Have you ever wondered why there are so many young adults wondering why bother? So many young adults have given up. Too many parental promises: “Try this! It is guaranteed to work!” (It doesn’t…again) . No one would be surprised that you have given up hope.
Although there’s a chance that you are here at this site because one of your friends told you about it, the safer bet is that your parents suggested you check it out.
Either way is OK with me.
I have something to share with you.
I have seen for myself with countless clients, that no matter how messed up your life has been, no matter how many “issues” issues you may have had, you can change your life for the better starting right now.
(sounds like one of those detergent commercials on TV, eh?)
Experience has show me that: it’s the people who don’t quite “fit in” who have the best chance of starting new and really making it work, once they find a system that is made just for them. That is when they begin to stop saying why bother.
The problem with a lot of systems is that they are forced upon people, they work for people who are “straight ahead”, but if you are at all a bit ”out there”, those systems may not really speak to you.
So, how does the system work?
The system is fairly simple, in itself, and I will explain in a minute, but what makes it special is what we bring along with it, or really, what we don’t bring along with it.
We don’t bring along your “history”. We don’t bring along your mess ups. I had one parent spend an hour telling me all the things that her kid did wrong. When I finally found a space to speak, I asked the parent “what are the things your child does well?”
The parent was very happy to go onto this entirely new tangent of all the really cool things that her child did. They were awesome things and I knew that I could work with that.
If you have even one thing that speaks to you; you love music; you love animals or little kids; you’re funny; you love the arts; (fill in your thing here); then mentoring young adults can work with you and we can do something great!
So now, back to how the system works 🙂
You pick three goals that you would like to work on.
Feel free to make up your own that make more sense to you but for the moment:
Let’s use one from one of my most recent clients;
Client: Skeeter Peterson
What are three goals you would like to work on:
Stop sucking at school.
Do something about the amount of weed I smoke.
Have my parents yell at me less.
You might find Skeeter’s goal choices a little weird, or they make make complete sense to you. Your choices would be based on you.
Once we’ve made those goal choices, we look at what are the challenges to making those goals work.
Finally, we ask you what would be a first indicator of success. Nothing huge. Nothing magic. Simple first signs of victory. Once you can choose or imagine first sign-posts of success, you no longer will be that young adult wondering “why bother”. You will become a young adult ready to investigate ways to learn, grow and develop as part of a team. Your mentor and you with you in control.
What you find out is, a great mentor doesn’t really care if you mess up working on your goals or not. We care about figuring out why you you met one are all of your goals one day and not the next. If we can figure out what inspires you (it could be the weirdest things that might not make sense to anyone else but you), then you learn how you best work and how to inspire yourself with things that will make sense to you.
So now, back to the first question; why bother?
Why not? 🙂
But seriously, if you tried everything else and you’re not happy with how your life is, you really have nothing to lose. So why not bother. Or just say “bleep it”. Try it and see what happens. No expectations. No pressure. But a chance that this may be the thing for you.
There you have it. It’s a little different. But it really works.
Please feel free to email me any questions you may have.
Thanks for reading!
Ken Rabow 2022 update. I think I should mention that after you have chosen your goals, identified your challenges and picked sign-posts of success, the next part of mentoring young adults is creating a daily routine. “You can only do in your life what you can do in a day”. There are so many reasons why it is hard to get the “good things” into your daily routine. An experienced mentor will know how to let you live your life and still succeed in going towards your goals with a few things each day.
