Why Millennials are the "Pick Me" Generation.

Instead of making identity adjustments to be liked and picked by men, we constructed identities around productivity, striving and obedience.

“The highly intelligent and competent woman is shifting from BOSS BABE to RESOURCED WOMAN,” nervous system practitioner @danadozzyy tells me in her tangerine-tinted aviators, this particular video now surpassing 50,000 views. “A resourced woman is able to completely own what she wants for her life - if this is having a homestead, having children, building her own business, or doing all of those things. She is able to live in a way that is constantly bringing energy into her body, and feeding her nervous system.” A call-to-action, highlighted in bright red, suddenly appears above her head: The Resourced Woman Workshop I Cyclical Nervous System Regulation I Jan 21 @ 6PM EST. I save down the video, hit subscribe, and spend the next hour gorging on her self-help-meets-spiritual-guru clips.

Click here for the clip.

She says stuff like, “you are allowed to choose that you want to be able to meet the demands of your life in a way that is not at the expense of your body,” and “when you stop judging the actual needs of your physiology, your life gets even easier.” I eye-roll away, but I can’t look away, because there is something in what she’s saying that feels extremely true to me and to my entire generation, especially in 2025. Whether it my lawyer friends, corporate cogs, fellow marketers, freelance product managers, other entrepreneurs, or educators in my midst - it feels like every single millennial I’ve caught up with between November and now is overhauling their life and career in some major, tectonic way - for the sake of how they feel. For the sake of regulating a nervous system that broke down a long time ago, and is overdue for some rest.

“I’m shutting down my thriving creative agency to focus on writing and consulting. I don’t want to manage a team anymore and I want to focus on projects I’m passionate about. I want to simplify and pour into myself.” - a writer, creative and now-freelancer I admire.

“I’ve decided to leave the company I’ve worked at for 10 years. I have no idea what’s next. But I’m overworked, I don’t feel fulfilled anymore, and I think I’ll make the best next step with a clear head, and some time off.” - an ex-boyfriend who decided to give me a 2025 life update.

“I’ve decided to quit my lucrative freelance product management work to launch a travel concierge business. I’m working as a part-time virtual assistant on the side. I know it’s below my skill-set, but my priorities are living and traveling abroad right now, relaxing, and getting my side hustle going, but at my own pace.” - a best friend and old roommate.

“I’m selling my decade-old business because I just don’t care anymore. I’m willing to declare bankruptcy if I have to, I don’t care how it looks. I just want to move onto my next chapter and be happy. I’m proud of what I’ve done, but I don’t feel like working on this anymore. I can’t keep pushing like this.” - a founder I’ve known for six years.

“I was the first hire for this massive, super successful startup, then left my marketing role there to join a smaller company that promised a lot of learning and growth. I’ve only been there for 3 months. They told me if I stay and work really hard, I’ll get to meet a lot of important people and founders and make a lot of money and connections if I grind like crazy and forego any work-life balance. It just didn’t feel aligned for me. I just put in my two-weeks notice.” - a recent creative connection.

“I’m focused on what I want to be doing and feeling day-to-day, not on what looks good to other people. I just want to be writing my book. That’s it. I’ve contorted my entire life up until this point factoring in how things look from the outside, but now, I’m focused on how it feels to live within my actual live, versus how my life appears to others.” - a very successful writer, actress and comic.

It feels to me, at least, like the collective millennial jaw-clenching is finally easing in some way, as if the constant chasing and coveting and spiritual self-harm is coming to a close.

These choices above are soul choices. They’re not for money. Not for cache. Not for career advancement. Not for applause or accolades or the next gold star - which millennials are so used to chasing - but for some semblance of inner peace. To reclaim control over a collective nervous system that got hijacked by the economic precarity of The Great Recession, post-2008 productivity pressures, the “always-on” nature of smartphones and Slack, the demands of a gig economy, and, of course, the chokehold of those militant 6AM SoulCycle classes - then rushing to claim your shower.

It feels to me, at least, like the collective millennial jaw-clenching is finally easing in some way, as if the constant chasing and coveting and spiritual self-harm is coming to a close.

Let me explain.

