I just equate that to pre-marital counseling. People like to wait until they get the ring and the date, but really pre-marital counseling should start before you even get a ring and a date, because by the time you do, it’s too late for the counselor to say, “You guys really aren’t meant for each other.” It’s just too late, because I’ve already put the money out. I’ve already told everybody. It’s much harder now to turn around and say, “Oh, okay, we’re not going to get married.” Who is going to do that? Nobody.
At the age group that you’re in, I think it’s a perfect age to really begin to sit down, clarify your focus. You can walk into that job and tell them exactly what you’re looking for. You can say, “This is where I want to go,” and maybe it won’t be where I want to go for the rest of my life, but I can see, I have mapped out where I want to be for at least the next five to ten years. What an advantage to have, what a platform to walk in with a level of confidence, knowing where you want to go, knowing what options are before you, and knowing that I can get there, I really can, versus when you come out of college, you look back at four years like, “Okay, I got this degree, so what do I do next,” and hoping to find a job, and then if you don’t get a job, what happens to a lot of millennials, they get very depressed, because they’re finding when you get out of college, they’re telling you know your bachelor’s degree is like a high school diploma at this point.
Now you’re going on and getting your masters. You know what you find out after you get your masters? Well, where’s your experience? You’re like, “I don’t have any. I spent six years in school,” and they’re finding a saturated market. They’re finding a market that is very highly competitive than it was ten, fifteen years ago, and so they’re stuck, because they don’t know how to think outside the box.
I hope that answers the question. I think life coaching helps millennials think outside the box in advance, in advance before they even get in the box. It teaches them how not to probably even get in the box, if I could say that.
Alesha Thomas: I think you’re dead on. The answer was completely spot on, and I think it will help a lot of millennials, who are just feeling stuck, because, as you said, the job market is crazy right now. You go to school. You spend all this money on a degree that really can feel like a high school degree, and then you figure let me move on and go to grad school, and that’s more money and more time sucked up, and you’re left without experience. Yes. Getting a life coach, as you equated it to a marriage counselor, I think is essential for millennials, especially if they need help with what direction to go in their life.
Niki Brown: Absolutely.
Alesha Thomas: I really find that my generation is consumed with receiving instant gratification. Like we said, moving on right from college into grad school, that instant success, so be it from our job, school, our partner and friends, and what I’ve noticed is that we’ve become so consumed with technology especially, and instant success and greatness, that really our interpersonal relationships suffer.
What advice would you give to young adults as it relates to instant gratification, and especially interpersonal relationships? We see young adults and older, constantly on their phones, constantly involved in social media, so how can we really find the right adjustment to accommodate our future, because really social media is going in such an amazing place, but it takes away from, I think, interpersonal relationships and that one to one contact that we’ve quite often lost.
Niki Brown: You’re right. I think millennials are at an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is never before have we seen a faster paced society, where things are happening much more quicker. There is a level of instant gratification. It’s not that we’re looking for it. It’s actually real. We can send our resume in via online, and get a hit on it immediately, versus sending it in the mail, and waiting two weeks for somebody to get it and get back to us. I mean there is a level of instant gratification, and social media has helped to create that. I think really it’s not just saying, “Oh, we’re looking for instant gratification.” We actually have instant gratification.
As it relates to interpersonal relationships, it’s the same thing. When I was dating, I don’t want to date myself too much, but when I was dating, we didn’t have all this text messaging and all that. We wrote letters, and it took time. Now I’m getting to know people much faster than I would have ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, because of social media. It doesn’t take me six months to a year per se to really get to know someone. We’re talking a lot quicker. We’re talking a lot easier. Social media has bridged the gap in time, so things have sped up. There’s an acceleration.
