to those who were born between 1982 and 2002 (give or take) and know what it's like to be born into one of the most overgeneralized groups of humans in the world, i understand the struggle. the is a list of some of the things that stress us out the most. with any luck, you'll see something on this list that resonates with you and causes you to make the changes necessary for you to live a "stress less" life rather than trying to live a "stressless" life. 

10). the cellphone. 

our cellphones cause us unnecessary anxiety. if we aren't answering phone calls every twenty minutes, sending text messages every ten minutes and checking how many people liked our latest post on social media every thirty seconds, we would be much better off. but we can't seem to do that because we feel obligated to stay in the know; we always gotta know what's going on and who it's going on with. and every now and then we'll put our phones on do not disturb in order to get a break but a few days (or hours) later, we open ourselves back up the stress associated with constantly having to be plugged in. 

9). you're supposed to be married by now.

as a millennial, there's two things you know to be true. the first thing is that your parents and grandparents don't want you to die alone. the second thing is that they don't want you to wait until they're too old to enjoy the grandchildren you need to produce for them. they'll project these concerns by subtly inquiring about your love life, and sometimes overtly saying things like, "i'm ready to be a grandparent" and then it's like once you get married, great. now have a kid. and once you have a kid, great. now have another one. the external pressures never seem to stop as it relates to being married and entering parenthood. and because we know their hearts are in the right place and that they just want us to be happy, we let the annoying comments slide without addressing them. but that doesn't make it any less of a stress factor. 

8). you're either sleeping too much or not enough. 

i don't even know how many hours of sleep constitutes a good night's rest these days. is it 6 or is it 8? but anyway, with everything we have going on in our lives, our sleeping patterns are all over the place. some of us rely on our 1-2 naps per day to get us through. the rest of us bank on energy drinks to help us ride it out on 2-3 hours of sleep. you begin to find yourself in situations where you compare everything that you should be doing with sleep. "should i do this homework right now or take a nap first so i can be refreshed?" "i should go to sleep before I go to the gym so I can be nice and energized for my workout." and what was supposed to be a thirty minute nap turns into a three hour nap and now you're even more stressed out than you were before you went to sleep. the struggle is definitely real with this. 

7). your savings account got beef with your checking account.  

bruh. if I had a dollar for every time i transferred money from my savings account to my checking account, i wouldn't need to go into my savings account in the first place. it's like you try to do the right thing by putting money in your savings, because you wanna have money for the future and all that good stuff. but then at the same time, we ain't gonna get to the future if we can't get through the present, ya feel me? i've found that this is an ongoing struggle for many millennials and because of that, we're always, always, always, retooling our approach to money and what we choose to spend our money on. 

6). we celebrate everything. 

it seemed most appropriate to make this point after the one about the ongoing tension between our savings and checking accounts. in most cases, the reason we're having a hard time holding on to our money is because millennials legit like to celebrate e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. on any day of the week, you may find yourself out for drinks celebrating a friend's promotion, going to a gender reveal (which is completely different from a baby shower), celebrating someone who is moving out of the state, going out for drinks to celebrate making it through a rough week, or grabbing dinner because one of your friends got accepted to their graduate program. it seems like there's always a reason to celebrate and like true millennials, we pride ourselves on organic relationships -- so we feel compelled to go to all of them. that's why we stay broke. and the hard reality is: we can't go to everything. but honestly, we refuse to accept that. 

5). we're more compelled to remove people from our lives. 

millennials are all about personal peace and at this point in our lives, we aren't willing to keep people in our lives that compromise that. more and more, i'm seeing millennials release people. sometimes the people we let go have done something bogus to us or someone we know. but sometimes the people we let go haven't done anything bad to us at all -- they just aren't contributing anything to our lives. gone are the days of keeping them around just because. and even though we know this, it's still hard to sometimes pull the trigger on these relationships that aren't contributing to our growth. 

4.) there's not enough time in the day. 

between the jobs we go to during the day to pay the bills, the passion projects we work on when we're not at our 9-5, maintaining a social life, eating right, exercising, spending time with our families, working second jobs, going to school, staying cultured, choosing insurance policies, jailbreaking the firestick, reading the books on our reading lists, staying on top of all the bills, dating, and maintaining a relationship with God, there's just not enough time in the day, period. and because we as millennials feel compelled to do everything, we sometimes struggle with prioritizing our time and energy on where it is most needed. 

3). college debt. 

the thing that blows me about repaying student loans is that they really be expecting you to pay 500 dollars a month even though you make 12 dollars an hour. like, what algorithm are you using to configure this number? how drunk do you have to be to believe that's plausible for me to pay? and then what's more is, we end up having to call them, email them, and chat with them to determine a more feasible arrangement. and once all the interest is factored in, it just feels like you're not making much of a dent in the loan amount at all, and that's hella discouraging. but we boss up and do the best we can with what we have anyway.  

2). we're rare breeds at work. 

companies everywhere are hopping on the millennial train. nevertheless, there typically isn't a lot of us in our workspaces, which means we typically have to be even more cognizant of how we act, what we say and the work we produce because we're already up against preconceived notions about how millennials operate. that's why a lot of us go hard and work beyond the hours that we get paid for, because we feel like we got something to prove. and then if you're a minority or a female millennial, it's even more stressful trying to navigate the workplace and earn respect from the people around you.  

1). fear of failure. 

maybe it's your father who wasn't there for you growing up. maybe it's the dad who was there physically but absent mentally your whole life. maybe it's your mom who didn't support you or nurture you. maybe one of your parents was on drugs. maybe you had an older sibling who had a baby early and dropped out of school. whatever it is. whoever it is. we don't wanna be that person. and with everything we do and all that we accomplish, we don't want to be the one that failed. it's stressful because it's the tension between knowing you can never be perfect, but doing all that you can to make sure you're pretty close. and this perspective isn't always the healthiest and sometimes causes us to burnout quite frequently.