Gimme gimme gimme. I deserve this. It’s so unfair that I’m not getting what I want.
Do any of these statements sound familiar? If you have any teenagers in your life, you’ve probably heard them demanding to receive a cell phone, saying that all their friends have their own phones and that they deserve to have one too. Even in your own life, you may have caught yourself using this exact same internal dialogue. I deserve to own my own home. It’s not fair that I’m still renting when I should be a homeowner. The problem is that many of us suffer from a sense of entitlement.
Face It: Life’s Not Fair
Although we like to believe that we live in a meritocracy, we also have certain expectations in life. From a very young age, we may have great ambitions for the future. As a child, you may very well expect that you deserve to attend university on a full scholarship. You’re a bright kid, so why can’t you go to school for free? As you get closer to high school graduation, you may start to realize just how difficult it is to get a full scholarship. It’s not fair. Why can’t I go to school for free? Why can’t I have that hot new sports car? Why can’t I have a problem-free relationship with my significant other?
You Don’t Deserve It
The truth is that we aren’t entitled to very much at all. We take many of the great things in our lives for granted, so we fully expect to get even more. With the current recession, many people are losing their jobs and they’re shouting back to the world that they deserve better. They feel that they deserve to have a better position with a better salary, but whining and complaining will get you nowhere. You don’t deserve a job; you earn it. Having hopes and dreams is one thing, but fulfilling them requires hard work and dedication. In approaching any ambitious endeavor, it is perhaps best to expect nothing but work toward everything.
The Journey Is a Gift
We all know that life is difficult, but it is this very challenge that makes life worth living. You may feel like you deserve that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but the actual retrieval of the pot of gold isn’t nearly as important or fulfilling as the journey toward it. Receiving handouts with very little effort may seem nice at first (I like getting free stuff as much as the next guy), but earning your success is so much more rewarding.
As cliche as it may sound, each and every day of your life is a gift. Cherish it for what it is. Anything beyond that is a bonus.
I just found this blog, and I have to say that it has a lot of helpful advice covering a wide range of issues.
I have one question about overcoming a sense of entitlement. Do you think that overdoing it could result in maintaining too low of a standard for yourself? I would worry that if I shed my irrational sense of entitlement, that I would no longer be able to aspire to anything better.
This was a great post. Keep up the good work.
As I said in the post, there is nothing wrong with having goals and ambitions. We should all strive to be the best at whatever we do, but you have to realize that you should be earning those successes. If you happen to fail, your reaction should not be that life is unfair; it’s that you should pick yourself up and try again.
Well, the crux of my point was that if you don’t feel that I deserve something, it’s hard (at least for me) to envision myself succeeding. So much of what we do in life depends on having confidence,and maybe too much confidence creates that sense of entitlement that makes people prone to complaining instead of coping.
I suppose it’s all about balance.
The line: “You don’t deserve a job; you earn it.” struck a cord with me. No one deserves a job, the the you earn it part is incomplete when you talk about people losing their jobs. A lot of people who work very hard, including me, have been laid off. They earned their job, but don’t have it now.
Are you saying that they didn’t earn that job? It sure sounds that way Michael. I don’t goof off on jobs, I earned every penny that I was paid. I get people call and ask for me to come back when they have more things they want done with their computers. That is why I have a job for Saturday, because the customer wanted me.
Some very hard working people that “earned” their job were laid off. They went to school, got a degree, went through internships, go to continuing education, and read about new trends so that they can be the best at what they do. They perform at a high level, but got laid off because the US government did a poor job of regulating the financial industry.
So, what did those people do wrong? What did they do that they shouldn’t have? I have a family to feed, I have applied everywhere and in every case that I have gotten a call back I have been told that I have too much experience or I am over qualified. They give the position to someone that hasn’t “earned” a degree or tried to make themselves better because they don’t want the person they hire to walk away when they get a better chance or their old job wants them back. It’s giving the job to less qualified because they can’t get the better job because they didn’t do anything to earn the better job.
There, that’s the point of one on the side of the laid off, hard working people.
They absolutely earned that job and they earned every penny along the way, but you also have to remember that you shouldn’t take that job for granted. Through no fault of your own, it can be taken away from you (as it has with so many people).
Do the people diagnosed with cancer deserve that disease? Many of them did absolutely nothing wrong and they still got hit with the bad luck. That’s just how life is.
As you have said before in posts, there is no such thing as luck.
I lost both my Aunt and Uncle to cancer, but my Uncle got it from making his own cigarettes and my Aunt from the second hand smoke. Did my Aunt deserve to get cancer? No, but it wasn’t bad luck, it was from the act of being around and inhaling the smoke. She loved my Uncle, she didn’t know about 2nd hand smoke, no one did back then.
I miss both of them, I wish that we had a cure and I don’t wish the suffering on anyone, including the loved ones.
Perhaps the boss had an inflated sense of entitlement and placed personal profit above people? Many companies go broke due to greedy and unscrupulous managers or owners. You appear to have a skewed sense of entitlement if you blame workers for losing jobs and overlook the actual culprit who shovelled money away at the workers’ expense then sacked them like empty drink cans.
One of the greatest inventions ever, has been the internet. Sadly, this has broaden the entitlement notion. Most people in relationships, jobs, and business crave instant gratification. Instant gratification is also entitlement. People feel that just because others have had success online so should they, and for merely just showing up.
There really is one precise reason for that. Because those that have made money or significant money online, they speak of what is like to be earning big money instead of all the hours, effort, being a student, and taking extreme action to hit that goal. I have always been a “student” of the action, not the result.