What Generation Do I Belong To?

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

That was the question on my mind this morning, what generation do I belong to?

A point was brought up over the weekend about baby boomers thinking and acting a certain way, and Michelle turned and looked at me and smiled, as if I was one of them…..Am I?

To be honest, was never sure where I fit in “the generations”

GENERATIONS DEFINED

I found this chart on careerplanner.com just for my own reference:

the article also goes into details and descriptions on each of the generations which you can read here .

Now I was born in 1965, which “officially” is one year AFTER the “Baby Boomers” officially (according to U.S. Census) birth years ended. I have no idea why that made me happy, but it did…with all due respect to all the “real” baby boomers out there of course.

So “officially” I am a generation X’er, so let’s see what that says about me.

Characteristics of Generation X

Gen X was born between 1965 and 1979. They often had both parents working, were exposed to daycare and divorce, and became known as “latchkey kids”. They are a well-educated generation with many having tertiary qualifications and are resourceful, individualistic, self reliant and sceptical of authority. Unlike the Baby Boomers they are not interested in long-term careers, corporate loyalty or status symbols.

From <>

Hold on a second. That does not sound like me at all. I was never in daycare, my kids were never in daycare. Although I am not much into status symbols (probably because I could never afford them before), I worked at my last job for almost 21 years, that should count for some kind of corporate loyalty (or possibly insanity)

So let’s look at what it says about baby boomers

Characteristics of the Baby Boomers Generation

The Baby Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964 and have the largest population of any generation. In their youth they were open-minded and rebellious but became more conservative in their 30’s and 40’s. Job status and social standing are important to this generation who tend to be optimistic, ambitious, and loyal, and believe that employment is for life. They created the concepts of “workaholic” and “superwoman”.

 From <>

Well, this does sound more like me…but I really don’t want it to.

Call it denial, call it whatever you want. I just know that being a “workaholic” darn near cost me everything that I hold near and dear today. My family, my friends, my life! So I refuse to give in to the “numbers” and decided to take some of those dreaded quizzes.

You know the ones where we answer 10 multiple choice questions about such things as which singing groups we relate to, which catch-phrases resonate with us, what we like to drink, and on and on ad nauseum.

I found five different “tests” that each only took a couple minutes, you can find the by googling “what generation do i belong to quiz“. There are way more than five available, but after getting five different results from the ones that I tried, I decided that this was not going to help at all.

First result came back saying that I was a Millennial, which officially is people born between 1975 and 1995 and also known a Generation Y. After reading the description, I was good with the assessment. Maybe I had my answer (the mind is a wonderful place to live when you want to)

Characteristics of Generation Y

Gen Y was born between 1980 and 1995 and are also known as the Millennium or Net Generation. Millennials are very technology wise and are comfortable with ethnically diverse groups. Their values are similar to Veterans in that they are optimistic, confident, sociable, and have strong morals and a sense of civic duty.

Then I took a second test, and it told me I was halfway between a Gen Y and a Gen X

Third test told me that I was definitely a Baby Boomer

Fourth test came back saying that I was a Gen X’er through and through

Fifth test came back and said…….are you ready?……it said that I was a 70’s Hipster.

Yup….a Hipster. I don’t think that I have ever been called a “Hipster” in my life, or even thought of myself as one…..if in fact I knew what a Hipster was.

So What Generation Do I Really Belong To?

What brought all of this thinking on was listening to a speaker over the weekend at our “Unleash” Event for Empower Networks in Nashville. Justin and D Verrengia, a young married couple that has made over a million dollars in the past 2-3 years(*) inside of Empower Network were the very first speakers and they got the event off to a wonderful start. I believe that there were over 20 presenters in all on Friday and Saturday, and then an all day Sunday presentation on what is going to be coming up in the very near future in our company that absolutely floored all of us, which I will get into shortly.

But during Justin and D’s presentation, they gave us so much good information and “nuggets” that it was hard to just pick one to talk about here, but the one that jumped out at me the most was when they were talking about ‘Who Is Your Target Audience?’. Who should I be resonating with and working with? And the answer, and I heard it several other times over the weekend, is ME!

So that is what got me thinking about who I really am. And then the comment about Baby Boomers was thrown out there and Michelle teasing me about it and I wanted to know.

So what is my answer? What generation do I belong to?

I belong to my generation. Why does it have to be defined? I resonate with people much younger than me as well as people much older than me. As Popeye would say, “I Yam What I Yam” and no matter what I have tried to do over the years to try to get myself to fit in with groups of people, usually by not being myself and not being real, it always turns out best when I just am myself. Who else can I be?

Over the course of the weekend, I met people ranging in ages from 18 to 80, all of them there for the same reason. All of us looking for something better, something that can help us grow both financially, but more importantly, emotionally and spiritually. These weekends are really meant to be experienced rather than talked about, and if you ever get the chance to attend one, then please do yourself a favor and do it. This was our second event and we have already purchased tickets to the next one at the end of July that is going to be held in Las Vegas.

Exciting News About the Future

We spent 4 days in Nashville listening to some of the top earners in Internet Marketing and taking a notebook full of notes that we will be more than happy to share with you if you are interested. The plans for the future of OUR company are astronomical. The vision is to develop 100 new millionaires each and every year going forward, and I believe with all of my heart and mind that it is going to happen.

The products that Empower Network has to offer are, in my opinion, the absolute best set of educational tools in the industry not to mention the Kalatu Blogging system that just keeps getting better, and soon will explode in value as Kalatu Premium is released in the near future.

So if you are anything like me, trying to figure out exactly where you fit in in this often upside-down world that we live in, I invite you to connect with us and see what we are doing, and see the vision that we have developed just in the short time since joining Empower Network.

What do you really have to lose? Nothing, and absolutely everything to gain.

Connect with us and let’s walk arm in arm into the future with one of the greatest teams of people that I have ever had the pleasure to be with.

Talk to you soon

Mark and Michelle Eaves