Gemma Spake

When we were in high school, when we were in college, everything is kind of this step up.

Like we achieve this and then we achieve this and then we climb this and then we get to the top.

And when we graduate, we climb the career ladder and every two years we're rewarded with a promotion and we're rewarded with a raise until we get to the top of the ladder and then we are predictably, naturally our happiest because we have done it and we have the success story we always wanted to be.

But like that progression,

is not true anymore, if it ever was true.

Instead, we live in a very uncertain time for all of our careers, for all of our lives, rapidly evolving technology, AI, financial crisis, a volatile job market means that our age group isn't going to have that same sense of upward mobility and progress that a lot of other generations have.

There was this woman called Eliza Philby.

She wrote the book Inheritocracy, and she's the one who estimated that Gen Z will have five careers and work for 15 different employers in their lifetime.

Whereas in the past, that typically would sit around the one to two mark.

When we change jobs, when we shift industries, as is necessary for us at the moment, we're

It can make us feel like we are falling down the ladder and that we're not exceptional because taking a break, taking a detour, any kind of deviation is basically like we're out of the running because compared to somebody else who didn't deviate, we are now behind.

And that is a really stressful situation to be in.

Again, the pressure that puts on us, it's deeply anxiety-inducing.

It's also incredibly unproductive and actually counterintuitive.

As much as I do agree pressure may be a privilege for some, when a certain version of success is the be-all and end-all of life and you are not achieving or anywhere close to achieving that success, it actually ends up making our goals feel less achievable and reduces our motivation.

This is what I want to talk about next, you know.

We know where the pressure to be extraordinary comes from.

We know that we're kind of set up to fail in many ways.

Now, what does it actually do to our motivational systems and our mental health when our only version of what would make us happy or what would constitute a good life is this outdated model of like the brilliant young individual?

We're going to talk about that and so much more after this short break.