if you’re younger than 38 you have heard it. If you’re in your twenties you probably hear it more than twice a week. More than likely, it has been said directly to your face by someone much older, and wealthier, than you with no regard to your character or modus operandi.

It is some version of “millennials are lazy and entitled.”

If I’m being honest with myself, I’m guilty of feeling and acting entitled sometimes. I’ve written about that before - the idea that I was unfulfilled at work because I was too good for, too talented for, too organized for, too {insert positive adjective here} for this job and I deserve more. If you’re new here, you can read that expletive-laced piece here.

Entitlement is a funny concept. I think it has taken on its own personality because of the narrative created by old people. It’s almost like millennials have accepted our fate of being entitled because it’s too exhausting to explain to old folks that millennials have done nothing but make their life easier. I’m speaking directly to the development and evolution of tech when I say that, but it could be said in many contexts. For a lot of us younger folks, it has presented itself as motivation to further develop and progress. For others, it has been embedded into their mental in an unhealthy and toxic way, creating an excuse to not develop and progress. For me, it has done both.

I’m going to tell you a story that, I believe, is the root of my cyclical entitlement. I’ll keep the story short - I went to 5 different colleges, transferring 6 times, in 7 years. I now have a journalism degree and am 4 credit hours away from an English degree and 3 credit hours away from a general business degree. I am not going back to school to complete those hours, but the thought of having a 7-credit hour semester with the end goal of 3 degrees is cool to think about. My intention in sharing that is not to brag, but rather to make you aware that I was able to leave whenever I wanted with really no consequence. The only “consequence” was added time to an undergraduate degree. It was easy for me to change schools and justify it by saying it was a better option, better opportunity, better whatever I wanted to say that time. In reality, full transparency here, when something got hard, I ran. In this sense, sure, I am an entitled millennial who didn’t have to stick it out.

If you have been inside a church building in the last ten years, then chances are you’ve heard someone preaching about chasing the next best thing. I am an example of chasing the next best thing played out in very real life. At the time, there were no consequences - other than student debt and being made fun of for taking so long to graduate. Because I am so passionate about being the best version of myself, I would take transferring a step further and change my major every time I changed schools. Mainly because I thought this major was better than that major and I was bored of those classes. Even more, when I graduated, I took the same approach to my professional life and held 3 positions in 3 different industries within 10 months of graduation. All with the mindset that the next thing was the best thing, and it was going to change my life forever. Sure, I’m an entitled millennial.

Well, now the consequences are sneaking into my life.

Surprise, surprise. How does that science saying go? For every action, there is an equal and opposite consequence, whether it happens immediately or not. Right? Something like that.

These consequences are subtle, and not apparent in my everyday real life. They are more of a mental state than a tangible obstacle that I have to maneuver around. The consequences are the same as the action - because it was always so easy to change, I now believe that it’s easy to change. Because I was always able to run from things when it got hard, my knee-jerk reaction now is to run when it gets hard.

*An important distinction to make is that I only think this way in certain spaces. Relationships are not one of those spaces -- Joslin, don’t worry, I’m not going to run when marriage gets hard.*

I think that because this cycle was created during school, which is something that I did because, in many ways, I was told that I had to, it is mostly my mindset towards work which is also something that I do because I am told that I have to. So, here I am. Learning how to fight through the urge to run and discerning what it means to stick it out. I am learning that a hasty decision to change is now impacting more than one life and has more impact than I think on my own life. I am seeing that a hasty decision to change is a weak move and I am trying to be a strong person. I am figuring out that my instincts are sometimes wrong, and that I should get beat up every once in a while.

Maybe old people have a point when they say that millennials are lazy and entitled, but maybe they’ve been saying it for so long that they’ve used it as an excuse to not teach or help us kids. Thus, making old people lazy and entitled. Suck on that, boomer!

Raise your glass with me. Cheers to us, for trying.

Modus Operandi is also known as one’s M.O. It’s how you operate.

If you’re wondering, the schools that I went to are:

Univ. of Science and Arts of Oklahoma (fall 2011)

Luna Community College (2012-2013)

New Mexico State University (2013-2014)

Univ. of Texas at Dallas (fall 2015)

New Mexico State University (Spring 2016)

Univ. of New Mexico (2016-Fall 2017)

The jobs I had the year after graduating were:

Young Life Staff Associate

Account Manager Intern (advertising agency)

Superintendent (home builder)

*If you’re a millennial and you feel you have been personally attacked by an old person for calling you lazy, you may be entitled to financial compensation and years of therapy to spend it on.

I’m going to pretend to be wise. You should read this in the best motivational speaker voice you can muster up in your head. A combination of Eric Thomas and Oprah Winfrey on giveaway day, type voice.

There has been a theme in my thought processes lately. It is a theme that consumes me to the point that it has become the topic of conversations that I have with strangers, it’s the majority of social media content curated for me - because the psychos at Instagram have bugs in my brain that read my thoughts and turn them into ads and suggested videos - and it is the books that I’m choosing to read. For the record, I have never been a fan of reading, but I recently started to read more because somebody at some point said, “leaders are readers.” Clearly that person was a great leader because I definitely know his or her name and the context in which they said it.

The theme is this: you just have to start.

It sounds cliché, I know. Like the kid you went to high school with who is shoulder-deep in a pyramid scheme says on Facebook, YoU caNt GEt wHeRe yOu wanT tO gO if YoU DoN’T StArt. I’m not taking that approach. I’m taking the approach that suggests nothing else matters in this moment. There is not a single thing more important, right now, than starting.