If you haven’t read Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials by Malcolm Harris - it’s a must. A millennial himself, he details how and why millennials came to be “overworked, underplayed, gold-starred, and tired, wondering where all their time went.” As we came into adolescence, he outlines, it became much cheaper for companies to hire workers, and much harder for workers to find jobs that paid a good living wage. Our parents went haywire on our behalf, and competition ensued. An “arms race” began that "pit kids and their families against each other in an ever-escalating battle for a competitive edge. It was mission-critical to get into the right clubs, and schools, to get the best grades and into the right classes.” For many millennials, then, our entire childhood was constructed around being chosen, and being perceived as “special” or “worthy.” We were and are, to put it bluntly, the ‘Pick Me’ Generation. But instead of making identity adjustments to be liked and picked by men, shaming girly-girls along the way to seem unique and quirky, we constructed identities around productivity, striving and obedience to be liked and picked by higher education, and then, by capitalism.

This is why I started the Environmental Club at school with a friend when I was 17, despite not giving two shits about the environment (sue me). This is why kids stuffed as many AP courses onto their plate as possible, even in subjects they didn’t like or excel in. This is why student government races were so competitive. It’s why getting early-admission rejection letters carried the weight of finding out you had cancer. It’s why my parents, already deep in debt from my dad’s second kidney transparent, went into even deeper debt to send me to the best school I got into. Facing down a cut-throat economy, shrinking job market and a war in the Middle East, our parents figured if we were smarter, more productive, and more accomplished than our peers, maybe we’d have a shot out there in the Big Bad World. And can you blame them? As Trump reclaims power, wars wage overseas and economic growth decelerates, perfectionism and achievement culture still reign supreme among anxious-yet-loving parents who want their kids to win. The rat race continues.

“Like golden retrievers who don’t know how to stop chasing a ball, millennials are so well trained to excel and follow directions that many of us don’t know how to separate our own interest’s from a boss’s or a company’s.”

When I think about my nervous system in the context of my millennial upbringing and then, throughout my 20s - the need to be exceptional, the need to be chosen - I think about this Harris quote: “Employers…convinced young people that work itself is a privilege of which they are probably unworthy… teaching people to be servile, anxious and afraid.” I felt that way. Did you?

When you’re raised in a post-9/11, post-2008 culture where the future and security isn’t guaranteed, and every opportunity is framed as a competition, you’re primed to believe that you are utterly replaceable and must do everything you can to get a spot, then keep your post. The adult life of this Millennial Pick-Me and the need to be liked and chosen in the face of that uncertainty looks like:

• Taking a job you don’t enjoy, or that doesn’t support your career goals, just to pay the bills.

• Working overtime for no pay.

• Doing the job of two or three people, on one salary.

• Gratefully accepting a promotion in title and responsibilities, but not in compensation.

• Acquiescing to investor demands or expectations that you know don’t serve your business long-term.

• Accepting mistreatment by your boss or someone more senior.

• Remaining in a job that is toxic and demanding.

• Burning yourself out for the sake of your team or your project.

• Taking on the workload of others instead of leaving them accountable for their poor performance or lack of effort.

• Staying at the office until your boss leaves, even if you’re finished with your work.

• Never taking time off or asking for vacation, even if you have allotted vacation days.

• Working late into nights and weekends because your manager has poor time management, and never calling out how it impacts you.

• Pursuing a promotion at a job you hate, simply because “it’s time” for a raise.

• Pursuing awards, accolades and badges of honor like “Forbes 30 Under 30” to impress your peers and give you an ongoing “edge” in the job market.

• Wanting to start your own business or pursue entrepreneurship to escape this system of servitude, or to serve your wounded ego, not because you have a worthy idea.

As Harris states, “Like golden retrievers who don’t know how to stop chasing a ball, millennials are so well trained to excel and follow directions that many of us don’t know how to separate our own interest’s from a boss’s or a company’s.”

