As I was tanking up last night, I was thinking about how it is really hard to take some people seriously, given their behaviour. This came to mind because a few days earlier I had read an article about a survey that had found that around two thirds of Gen-Zers suffer from "refuel anxiety" - where they feared having to refill their car, and would actively avoid doing it because,
young drivers reported fears over parking close enough to the pump, identifying the correct type of fuel, or competently operating the petrol nozzle. Researchers said the stem of the worries related to fear of making a mistake in public.
Much confident.
The problem with feigning competence and confidence, is that in reality, you know your incapabilities and that will of course make you feel anxious, especially in public, where there is the fear of being discovered. And while this survey is far from scientific, I think that it does point to the actual cause of the majority of the anxiety that people feel, in all age groups, but especially in the younger cohorts.
Imposter syndrome.
With all that social media time spent creating a digital persona that is detached from reality, it is "only natural" that people will increasingly feel disconnected from themselves. Even when they look in the mirror in the morning, the face they see is not the face that is in the perfect pose, with the perfect filter, blemish and wrinkle free. They are divorced from their own image, and the reality is nowhere close as good as the fantasy world they have carefully manicured for society.
No wonder they are distressed.
From the survey, one quarter of the younger drivers with "refuel anxiety" said they avoided filling up for so long, their car ran out of gas. As far as embarrassment goes, that is like having a fear of using public toilets, so shitting in your pants instead. It is far, far more of an issue.
But again, many people will defend all of the anxiety because "life is harder now", but they don't recognise what lays at the core. Yes, stress and trauma are the main culprits, but no one seems to question the level of stress and trauma required to evoke anxiety to the point it is an issue. Everyone feels some level of anxiety, but at what level is the discomfort high enough to make basic life tasks difficult to impossible?
Everyone is different when it comes to how we react to experience, but we should at least understand that our baseline is not far from the average for the majority of us. At least in potential. This means that we should recognise that at least when it comes to these daily tasks, if everyone else is able to do it, I can do it too. And if it makes me anxious, then I need to work out how to get the fuck over it.
Learn to live in discomfort.
The more you avoid discomfort, the more you will experience it. That is not some pithy zen proverb, it is just the reality of experience. The more we protect ourselves, the softer we get. The more we stretch, the more flexible, The more we push, the stronger. And, anybody and everybody has the potential to improve their strength across the entire domain of their self - whether body, mind or emotional resilience. But, it is always uncomfortable, often difficult, and rarely fast.
Personal development takes time, which points to another issue that has been on the incline - instant gratification. It has been growing for decades, but in the on-demand culture, where people are constantly demanding and expecting everything they want to be instantly available, with the digital servings coming at literal lightspeed, impatience runs rife. As does the inability to invest oneself for a future return that may never come. It is all about now.
And now...
There are a lot of anxious people unable to perform the simplest of tasks without hyperventilating.
Taraz
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Growing up we had some measure of privacy in public. I realise that's something of an oxymoron, but if you did something dumb only a handful of people might see it and then just go about their day.
Now, with clout chasers looking for content everywhere, one dumb mistake can go viral and haunt you for the rest of your life; and there are any number of strangers with a financial incentive to make that happen.
The poster gets all the attention and follows, and the subject gets to never live it down.
It's an existential threat to your bloodline.
A teen gets filmed screwing up bad enough and goes viral enough, their name is going to get googled by any prospective partner and this'll potentially cost them opportunities to have kids. I don't know that these youngsters are actually broken; it might be a sensible reaction to a broken society.
Lots of misaligned incentives in this world today.
Perhaps, but what is seen as an existential crisis seems to be lowering in severity, and is rarely physical. The emotional self is so fragile today, that it seems that any threat to it is seen existential.
LOL this is a new one to me. Fear of pulling up to a pump and making a very easy choice?! I keep my tank above half full. I'm afraid of the apocalypse coming down when my car is out of gas! For a while there, when things looked very bleak to me, I had two cars that I kept full. I figured I could drive almost 1000 miles on those two tanks of gas if I had to.
I do know quite a few people who will drive around and around looking for a parking spot that they don't have to parallel park in. Is this similar?
I also love to parallel park. I find it fun to see if I can get it exactly right in one swoop.
Is there something wrong with me?
I wonder if these gas-averse people will have an easier time with self-driving cars. Technology to their rescue. Oh wait, they still have to get out of the car, figure out which buttons to push etc. That people can't do this without heart palpitations scares the crap out of me. I wonder what happens to them in a voting booth.
:D
I fill up when it is cheap. It is crazy here, there are 10-15% swings across the week.
They mentioned this too. 96% of people were anxious - but not everyone avoided it. I don't avoid parallel parking, I see it as a challenge :)
I suspect so. But, like most of the technology, it also means they will have lower driving skills, because they aren't driving. Maybe a good thing in the case of driving, but it is happening to all of our skills. It is like the people in the movie Wall-E
I didn't see that movie. Looked it up
These are topics for a children's movie?! Propaganda I'd call it, early indoctrination.
I see parallel parking as a challenge, too. I math and physics puzzle. I really like to do it, and now with a back-up camera in my car, it is easy as can be to do. I like driving in general, time to think and sing. I do like being a passenger so I can look around, I do not trust that kind of technology. I'll be in control of my body as much as I can, thank you.
