Is the American Dream overrated – 365-Day Exit Strategy

Is the American Dream overrated? Start Framing Your Exit Strategy

Remove Yourself from the Box of an American Dream and Start Your Exit Strategy

Who’s Dream Really is the American Dream?

Today we’re going to discuss the American dream. We’re going to try to unpack whose dream it is and what does the dream mean to you? Can we reframe it?

In my opinion, the American dream is overrated.

The house, the spouse, the cars, the kids, the education, are all expensive right? The education sometimes never gets paid off, or it gets paid off years and years in the future. The cars depreciate as soon as you drive them off the lot. It takes a lot of people, a whole year sometimes, to save up for one vacation.

I see a lot of millennials and GenZ who are suffering from depression, sadness and dissatisfaction. Depression is real. I’m not debating that at all. It saddens me though, because they haven’t even gotten to the real world yet. They haven’t gotten to the grind of the American dream to experience the things that are really going to make them sad and introverted.

I think that we’re suffering too, not just them. All generations, my generation, older generations, younger generations, everyone. I believe we are suffering from the weight of expectations. Who’s expectation is it though? Are these expectations put on us by our parents, our grandparents, our extended family members, and society? Or, are these expectations that we are putting on ourselves?

You go from high school to college. Maybe you get an advanced degree, so you can get a better paying job. Then, you land the job. You show them you have the experience, then you’re working all day to prove yourself at that job.

Who are you doing it for?

Are you doing it for your family that you hope to have by that time? But then you realize you’re working such long hours and you probably don’t enjoy it as much as you thought you would. So when you get home, you’re not spending time with your family, you’re trying to decompress from your job. You’re trying to decompress from the long traffic that you’re in coming to and from work.

So when you do get some downtime, you want to just be free from everything. You binge watch Netflix, or you overeat. You have lazy days, or sit on your phone all day looking at social media. Then you realize you’re not happy. Your family is not happy. Your friends, who you hardly talk to anymore, they’re not happy. No one’s content. Is this part of the American dream?

I challenge you to rethink your idea of the American dream, whether you call it the American dream or not. What is it that you thought you would be doing instead? Once you’re in the middle of it, you realize it’s not what you thought it was.

Remove yourself from this box, this prefabricated box. That box that someone put us in. The one we put ourselves in, is entirely according to someone else’s design. It’s not of our own making.

I want you to ask yourself, What is your idea of the American dream?

Is it how much money you have, or is it how much money you have left at the end of the pay period? Is it the size of your house, or is it the cost of your house? Is it even more genuine than that? Is it just opportunity, or is it happiness, or the pursuit of happiness?

I want you to ask yourself, What is your idea of the American dream?

The big question I have for you is, do you have an exit strategy from the weight of the American dream?

The weight that the American dream has been put on everyone’s shoulders to live this life and fit into this box, and suffer the entire time in quiet despair. Think about that.