5 Career Resolutions for Millennials in 2017

Richard Carlson's first book "Don't Sweat Small Stuff" brought so many benefits for my personal and career life. How we interact with other human beings, become a good listener, how to deal with the stressful condition and much more.

Several weeks ago I read another great book from Richard Carlson "Don't Sweat Small Stuff at Work". This book focused on the personal development at the workplace. Just like the previous book, he wrote 100 points in this book.

Millennial have a super unique characteristic when it comes to a workplace. Most millennial tend to complain, disappointed and leave when the workplace is not as cool as they expect.

This book provides us with a story that can motivate us a millennial to have a better understanding of our workplace. As I read the book, I found 5 most important chapter we (millennial) need to read this book.

1. Stop Anticipating Tiredness 

“OMG, tomorrow is already Monday, I will need to do the presentation, monthly report, boring meeting”, “This week is a super busy week, I will only be able to sleep 3 hours”. We heard a lot of complaint like this coming from our colleague or even from us.

The problem with anticipating tiredness in this way, or in any way, is that it clearly reinforce the tiredness. It reverts our attention to the number of hours we are sleeping and how tired we are going to be

We don't need to keep reminding yourself that we are going to be super tired, that we will only have 3 hours of sleep every day. If we have a lot of things to do, list it down and do it one by one; if we are lack of sleep, take as much time as we can to sleep. With this, we are going to have a better day and week ahead.

2. Light a Candle Instead of Cursing Darkness 

As the title suggest, this strategy involves taking positive, solution-oriented (however small) toward improving a situation instead of complaining about what’s wrong. It means being more a part of a solution rather than a reminder or reinforcement of the problem.

In my company iPrice Group, every Friday we have an anonymous survey. The purpose of the survey is for everyone to express what they think about the company, their complaints, opinions or an appreciation of what the company already gave to us. Every Friday, in the team meeting, HR team will read the survey and management level will answer all the questions.

Some questions including: “Why we don’t have much cultural or religious celebration in iPrice?”; “Why we can’t make our office look more beautiful, more fun?”.

There was an answer from one managerial person “Instead of complaining about what we are a lack of, why don't you take part and volunteer to make the office more beautiful and more fun?”.

What we can learn from this is, if we see a problem happen in our company, instead of we cursing the situation, we should act to change it. For example, if the office is too boring, why don't you initiate a fun activity, such as sport, outdoor activities or other activities. Stop complaining, start action!.

3. Don’t Sweat the Demanding Boss

The truth about demanding people is that generally speaking, they are demanding to everyone. In other words, it's no personal. The problem is that we most of the time think that Mr or Mrs. Demanding was "Out to get me".

Instead of complaining about his or her attitude, try to steal and learn something good from them. We need to change our approach to deal with this kind of person. We can try to open our self to understand what they are trying to teach us and don’t take their behavior personally.

What can we learn from this situation? We learn how to deal with demanding people, later on, when having our own company, we understand how to deal with our employee, with our clients and also our investors.

With this behavior, we will be less adversarial and defensive than we used to be. It takes a time to learn, but this skill is worth it.

4. Remember the Motto, “You Catch More Flies with Honey”

When we are kind, loving and patient – when we are fair, a good listener, and when we genuinely care about others – our attitudes comes across in all we do. As a result, people love to be around us, share their secrets of success and want to assist you in any way they can.

You can do simple things to be like this, such as offering help to those who need, saying “Good Morning”, offer to go out for lunch together, be a good listener when your colleague share their stories.

Remember to be good to everyone, just be good.

5. Ease Off Your Ego

This one of the most interesting parts of the book, talking about our ego. Ego is part of us that brags, exaggerates, criticizes, and judges other (as well as ourselves). The ego is very self-centered as if it needs to yell out,"Look at me!!" Because the ego is so self-preoccupied and selfish, it encourages us to lose our compassion for and interest in others.

From now, whenever we are in “proving mode” try to feel how much the energy that we are invest on it. You will feel super tired because the ego drains so much energy.

There is a lot to be gained by easing off our ego. First, we will feel as though a huge burden has been lifted. As I said before, it takes a lot of effort and energy to be in “proving mode”. We will be more interested in other people. We are going to be a better listener, kinder and more generous person as Ricard Carlson said in his book.

There are still 95 chapters that Richard Carlson wrote in his book. But, from these 5 we as millennial can learn so many things related to our workplace. Moreover, it's 2017, we can use this as our resolution in the workplace.