It is a cute movie with a cute robot that protects a plant to save humanity :)
I don't think life is harder now. I just think people don't get the skills they need to handle it. What do I know though, I can change my own oil...
This is the problem with avoidance of discomfort - no skills get developed.
I can't anymore. Well, I probably could, but I don't :D
I don't either, but I could if I wanted to!
You have to be kidding me! You can't make this stuff up! LOL How much of an imposter you have to be that you are afraid of making those kinds of mistakes?!
I have no idea how credible the survey is, but the same kinds of people have known issues with things like answering the phone. So it doesn't surprise me at all :)
I wounder what kind of issues they have answering the phone :) Though I am not excited to answer the phone when I see the number that I don't know as it is most frequently a marketeer...
Did you check the methodology? Relatively few Gen Zrs will own cars or have licences, possibly that was a survey of ALL gen ZRS irrespective of whether they know anything about cars at all.
I mean if someone has the confidence to actually drive, like on a road, why would they lack to confidence to use a petrol pump, but if you've never done it before, I can see why you might be worried about making a fool of yourself.
It must be a click bait survey with dodgy sampling to get stats like that.
It is a dodgy survey, but there were drivers involved. However, since reading, I have actually talked to someone (Gen-Z) who feels anxiety doing it, though they have been driving for a couple years.
"Learn to live in discomfort" is an important lesson.
I'm glad I spent some time as a soldier as a young man. When people collectively go through periods of physical exhaustion and hardship - you get to see who people actually are, when they don't have the energy or personal resources to do anything more than perform what ever urgent task is immediately before them.
Stress can deform people though, and elicit or reveal some aberrant qualities.
I think this is what saves a lot of the men here in Finland - compulsory military service. They would be far more fragile if they didn't have it.
That is the bitter truth for today youngsters. My nephew never care about bike fuel..there were many instances when he left is motorbike on the street and returned home. Only because he never cared about refueling it..neither he check before going out. The scenarios is worsening. This is where I always said that the more ease and comfort given to child, they never succeed. It is more like of spoon feeding.
This is the other side of it. They aren't very good at maintaining anything! Everything in their life is disposable.
I think it is important for younger people to accept their flaws and deal with daily responsibilities rather than trying to maintain a flawless image online.
They talk about societal standards, when it is really just ego talking.
True. Experiencing discomfort makes us stronger. The trick I use is to allow myself experience discomfort, then give myself a break from the discomfort. I believe this will have the same effect as muscle building. We breakdown muscle by workouts and when we rest, the muscle takes the time to rebuild thereby making us stronger. So I believe we should have periods of rest in-between experiencing discomforts so our mind and body can repair and become tougher. Continuous discomfort without breaks may have negative effects on the mind. My thinking may be wrong, I don't know.
The problem is with rest, is that often people end up resting far too early and for too long.
What sort of societal change is this? Honestly, refueling shouldnt be this big of a deal. Tasks once seen as routine work now trigger anxiety of such extreme level. Isn't this some extra softness? From going to constant reckless wars, we humans are evolving into something different. Different times, different situations. Still, I can’t say much, because it’s hard to understand what they feel until I’m in their shoes.
Soft as baby lambs :)
I would think they would just ask chatgpt if they didn't know what they were doing, but my son says kids don't really know how to use their smart phones except for playing clash royal or Tic Toc.
And this is the same for the people in their 20s and 30s these days! :D
Something that is sorely needed in these times, to lower anxiety especially in episodes with bad news, a real threat for example a job interview. We must learn and act on how to develop tolerance to frustration, resilience in our character and strength in our spirit.
People seem to have become so fragile, but with very big egos. Even a tiny negative on their ego, breaks their world.
Reading this made me somewhat furious. Refuel anxiety, wtf? Seems like some people of younger generations really haven't got enough actual problems, and it seems they're somehow able to actually avoid refueling? I don't know...
Yes it does. Perhaps they should see how some other people in the world live.
Refueling situations are a bit dangerous. News outlets regularly report on them. Negligence on the part of the driver and the person refueling leads to dire consequences.
Generally speaking, the surest way to overcome fear is to face it without fear. As you said, it's impossible to grow without facing challenges.
Are they dangerous?
There are people smoking while refueling.
There are people refueling in different ways.
There are vehicles leaving before the fuel tank is finished.
When we come into this world, we are just a child with nothing in our mind. Over time, we learn and gain experience, filling our mind with things that are suitable or unsuitable. If a person becomes successful, he was also born into the world with nothing. So if he worked and sacrificed to become successful, we can also do the same. We must definitely recognize it and act on it. We should not worry about the things we do not have, but instead it is important to change our thoughts to acquire them. No matter how difficult life is, we should fill our mind with new ideas and plans.
If we shy away from experience that makes us uncomfortable though, we learn nothing.
Most things these days look like they're geared toward quick fixes, but proper growth isn’t instant. No wonder so many people are anxious, our culture doesn’t leave space for patience or long term effort anymore. There's what some of my friends call pressure in the system
If you try to avoid discomfort, it will come back bigger. Don't be afraid of small tasks because if you are afraid of small tasks, it will be difficult to handle big challenges. Due to the current digital life, the distance with reality is increasing. I think the only solution is to accept discomfort as normal and gradually become stronger through practice.