Now normalize and pair this professional lifestyle with daily habits that supported and enabled it: 6AM group fitness classes that burned 800 calories in a clean 50 minutes, Sweetgreen salads you could order off your iPhone and pickup downstairs in your office, venture-backed house cleaners you could summon with a few taps for $30, Ubers you could call for $8 a pop to take you from your desk to your bed at 11PM. Our nervous systems were on overdrive, desperate to please our managers and investors and corporate overloads, then supercharged by Classpass and get-it-quick apps that promoted urgency and immediacy, never teaching us to breathe or slow down.

When I think back on the years between 2013, when I moved to New York, and 2020, the pandemic, it feels like eight years trapped in a Nutribullet, getting pulverized into little bits:

Wake up

Workout

Shower

Coffee

Commute

Seamless

Meeting

Slack

Meeting

Slack

Investor Call

Meeting

Slack

Seamless

Coffee

Uber

Meeting

Uber Back

Zoom

Slack

Commute

Event

Slack

Commute

Slack

Seamless

Eat

Slack

Wine

Slack

Sleep

Repeat.

The thought of freeze-framing my life in 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019 - when my pace was so relentless, so oddly masochistic - to ask, “does this feel good?” is laughable.

Me, before and after getting absolutely liquified every day for nearly 8 years.

Because, according to Harris, we live in a culture that “increasingly rewards only exceptional accomplishment” and “any disadvantage or challenge can seem like a disqualification,” you are not incentivized to question this pace or hit STOP on the Nutribullet at any point. Even as your nervous system wigs out, like in my case, with hair falling from my head, massive fluctuations in weight, stress herpes breaking out on my fingertips - you tell yourself to keep pushing so as to not “disqualify” yourself. You are not incentivized to listen to your body. You are not accustomed to asking if in “chasing the ball,” you are actually getting any closer to who or where you want to be. All you’ve known since your youth is the chase itself, and according to your parents, then your peers, then your teachers, then college counselors, then your employers, then your managers, and their bosses, and all the self-made-millionaire influencers, and the startup podcasters - the act of hustling is safety itself. The thought of freeze-framing my life in 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019 - when my pace was so relentless, so oddly masochistic - to ask, “does this feel good?” is laughable. It wasn’t about what physically felt good. It was about knowing, mentally, that I was still chasing.

But somewhere along the way, more recently, this chasing- the type that disconnects you from your body and pushes you to the very edge - stopped feeling safe for a lot of us. The median home price in the U.S. has increased by over 40% between 2010 and 2020. Millennials are still burdened with record-high levels of student debt. And wealth inequality is more pronounced amongst millennials than it is or was within other generations. Some of us have hustled and made enough to save, or buy a house, or invest, but nearly half report feeling burnt out due to financial stress, job pressures and health issues.

We don’t want to live in the Nutribullet anymore. I think the collective reset started in 2020, during the Great Resignation, but I think 2025 is the year you’ll see some of the most loyal, high-functioning and high-achieving millennials in your life do a complete 180. I think this is the year they relinquish the shame of putting themselves and their health and wellbeing first. I think this is the year a lot of people pleaser, golden retriever types decide to live how they want to, and not how they think they should. I think this is the year that a lot of risk-averse people rethink their definition of “safety,” and decide that feeling good about their work and about themselves is more important than the number on their paycheck. I think a lot of people will shed much of their professional identity, and then rebuild with intention. Some will get woo-woo spiritual about this transformation, while others will grow more obsessive about what happened to their bodies during this Nervous System Assault. Gut health, skin health, and vaginal health all come to mind. And lots more pilates. Of course.

Whatever choices you’ve already made this year, or plan to make, I’m excited for you. Maybe you’re not doing anything super drastic like the folks I shared up top - maybe you’ve simply decided that your weekends are yours now, and not your company’s. Maybe you detach from Slack at 6PM instead of 9PM, and have finally come to realize that you have more power than you thought in how accessible you want to be, and when.

Or maybe none of this resonates for you, and you’re grinding harder than ever, working the longest hours of your life. But if you are, I just hope it’s “bringing energy into your body,” as @danadozzyy would say, instead of trapping you in the pulverizer - the Nutribullet - where your days blur together, you click into auto-pilot, and you forget you have agency in every crevice of your life.

As long as you feel like you’re living, and not chasing.

Cheers to soul choices, and talk soon,

Ali 🧘‍♀️