Why Millennials Struggle with Consistency and Emotional Decision Making

By: Pritesh Patel

As Millennials, a lot of the challenges we face today come down to filling a gap between 2 phenomena.

Before I introduce the phenomena.  Let’s talk for a moment about what is “consistency” and “emotional decisions”.

I think we all can agree that consistency is a very important ingredient in reaching any goal, objective, building a relationship, etc.  When we were in school, we had to be consistent in studying to meet deadlines and pass exams.  At work, we have to consistently go in and produce results so that we can keep the job and/or get promoted. When building an emotional connection with someone to grow a relationship, consistent communication/effort is required. If we go up an escalator that is going in the opposite direction, you have to be consistently moving forward or else we don’t get anywhere. (Yes I did this just 2 days ago … )

But you get the point. Consistency is important to achieving anything.

Now lets talk about “emotional decision” making.  Or in other words, making decisions out of “haste”.  We all know that making decisions out of “haste” are not always good decisions.  Unless you are some sort of Buddhist monk or spiritual guru, we normal humans have emotions that fluctuate on a daily basis (maybe we can learn to control our emotions better … lessons from Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama, classical spiritual rituals, etc but thats possibly another blog post later … I got lots to say on that).  So if our emotions fluctuate daily and we make decisions based on them, our decisions will fluctuate daily as well.  That can be contradictory to achieving something longterm.  In fact emotional decision making produces inconsistency … links back to the first point.  In other words, wheels spin, but no forward progress is made.

Now to the 2 phenomena that produce a gap for Millennials. 

Phenomena 1:  We are called Generation Me.  Look it up.  Generation Me is the generation that has been told “follow your dreams”, “do what makes you happy”, “you can do anything you put your mind to”, “find your passion”, etc.  This message (which I think is a good message) has manifested itself in our generation having grand visions for our lives.  Grand visions of what we want to achieve in our careers.  Grand visions in what type of relationships we want to be in and the type of partner we want.  It has trained us to think very introspectively about the decisions we make.  All this introspection has a tendency to make us over thinkers. When we think “what will make me happy” is by nature thinking about decisions emotionally. 

Phenomena 2: We live in an era where there is more information floating in and out of our heads than ever before. We live in the age of the the internet, apps, Facebook, etc.  How many of us pick up our phones first thing in the morning and browse Facebook even before we brush our teeth or recall the dream we just had.  Do we even have time to question the the credibility of all the information that we let in our heads that we potentially use to make decisions and influence our emotions?  We are overall tremendously distracted by all this information.  

So in essence, we millennials have grand visions for our lives but we are too distracted to put consistent effort into those visions and when we do make decisions we either overthink it or make an emotional decision because it’s all based on how we feel in that moment.

Let me elaborate with an example. 

Example 1:  A common thread in a lot of our minds is likely personal relationships.  It is no secret that the Millennial Generation is getting married later than ever before compared to other generations. 

When pursuing a relationship, the age of the internet and the latest and greatest swipe right/left app gives us too many options.  Some of us get so so distracted with options that we forget that really building and maintaining a relationship takes consistent effort with one person.  Too many options and divided attention doesn't build anything. 

A lot of us also commonly say “it doesn’t click” or “I’m not feeling it”, “Its not you, its me”, etc.  In essence these are emotional decisions. Now I’m not saying emotions are a bad thing in this process.  A personal relationship requires feelings … thats obvious.  But lets break apart the concept of “attraction”.  “Attraction” itself is an emotion.  To build and maintain attraction requires “consistent” effort to progressing that feeling to new levels of attachment/connection.  Just like going up that escalator, if you aren’t consistently putting effort into maintaining your position and pushing forward, you won’t get anywhere.  

We won’t click with everybody but I think we sometimes forget that to “feel it” requires “consistent” effort to maintain it and progress it.  Its not going to be there magically without effort.  Again, emotions fluctuate daily.  If we make decisions based on those fluctuating emotions without putting enough effort into it, we could be missing out on connections that are good for us longterm and are right under our nose.

There you have it.  In conclusion, a lot of us are having a hard time bridging the gap between high expectations for ourselves while being highly distracted.  Sometimes too distracted with introspection to notice what is in front of you. We become inconsistent with our emotional decision making while doing too much introspection.  That ends up being contradictory to our goals.  

Add your thoughts and comments.  Maybe we figure this out together as a community while supporting and sharing knowledge with each other. What else, what do you think about all this?