How Gardening Can Help Millennials Cope with Stress in the Workplace

Simon Sinek interview “Millennials in the Workplace.” Simon talks about struggles millennials face in building confidence, having patience, learning social skills, and having a balance with technology and being more involved with the environment. I have taken some excerpts from that interview to explain how gardening, specifically urban farming can aid millennials in coping with these problems and becoming more fulfilled in their lives.

Sinek states that we have a generation growing up with lower self-esteem that doesn’t have the coping mechanisms to deal with stress and now you add in the sense of impatience. They’ve grown up in a world of instant gratification. You want to buy something, you go on Amazon and it arrives the next day. You want to watch a movie, login and watch a movie. You don’t check movie times. You want to watch a TV show, binge. You don’t even have to wait for week-to-week-to-week. Many people skip seasons so that they can binge at the end of the season…

Now having instant gratification can be a problem when it comes to not getting what you want in the workplace. Creating your garden at home can help and fight the mechanisms of entitlement. Having the ability to grow your own crops and nourishing food can reap the same rewarding effects as binge-watching your favorite show. Planting a variety of greens in different seasons builds patience and is having the satisfying impact that it comes from a person’s manual labor. Using different strategies of growing such as Permaculture or Hydroponics aid in being more focused and relaxed, which stimulates better workflow.

With the joy of cultivating crops and plants, millennials can share and trade with other locals, and build strong bonds when it comes to gaining knowledge of having a healthy diet and enjoying fresh quality food.

Simon says at the end of his interview that millennials, whether we like it or not, don’t get a choice, and now have a responsibility to make up the shortfall. We get to help this fantastic, idealistic, fantastic generation build their confidence, learn patience, learn the necessary social skills, find a better balance between life and technology because quite frankly it’s the right thing to do.

I agree with this and express that millennials now have a responsibility to save the earth and find new ways to fight food scarcity and build better logistics in distributing food locally in this country. Urban farmers have come out with eco-friendly systems that minimize the use of land, water, labor, and energy. Millennials can use gardening as a powerful tool to not only cope with stress and social skills but become more sustainable and aid in building a better planet, one garden at a time.

Farm Urbana is engaged in helping design and build edible gardens in urban environments.

Source: Ochen