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The Millennial State of Mind

De-stress yourself, and your customer

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“What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She's perfectly well and she hasn't a pain.
It's lovely rice pudding for supper again.
So what is the matter with Mary Jane?”

— A.A. Milne

The rice pudding is just the last straw, the trigger in a life so filled with stress that she lashes out viciously by dumping her pudding all over the floor. Mary Jane is showing signs of stress.

Mary Jane is a typical “Millennium Girl,” right here, right now, on the cusp of another thousand years. Our Millennial bio progresses from irritation to stress, to anger, to rage, to violence, in order of intensity. And all the blame goes to our chief Millennial characteristic: stress. Everybody's stressed.

Stress is the new preferred excuse for failures. For years it was “unhappy childhood” that was rewarded with instant understanding and sympathy. Some dined out on their unhappy childhooods well into their seventies.

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Now it's stress. Stress is credited as the source of every ailment. Stress is the consequence of too many people and too little space. Stress is the result of simultaneous living: information overload and living as we do — Singapore one week, Columbus, Ohio, the next, then onto Düsseldorf.

We can look forward to this. There is not likely to be less stress in the new Millennium, nor will we see fewer people, less cars, less crowding. I recently spent 70 minutes in the Sumner Tunnel between Logan Airport and Boston. Sitting in fumes and anger, near panic, I wanted to get out of the car, which was impossible. I had only experienced this once before, in a hopelessly halted traffic jam in Guangzhou, China, paralyzed in traffic and yellow air, surrounded by all the angry people on this road, and a billion others behind them.

We carry these insults with us; we store them up. They make us angry. We lash out in inappropriate, surprising ways, like Mary Jane and her pudding, like schoolboys sulking and smoking in the yard, all doing nothing. Doing anything stresses them out. The New York Times reports that police were called during a performance of “La Traviata” when the crackling of a candy wrapper prompted one opera lover to whisper a complaint that was allegedly answered by a slap on the back of the head.

STRESS! MULL! STEW! PONDER! DWELL! FRET! OBSESS!

Stress is the best excuse for the common anger that rocks the world. At almost any American intersection, the driver who pulls up to the light in the lane next to you gives you the finger or a hateful glance. Unhappy childhood? Passed over for a promotion? Unlucky at love? Rice pudding hater?

You think, “Why me, oh Lord?” as you drive on with your windows shut.

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There is now a major medical category called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which gained prominence in the news after the Vietnam War, and accelerated during the Gulf War. The strangest progression, however, is that symptoms of those horrific war diseases are now showing up in everyday American behavior. We are not engaged in a civil war, but we seem to be moving from stress to rage.

What is the difference between the angry driver next to you and the man who shoots up a day care center or a high school or a brokerage firm? Stress is now the accepted explanation for mass shootings. The shooter du jour may be more extremely disturbed than you or your neighbor, but every time you turn on the news you expect to hear about somebody whose stress level exploded. There is never a reprieve. And you feel what? Compassion? Acceptance? Understanding? The difference between the shooter and you is only a matter of degree. You can feel the seeds of violence every day.

New Yorkers have been raving about stress for years. It gives them substance. For New Yorkers, “I'm exhausted” is a more frequent greeting than “hello.” They take pride in it: my weekly trips to Taiwan are more exhausting than yours. “I'm exhausted” always shows up with “I'm late, I'm a mess, I'm behind, I need a drink, I am absolutely, totally exhausted.” Isn't that a great beginning to an enlightening meeting? And yet, isn't a stress-free life everyone's genuine aim?

The trouble is not that we live in stressful times, but that everybody tolerates the consequences. “Stressful times,” we say, and sigh, and we all go right on. Misery does love company.

People embrace stress. I heard two store owners declare that they would work like hell for 20 years (20 years of stress), and then relax. They are counting on it. One just hopes they outlive the 20 years so they can relax. They do not seem to know that life is in session now. They do not know that each of us is the ceo of our own life. Or rather, as ceo, they have decided work now, live later. Uh-huh.

Retailers need to understand that irritation, if not anger, is the Millennial customer's primary condition while paying for services. Tempers and time are short on both sides of the counter (or “on hold” or on the Internet). The first aim of any retailer who knows that understanding the customer makes money is to defuse the customer's rage, cause them to relent, relax, get what they want and get out. Adding chaos to anger confuses everybody even further and ends abruptly in “no sale.”

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KNOW THY CUSTOMER

Thy customer is angry. Before customers get to you, they sit in endless rings trying to drive around Dallas and Atlanta.

Ask your customers: Are you angry — all of the time, most of the time, rarely, never? This is important. This is the Millennial state of mind, and we must understand it if we want to connect with these customers. Ask your associates. Note the glazed anxiety of people working in stores. They hope to avoid anger in every confrontation. They feel no purpose, or they feel their purpose will be eliminated.

And when addressing stress:

• Expect it. Don't expect less. We share this anger. No man is an island.

• Admit it. Denial won't help us at all.

• Understand it. Look for the cause, not an excuse.

• Plan for it.

• Reduce it. Find time. Make time. Oh yes you can. You are the ceo of your own life. “No time” is the subtlest excuse of all. But the truth may be that saying you don't have the time is the best excuse for not doing something you don't want to do. Everyone will believe you (you martyr!) and then kill your improvement by sympathizing. But this would be a dreadful epitaph: “Here lies whoever, who didn't have the time.”

• Schedule time as if it were important. Keep the date. If not, you'll never find time to be good to yourself. Or to your customers.

Otherwise, what will happen? What will be the consequences of all this accelerating anger? Is there a breaking point? When can you say, “Enough is enough?” What is the eventual result of overcrowding, multitasking, speed and anger?

“Slow me down, Lord,” begins a fervent prayer in a book on serenity. In the new Millennium, there will be no slowing down. We will not watch less television, nor will we find fewer people clamoring in airports. The stress will increase. Relationships will suffer — and that includes yours with yourself, not just with others.

O let me divide my multitasking into its units, so that I can experience each task clearly.

Let me change consciousness between my 50 frantic phone calls and the intimacy of personal conversation.

There is a Zen exercise so simple, yet so complete, that it sounds at first like a wasted moment. But just try it, especially if you're one of those elevator ragers who punch the “Door Close” button immediately if the door does not close instantly.

Put a flower in a vase.

Observe it every day at the same time.

Register the changes.

That's all.

It can take you a long, long time to “get it.” But even the first time, it slows you down. You actually devolve unto a single task, a uni-task, looking at the flower and seeing it.

This kind of slowing down will not sit well with the fairy tale billionaires of Silicon Valley — those who are not married, do not date and share with the public the news that they are often too busy to dress, or shave, or wash, and are proud of all of the above.

Observe a flower?

There goes $50 billion, Woo-woo.

Get on the bus. Or, rather, get into the Porsche Boxster and floor it.

Well, Woo-woo, which? The Boxster or the flower?

What is the matter with Mary Jane?

That's what's the matter with Mary Jane.

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