Categories
Entrepreneurship Generation Y Inspiration

Millennial confidence and failure go hand-in-hand

I just spent the last twenty-four hours (and months of thinking and planning), working on this website. Not just this blog, but an events calendar that is far from going “live.” Creating this blog was fun for me. I know enough HTML to make some creative design decisions in order to create a clean modern site, with enough whimsy that expresses my style and brand.

The events calendar, however, sounds simple enough, but my desire to create something that fully expresses my brand got me in trouble. For some reason, I thought that since I could build this blog on my own, with a few tweaks, that I could build the events calendar as well, with just a few tweaks. Never mind that I only understand basic HTML and CSS, and that AJAX and MySQL remain distant acquaintances in the long line of tools I’d like to meet. Never mind too, that when I spoke with real web developers they estimated months of work to achieve the quality I was speaking of, and tens of thousands of dollars. I thought I could create a stellar web application. With no web development expertise whatsoever. In a few short days. In fact, I was sure of it.

It’s arrogant, certainly. And a little cocky as well. Along with the rest of my generation, my mother told me I could be whoever I wanted, do anything. What I want for this website is to engage the next generation. A lofty goal, sure. But I am confident that I will succeed. I have a lot of ideas, buckets of enthusiasm and energy, and a drive to get things done.

So, do I buy into the hype that Generation Y is arrogant? Yes, sirree. And proud of it.

Then again, I could fail.

I already discovered I was (way) over my head when I decided I could learn developer code in just a couple days. I have an events calendar that I could link to, but I don’t like it and it’s not up to my standards. But I’ve learned from doing, instead of just talking. While I couldn’t take my idea past a certain point without help, I gave it my all, tried my best, and built up my base of knowledge. I now know more then when I’ve started. For full millennial effect, our confidence needs to be combined with the assertion that it’s okay for us to fail. That allows us to turn challenges into opportunities, failure into success. Here’s to the success of this blog (or possible failure). I hope you stay tuned – cheers!

Be cocky. Fail like you mean it.

By Rebecca Healy

My goal is to help you find meaningful work, enjoy the heck out of it, and earn more money.

19 replies on “Millennial confidence and failure go hand-in-hand”

Well, good job getting all this accomplished so far. The site is looking great.

Our generation certainly aspires to be a lot, don’t we? It’s something I’ve been blogging about a lot recently. But I love your insight that we need to give ourselves permission to fail. I certainly went through that process. Even embracing the ability to edit ourselves along the way as we figure all these things out as we go is so empowering.

Keep up the good blogging!

Tiffany,

Thank you for your good wishes. I just found your blog earlier today actually – what a coincidence- and I love it. You have a great perspective. I admire that you work and go to school! Looking forward to continuing the conversation.

Rebecca

Hi Rebecca,
What a great site. I don’t have time to really read it right now, but it looks very interesting and I bet you put a lot of work into the site.

I look forward to reading your articles and can you tell me again how to access by having messages come up telling me that their is new information. Do you accept submissions from outsiders? I am new to the blog idea being just a little bit , lol, older that you and your daily associates. Thank you for including me. Also, the picture of you and your fella on the grass is a great shot. You both look so happy and the picture is balanced so well.
Love to you,
Deborah

Thanks, Deb :).

I will eventually accept submissions from other people. To get updates when I post something new, simply enter your email under the heading “subscribe” on the right hand side, and then hit the “subscribe” button. You will receive an email whenever I write something new. Enjoy!

What an interesting conversation about failure!
In all seriousness though, failure in this society isn’t viewed as a waste of time or necessarily associated with shame and stigma…an opinion I think is supported by the generally positive comments to your article. Risk taking entrepreneurs like Edison and Gates are almost universally admired and we cheer them for the fame and success they’ve earned. In the science and technology field, there’s a lot of talk about innovation rising from the promise of reward in a free market to encourage such risk-taking behavior. It’s the only way we can plow through the near constant, ego-bruising failure that goes with research. So I identify with the message of your article – when that moment of inevitability arrives (as is 90% likely the case for me) I’ll try to learn from the experience, make myself a better person, and make the next failure an only 80% probable occurrence :)

Ganesh, thanks for you comments. ;) I think you’re right. Failure isn’t deemed bad in our society. Possibly to the detriment of newer generations who get a trophy just for participating. And when that kind of thing happens, you don’t even want to take the leap- so much focus is on the success and not all the work to get there. Very interesting to hear about it from the research field… a lot of fields have the “near constant, ego-bruising failure.” In fundraising, for example, there are just as many “no” as “yes.” I’d be curious to know if there are character traits across these type of industries that are similar.

Hey Rebecca,

Have you looked at the wonderful world of open source? As long as you know basic html and css you should be able to format some of the open source web calendars to fit your design needs.

Great site by the way, I’m really glad to see more millennials jumping into the fray (or out of it actually).

-Brad

Brad,

I’ve looked at open source, but actually nothing seemed to suit my needs (I have an extensive list of features and flexiblity that I want included). I was working with Trumba calendar to try and see if I could mold it to what I wanted, and it’s close, but not quite there. Do you know something I don’t? I’d be grateful for any advice in the area.

Thank you for the well wishes too. You have some cool things going on at your site as well!

[…] When I wrote my first post, it was Tiffany Monhollon who contributed the first comment. Which made me giddy for days upon days and gave her instant status as my first online best friend. It only made sense to feature the talented writer of Little Red Suit as the first young leader to be featured in the Follow the Leader series. […]

[…] 1) Gen-Y will fail. Miserably. We won’t change the world straight away. You have to fail to succeed. When you haven’t wiped the crud off your shoes, you can’t develop emotional intelligence, which is an important factor for career advancement. Only experience will help us learn. Let us take the reins quickly so we can learn quickly. […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *