Encouraging Teens to Find Their Spark

Encouraging teens to find their sparks is a community affair. It’s pretty amazing because adults can find their own sparks in the process.

Someplace I read the words

You were just waiting for someone to encourage you to be the “more” that you are, weren’t you?

How perfect for what we’re up to ……………… creating the space and place for people of all ages to discover that they are special, they are unique and that they have something very important to contribute to the world.

Participate in your community’s Spark Champions team. If one doesn’t exist, create one.

How?

First, go online to www.Search-Institute.org and print a copy of the 40 Developmental Assets for Adolescents, and order Benson’s book Sparks: How Parents Can Ignite the Hidden Strengths of Teenagers.

As you expand your team, ask each person to do the same. (I don’t lend my books out as I highlight, underline, and attach Post-It Notes to whatever I want to refer to quickly, and I don’t want to influence others as to what they feel is most important to them.)

Develop a vision of what you want to see happen in your schools and communities as you create your team. I created Serendipity West Foundation as a result of a seminar called Life Directions Intensive (http://www.peakpotentials.com/new/courses_camps/ld.html - please use Promo Code: 233754, if you want to explore this seminar).

One of the things we did in the seminar was to draw a picture of what our mission/vision would look like. I drew several pictures on the page, including one of a bunch of stick figures at a school participating in a Challenge Day, and another depicting a project the kids might create as a result.

I took this picture around to everyone and said “This is what I want to do and I have NO IDEA as to how to do it. Who do you know that I can talk with who might be able to guide me?” I explored many leads and ultimately met Arlene Gibson who was so aligned with what I was up to that she became my angel and my mentor.

And now we have scheduled our first four Challenge Days at Redmond High School and Elton Gregory Middle School the first week in January 2009. And we are hosting a Next Step to Being the Change Workshop next weekend, December 5,6, and 7th for 20 teens and 40 adults who want to be Spark Champions even though they don’t know yet about sparks. And Sisters Middle School and Sisters High School, as well as Pilot Butte Middle School have submitted their applications for Challenge Days.

OH, WOW. Do you know what that means? We will be DIRECTLY IMPACTING OVER A THOUSAND KIDS and many others indirectly, and our Spark Champions team will be their support them as they find their sparks.

WHOOPPEE!!!!!!!!!!

You can do this too. Let me know how I can help you.

Sparks – Something to Get Excited About

Thank you, Peter Benson.

Peter L. Benson, Ph.D., the creator of Search Institute’s Developmental Assets, has written a book called Sparks – How Parents Can Help Ignite the Hidden Strengths of TEENAGERS.

OH, WOW…………having read only the first 46 pages, I know that Benson’s insights support not only parents, but entire communities, to champion our kids as they search for their passion, their purpose, their spark.

And, truly, this is the mission of my foundation, Serendipity West Foundation: Awakening Teens to Their Magnificence and Power, Creating Bold New Futures. I’m just beginning to discover just how many other people have taken this on as their passion, their purpose, their spark.

Sparks? A spark is something inside that gets you excited. It’s something that gives meaning to life. And it’s not just teens we are talking about, it's everyone.

I found my spark late in life. My dream is to be a catalyst in creating the environment in all Central Oregon communities and schools that “energizes our families, schools, and neighborhoods to see the potential in each young person” - and the not-so-young, as well.

So many people – teenagers and adults – live locked-up lives. They meander through life, sometimes checking things off their to-do list, but often not knowing why they are here or why they matter. When you do this too long, you get a nagging sense that something’s missing, and what’s missing is discovering and expressing your spark. (Sparks – page 18)

As has been attributed to e.e. cummings:

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside of us there’s something valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our touch, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

So………………what is your spark? If you don’t know, actively seek it. Once you know what it is, I say GO FOR IT.

HOW CAN OUR COMMUNITIES SUPPORT TEENS?

When I met with Stephanie Bennett, the principal of Pilot Butte Middle School in Bend, OR, to talk about Challenge Day, she asked me if I’d ever heard of the “40 Developmental Assets”. She directed me to http://www.search-institute.org/ to a link that lists Developmental Assets not only for Adolescents, ages 12-18, but also for Early Childhood, ages 3-5 and Middle Childhood, ages 8-12.

These Assets are the building blocks of healthy development as identified through Search Institute’s research. Search Institute is an independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide leadership, knowledge, and resources to promote healthy children, youth, and communities.

The Asset that fits DIRECTLY into what I'm up to is number 39, “Sense of purpose – Young Person reports that ‘‘my life has a purpose’”. How great it is that Search Institute has created this list of assets to work towards as we begin the steps that will ultimately create “My Legacy”.

And how great it is that we can play a role in supporting our kids as they seek their purpose/passion as young people and not to wait until the age when I finally found mine.

If kids are your passion, check it out. Together we can make a difference in the world – and so can our kids.

In my next post, I’ll tell you about how “Sparks” can change a youngster’s life.

MY LEGACY

I am celebrating my 95th birthday and am the guest of honor at Central Oregon’s 20th annual Be the Change Celebration, held at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds, attended by thousands and thousands and thousands of teens, their parents and their friends who have been positively impacted by the hundreds of Challenge Days that have been held throughout the last 25 years in our Central Oregon schools.

There are hundreds of booths at the Fairgrounds with exhibits and examples of the remarkable inventions and creations that are the result of the careful nurturing of our children over the years that started with a few Challenge Days in a few schools in 2008.

Challenge Day’s Be The Change Movement is now supported by every person and business in our many communities and our example of school and community involvement has spread throughout the state and beyond. The seeds were sown early in 2006 with the discovery, at age 68, that I had a purpose and that was To Awaken Teens to Their Magnificence and Power, Creating Bold New Futures. One of my favorite (and now famous) sayings is: Each of us has a piece of the puzzle. Once you put your own piece in place, a thousand others can then be placed.

In January 2006, I put my piece of the puzzle in place (www.SerendipityWest.org). Shortly thereafter Arlene, my mentor and angel, put her piece in place, and Terri, a mom with a vision, put her piece in place. Together we created the Central Oregon Circle of Change. Look at our handiwork now - thousands of teens and adults have discovered their passions and are putting their own pieces in place. What a marvelous world it is.

Each school year thousands more teens, supported by their communities, attend a remarkable one-day program that “provides youth and their communities with experiential workshops and programs that demonstrate the possibility of love and connection through the celebration of diversity, truth and full expression” (Challenge Day’s Mission – www.ChallengeDay.org). Be the Change Teams in each of the schools and communities support the teens as they explore the possibilities that exist in their lives as they think outside the box.

Our pilot after-school program, created in 2009 with Pilot Butte Middle School Principal Stephanie Bennett (now U.S. Secretary of Education), has been duplicated at every elementary, middle and high school in Central Oregon. No longer do parents and youngsters wonder how to productively fill the day when school is out. Community involvement has established community centers in each of the towns across Oregon, many of which are at the schools themselves. Volunteers from across the communities and the state share their areas of expertise and the kids have opportunities to explore diverse skill sets in their search for their passion and their own piece of the puzzle.

Serendipity West, my dream home, has become a gathering place for the many extraordinary people that come to share, learn and celebrate what we have created. I receive strength from my talks with “Grandfather Tree” (a grand old Ponderosa Pine, full of wisdom) and as I sit on the Grande Veranda and watch the sun set behind the mountains, I know I have found my serenity and my solitude. I continue to allow the Universe to shower me with miracles every day. I am at peace with myself and with life.

I have been instrumental in impacting thousands (and thousands and thousands) of lives. I made a difference. Life is good.

Have You Ever Written Your Legacy?

I have been in classes and seminars where the exercise was to write your legacy…what you wanted people to say about you at your funeral. I never felt empowered on those exercises, and whatever I wrote always seemed to be something I invented just to do the exercise.

I have the good fortune to belong to an organization called HUB, Humanity Unites Brilliance, an amazing organization with three weekly curriculums: Personal Development, Business Growth and Humanitarian Impact -- plus much much more.

Last Monday was a turning point regarding writing my legacy. I’ve had a lot of pieces in place, but it was during the HUB Personal Development Conference Call that I began to see how they fit together for me. I was so certain about what my legacy was to be that the words flowed easily. I spent several hours after the call and several more again the next morning putting together the words that described what I was to accomplish in the rest of my life.

Peter Benson, in a book called “Sparks”, says that sparks are the hidden flames in kids that excite them and tap into their true passions. Sparks, he says, have the power to change a young person’s life from one of “surviving” to “thriving”. My passion is to be the catalyst that causes us to create the environment where all the kids in the schools find their sparks and thrive, where they find their own passion and purpose, their own piece of the puzzle.

In my next post I’ll tell you what I declared my Legacy to be. Every time I think about it I feel so serene knowing that this is what I came here to do.

In the meantime, if you are interested in the concept of Humanity uniting with Brilliance, visit my site http://www.serendipity.hubhub.org/. Through HUB you’ll have immediate access to technology, tools and teams to support your personal and financial growth and, at the same time, provide life changing impact to the world.