No longer are millennials the entitled couch potatoes our bosses, neighbours and extended family loved to point fingers at for believing we could have the world served to us on a gold platter, with a side of gravy at no additional cost. The labels are changing.
One woman’s story about how harmful ingredients in children’s personal products inspired her to make a change. Abby Songin has always considered herself a healthy person. Her parents encouraged her local shopping habits and meal preparation techniques from a young age. “I had a general idea of what was good for my body and what clearly was not,” Songin says. She takes her fitness seriously; she played basketball at an elite level and received an athletic scholarship to Canisius in Buffalo, New York. After graduating, she played professionally in Germany for a year. Then she returned home and started a family. The mother of two found herself raising young kids at a time when the terms “natural” and “organic” were growing in popularity. And as she looked to instill strong nutritional values in her children, she started paying more attention to ingredients on other items on her shopping list, such as shampoo, lotions, and makeup. It wasn’t just what she was applying to her own skin that frightened her; it was the toxins she started …
Charlene Bailey started figure skating at age seven. She spent the majority of her adolescence on the ice. When she wasn’t skating, she was thinking about skating. She remembers drawing sketches of dress designs on scrap pieces of paper. She would plan the skating choreography in her mind, and even pick out the music for the routine.
A healthy budget isn’t meant to close doors; it’s meant to open them. We’re living in a culture where spending money you don’t have is not only acceptable; it’s encouraged. And you can do it all without even getting out of bed. Our habits are driven by acquisition and consumption. Closets, basements and attics throughout North American confirm our ability to accumulate possessions. Our garages are so full; we can’t even park in them. It’s a dangerous time to be alive. We know quality of life isn’t defined by the make of the car parked in your driveway, nor is it established by the brand names you wear on your back. And yet we keep wanting more; buying more; spending more. We accumulate stuff we don’t need, using money that isn’t ours. Rather than feeling happier about the lives we’ve built borrowed, we’re left maxed out, stressed out, and completely distracted by the burden of maintaining our status while paying off heaps of credit card debt. Is this really the kind of life you want …
Tips for taking back some control in your day.
The idea of spending your days practicing yoga on the beach with the sea breeze blowing in your hair sounds like a life most people could only dream of.
Or perhaps it’s something you plan to do upon retirement, after slaving away at your desk for the next 40 years.
After all, we have bills to pay and a nest egg to build; we’ve all got to do our time, right?
Maybe not.
Less than two years ago, Lindsay Adamson led her life by exactly this mentality. She was living in Toronto, Ontario, working seven days a week, and logging 16 to 18-hour days. This was her fourth year living this way, after getting promoted to the role of National Sales Director at a company she had been working with for eight years.
“I missed everything in my friends’ and family’s lives,” she says in an interview with The Reply. “Weddings, showers, birthdays – although I always made it home for Christmas. But I was so addicted to trying to be successful.”
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Perks such as flex work hours, lucrative pay and the opportunity to give back make sales a viable career path for millennials.
