“Burn-out? We never had that in our day!”
- 3 min reading time
A lot of people over 65 today used to put in long work weeks. Working part-time was rare for men and going on holiday once a year was often enough. This 65 and over age group forms the richest generation in Dutch history. It will also represent the biggest transfer of money between generations.
This prosperity and wealth are the starting points for Millennials and Generation Z. One point that stands out is that mental well-being is becoming progressively worse among these generations. A wide range of factors are blamed here, including phones, social media, workload, choice overload, etc. If we keep pointing the finger at these external factors, we will continue losing our foothold until we become powerless.
The following questions are crucial here: Are you actually being affected by all these external factors? Or are you allowing yourself to be affected by all of these external factors? For the most part, I believe the latter. But why do we allow ourselves to be affected, to get carried away and distracted?
Resistance and adversity
Saying that much of today’s generation is not of strong build because they grew up avoiding resistance may not seem very kind. But if you ask me, that is the conclusion we can draw here. Avoiding resistance and adversity has clearly had a negative impact on the resilience and strength of many people. Teaching someone to deal with resistance and adversity is, as far as I am concerned, one of the best lessons you can impart.
We can also see it in our leaders. True leaders who stand up for the common good with tenacity, a fighting spirit and a sustainable vision of the future are in short supply. We are being directed by the system instead of directing it ourselves. It makes us dependent and we are losing more and more of our foothold. This poses a huge challenge to us collectively, with the biggest challenge of all being people themselves.
Not me, but us
To get a better foothold, we need to regain our control. Giving ourselves and each other direction. In short: making the ‘us’ more important than the ‘me’. This task does not lie with the government or in regulating a wide range of factors. Instead, it is about businesses in particular playing a major role. In place of weakness being fuelled through unrealistic (starting) salaries, excessive employment conditions and endless freedoms, full focus needs to be placed on rebuilding a strong generation. When companies aim to strengthen their people rather than mitigate circumstances, those same people are able to create successful businesses, happy lives and strong families.
There is more than enough knowledge out there today when it comes to personal leadership. Targeting this knowledge and making it the foundation of an organisation will help create strong employees and teams. Salary and employment conditions are not the holy grail here, as practice shows that companies paying sky-high salaries do not necessarily have the most motivated and satisfied employees. In many cases, it only serves as a golden cage instead.
More often than not, when money, success and happiness are ends in themselves, dissatisfaction and emptiness are the outcomes. It is precisely by focusing on building stronger people that money, success, fulfilment and happiness are more likely to come about. In short: true leaders create leaders.
Robert Peeters from Full Potential