Okay, turn off the Oprah voice. Now it’s just me blabbering.

The irony is that I have always held a “you have to start somewhere” mindset when I feel inadequate. It has been a continual narrative throughout my life, and I have found a lot of confidence in it. It has been something that I thought I had figured out. However, recently it has felt different. It has felt more real.

This newly discovered theme of you just have to start feels more closely related to dreams that I’m re-discovering. There have been plenty of extraordinary circumstances in my life in the last few years that have led me to, what I believe is, thinking bigger. Dreaming, if you will, but actually seeing myself in the dream rather than somebody I know who may fit the dream better. Maybe I am realizing the truths of the world and finding ways to place myself in them, maybe I am different, and you should come to me for all your wisdom and advice needs, or maybe I am just a little boy trying to start out in a big, scary world.

I had a conversation with a friend recently, and he said something that stuck. This man is medical professional. Smart guy, real smart guy. He has never been good at writing, or so he says. If you were to ask me, I would say that he has long been too worried about the wrong things when he would write. That, and the fact that he has only written academically, and academic writing is a pain in the ass. I digress. He mentioned that he, “finally got to a place where papers didn’t scare [him], and [he] would just use Grammarly to make it sound good. Which is incredible in itself. He continued with the part that hit me, “. . . just put it on paper and not worry about what it sounds like.”

“Just put it on paper and not worry about what it sounds like.”

How beautiful of a realization is this? Just put it out there. In the context of writing a paper, the illustration is so brilliantly clear that I can’t unsee it. When you’re looking at your computer and all you see is a blank white page there is nothing more important, in that moment, than starting. Who cares about what it sounds like, who cares where the commas go, who cares if you don’t have a title because turning in a blank sheet of paper sounds a whole lot worse than turning in a paper with a few run-on sentences.

When I say that he has long been too worried about the wrong things, what I mean is that he has been fixated on perfect grammar and how his intelligence is perceived. This turned into a fear, and the fear corralled the thoughts and imagination of an extremely intelligent human being.

“Just put it on paper and not worry about what it sounds like.”

Because the only time that you cannot go back and edit, refine, or make better is if there is nothing there to edit, refine, or make better.

This is the point that I have come to. I have been burned by dreams before. I have not met goals that seemed easily attainable. I have been let down. I have let myself down so many times that it is easy for me to stare at a blank sheet of paper with the idea, the dream, the goal, and be scared to put it out there because I don’t know what it will sound like. Or, because I don’t want to be perceived as dumb. Here Have A Beer is my example of you just have to start. I want to be a NY Times Best Seller one day. I have been sitting on my couch telling people that I am a writer for a very long time, and I always finish the sentence with something along the lines of, “. . . I mean, I don’t ever write but I enjoy it and am good at it.” I have never realized how stupid that sounds until I put it on paper. Now, when I think about being an author, I can think about things that I have actually written. The things that I have written may suck bad, but they’re better than everything that hasn’t been written.

- - Turn your motivational speaker voice back on - -

That is the start to anything great. Whether it be a blog, an essay for a class, or a plan to start a business. If you can just get it on paper and not worry about what it sounds like, then you’ll have a base to stand on. The base may be shaky, but it is stronger than the base that you didn’t have yesterday.

- - Okay turn it off - -

Now expand. Such is life, right? This whole concept is an approach to everything. Asking a girl on a date: you won’t ever hear “yes” unless you get the words out of your mouth. You’re probably going to sound like an idiot, but at least you’re making sounds. When I asked Jos on our first date, I essentially insulted her without knowing it, and she said yes. Actually, she asked, “Yes?” in sort of a I-think-he’s-asking-me-on-a-date-but-he-knows-I-would-never-date-him-and-he-just-told-me-that-I’m-stupid tone of voice, but now we’re married. Win for the little guys! Further, it’s being bold and seeking out job interviews. If you can just send the email, knock on a door, make a phone call. I recently landed a job because I walked into an office and interrupted a phone call that the owner of the company was on. Yes, the timing of it was Heaven sent, but the timing would not have worked for me if I only thought about walking in and never actually did. For my friend, on the surface, this looked like a career shift. At its core, it was him watching a dream slip out of his hands and not knowing what to do. Until he did it. And now he’s done it. He can say that he got to a place where he was no longer afraid of what it would look like and he “just put it on paper”. For context, he graduated college and moved to a different state with a one-track mind and his eyes set on a goal he had set a long time ago. A few years after moving he realized that his dream wasn’t going to come true and he couldn’t quite reach that goal, so he made a switch. A switch that involved going back to school and making a handful of other sacrifices. Now he loves what he does.

I’m learning that life is about progress. Deeper than a cliché about it being about the journey rather than the destination. More than not reaching a goal unless you start. I’m seeing that life is truly about progress. Progress looks different for me than it does for you. Progress looks different today than it did yesterday. Progress feels like a natural high, and progress feels like you’re getting punched in the face. Progress looks like throwing up words onto a page and letting Grammarly make it sound good. Continue to put one foot in front of the other in the general direction that you would like to head. If you’re not strong enough to put one foot in front of the other, then put one foot right next to the other, and shuffle forward.

So, cheers to progress. No matter what it looks like for you, today.

Eric Thomas is a motivational speaker who says things like this