Have you ever wondered about the word “Entitlement” and all that it entails?
You work hard your entire life, earn, save and expect that your golden years will be stressfree & peaceful. With the pride to shape your career and life, you can never even dream of depending on anyone, let alone the government. That’s your sense of personal responsibility!
And then, there are others who expect their governments and those around to help them. They believe its their right to expect such treatment, to be handed all that they want and deserve, on a silver platter.
With each generation, we have seen this entitlement mindset growing while the world is going the other way. Mind you, I am not looking to get into an argument here about one generation or another that reflects this, as there are definitely those who do not have an entitlement mindset in every generation. Let’s just agree that there are also those who have such a mindset and believe that its their right to have everything handed to them. Part of it may have to do with their upbringing where they were given a guarded childhood with everything handed to them, without even trying. Their parents might have thought that they were being great to their kids but, actually they may have been hurting them.
When we look at generations past and some in the present, many of them actually prided in reaping rewards for the work they put in. Somewhere along the line, parents wanted to make life easier for their kids and there began the growing sense of urgency to provide the next generation with an easier life than what their parents experienced. Genuinely good intentioned, this decision actually led to subsequent generations growing weaker and expecting their lives to be made easier without effort.
Knowingly or unknowingly, the sense of entitlement got instilled in their children as they were raised to believe that they were special in their own minds. While the older generations prided in taking on any odd jobs to provide for their families, the next lot would rather not work than do odd jobs, as they saw such work as not meeting their expectations of themselves. Nothing wrong with that except that if you do have expectations about the kind of work you are entitled to, you need to put in the effort to deserve it. Where’s the pride in relying on anyone when you can rely on your own self to manage your own needs until you land what you believe you deserve? There’s no point looking externally to blame someone else or the circumstances you are in. You may see it as an avenue to vent, but it actually perpetuates your own frustration and drags you down. It’s better to seek answers internally and make a change in your own thinking and behavior if you’d like to see a change in results. Personal accountability is a great factor in all this, it helps you take responsibility and make a change in behavior and eventually, in results you experience.
An entitlement attitude not only destroys people who harbor it, but can bring down entire communities, and as a result, a nation. It lays the seed of corruption, greed and adopting selfish means to achieve desired end, where the sense of community and betterment totally dissipates. What you inherit or are given is a privilege. When you treat it as such, your sense of responsibility and accountability comes to the fore. In times like now, with unemployment rates at the highest since the Great Depression, this attitude of privilege is so much more precious. If you are holding a job or have a business that is running, consider yourself blessed for you have the privilege to work and provide for your family. This is all the more reason to put your best foot forward in everything you do, as a part of your profession or work.
With the economy trying to find its footing amidst the current pandemic, many Americans and citizens around the world are losing jobs. Those of retirement age have found their 401Ks depleted. After working for years and feeding portions of their salary into these funds which promised to ensure their ability to comfortably retire at the chosen age, one would think that these people have as much right as any to be angry. However, the popular response of retirement aged Americans during such times of crisis, has not been anger at all. Instead, with an air of disappointment looming, the majority of retirement aged Americans have taken it upon themselves and their own personal responsibility to cope with this unfortunate series of events. Picking up part time jobs, or extending their work years before retirement has been necessary for many senior citizens, not just now but for past several years.
Our economic future depends on the standards of personal excellence. It is not impossible to achieve this, but it is required that it start to reform both the attitudes of those just entering the workforce and also, as a preventative measure, those who are still children, who will become the next group of young adults to enter the workforce in the coming decades.
If we reform the way that the upcoming generation of workers view work versus reward, then our economy could be saved from the downfall that is already plaguing many once-strong economies of the world. It is integral to this process that parents, businesses, and governments work together to restructure the mentality of young people and breed a new generation. Its not about age here, its about the attitude we carry that personal responsibility alone will make each of us stronger individually and as one community, one country & one world!
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