Flame of Hope

Wow what a powerful question.  How many of us have asked that question of ourselves?  Of those who have asked, how many have followed the path of self discovery long enough to find the answer?  The answer is one that we find by looking inward.  For me it was the powerful process of Living Your Vision that gave me a process to discover the answer.  I am Flame of Hope and my Purpose is to:  Be all I can; offer all I am; uplift and support all and serve those who are ignited by who I am; graciously accepting the abundance that feeds my soul.  So knowing my purpose I was seeking what that manifested purpose would look like – by then it was clear that Life Coaching and Living Your Vision Coaching was the way I would live my purpose.   Since then I have decided to increase my sharing by use of the Internet and focusing on helping Teens Discover their Ideal Career viewing it thou the lens of Purpose.  So began the journey of Careers for teens.  One of my first lessons was centered about getting in touch with their feelings – the inside out process of listening to that feeling place.  Was I ever surprised to learn that may if not most of the students in my 8^th grade class had not given any thought to feelings and did not know how to get in touch with theirs?  I began by asking – On a scale of 1-10 “How do you feel – physically and internally (that feeling place in their body that gut feeling that heart connection). By the end of the first class, it was evident that my materials designed for adults were not working, well at least for the 7^th and 8^th graders.  At this point, I did give up on the idea of teaching Living Your Vision principles and process and went into coaching mode of just asking questions, giving them learning situations that would illustrate the key points, and being in the moment.  It worked much better.  Here is the sequence of topics to explore and work on:

• Introduction and getting ready!
• How am I right now?  Exercises in getting in touch with your feelings – physical, emotional and spiritual.
  • Finding that feeling place – quiet your mind and listening skills
  • Why understanding your feelings are important.
  • Wheel of life – a starting place for understanding how satisfied you are right now.
• We all have baggage what is yours?  The beginning of sharing and building trust – in you and others.
  • Some practical ground rules to consider.
  • Teen’s life areas and labels.  What makes us the same and what makes us unique?  What do I want to experience in each area of my life?  A place to start.
• What are my values?  Where did they come from?  How are they discovered?
• What rules do I live by?  Where did they come from and how are they developed?
• What are my unique gifts and talents?
• What are my strengths?
• What is my learning style and What does personality type have to do with anything?
• What am I passionate about?  What am I really interested in?  So what?
• How does who I am life purpose tie into my ideal career?
• Manifesting my life purpose – how can I use my learning’s to create the life I want? Viewing Careers thru the lens of purpose and my life’s journey
• Life balance and thriving

Well this is quite a list of topics to explore, to see how your teen feels about and what they are willing to do about what they discover.  There will be helpful exercises you can explore with them, some experiences of your own that will help make the material a lot more meaningful and any sharing you both do the more you will get out of the experience.  I assure you that your investment in Career Insurance will pay great rewards.  Remember – ask questions along the way and please share in your experiences – this way we can all learn as we go.  It is my hope that what we learn together will help anchor the teen career class.  Ready?

Want peace of mind? What is your biggest fear that teen insurance can buy?

How about protecting your biggest investment – no not your house; your teens future job success. What would that success look like? How about feeling successful, satisfied, feeling the value of his work contribution and making more than a living wage, one that will allow him and his family to thrive?

What if your teen does not want to go to college? What will they do? Are you worried that they may not be able to leave the nest? Worse yet not be able to stay away due to financial troubles?  This is no joke, it is happening all the time -you probably know someone personally who is in this boat.

What is better than a college degree? What about a great job that makes your son or daughter come alive? Is it possible to thrive without a college degree? I believe so, if they know their life purpose and are living it.

What are you willing to do to insure your peace of mind and see your children thrive? One thing that I see in my business are young adults who have invested in a job or career path that now feel stuck, they feel like they are loosing their ability to choose a different path because they have invested so much time, energy and yes – money in the current career that they feel stuck.  When if ever will they feel free to chose something that provides more job fulfillment?  There is no better time than right now – just start to discover “who you are and what you are really good at” and then make sure you start doing it – perhaps in small increments, part time and build more of what you love to do into a job or create one of your own job.   The main thing to remind them is that they have to power of choice and need to exercise that power before they believe they are powerless.

Alright, so  what do you think about job/career insurance for teens and young adults??

Hi, Roxann just mentioned that it was not clear on how to leave a comment. I checked it out and if you look under each post there is something that looks like this:

Posted by mike under Careers with No Comments
Tags: appearance, Blog, shared tools and services, Teens, theme
If you put your courser on the comments piece and click you get a comment box to leave a reply  and then click on the submit comment button.
Hope this is useful and that I get more comments.

Hi all, well I think I have found a more appealing appearance for my blog – I think it is more me and would like your comments.

Any takers???

Oh, just thought I would mention that I am developing a new category of Shared Tools and Services – things that will help you work more effectively with your Teens.

I have been working at exploring teen careers for several years now and am just putting a course together that will help them along the discovery path. You can help begin their process by following my blogs and helping them to apply the principles and exercises. If you find it useful and want extra help, I will be here. Also I strongly suggest that you get a copy of “What Color is Your Parachute? by Richard Bolles. Pay particular attention to chapters 7-9, the Epilogue and useful exercises in the Appendix. I stumbled across his book over 20 years ago when I lost my first job and it is just as relevant now as it was then (or perhaps more so with the advent of the Internet).

Next Blog Session 2 will be about the initial process of discovery “Who am I” an exciting adventure. My experience tells me that teens have seldom if ever begun any serious exploration of the topic and will be excited to start down this path. Who better to get them involved and started than a Parent or Grandparent – who do they trust and who knows more? Certainly not their friends who are in the same boat.

My basic assumption about Careers – before you invest in career insurance it is necessary that you understand where I am coming from and what I believe.  I believe that everyone has a career path they were intended to pursue – one where they have the gifts, talents, personality, interest and natural strengths needed to be totally successful and fulfilled .  Your job (and your teen’s) is to find, discover or create it and live it.  How does one find this ideal career?  Can you do it alone?  The answer is yes and most people do so, but it may take a lifetime (at least it did for me). Many spend years working in jobs and careers where they do not enjoy the work, feel unfulfilled, underappreciated and know there is more but do not know what to do.  You see this lack of direction in college graduates, those who have worked in a job for five to ten years and those who are in the second half of life.  It appears that the longer one goes down the wrong path, the more invested they become in that path and hence difficulty in making a change. So there must be a better way.  There is and therefore the need for Informed Choice at as early as possible – that is why I am working with Teens.  I learned the basic process when obtaining my coaching certificate – the process is called “Living Your Vision” and was created by a wonderful woman (Fran Fisher) who created the Academy for Coach Training.  I have taken this process and tailored it to teens and added a Careers focus.  So what is this Teen Career Process, how does it work?

Hopefully after reading and thinking about the Intro session, you are now convinced that you need and want Teen Career Insurance.  But first let me tell you a little bit about my story and why Teen Career Insurance makes sense (not that you are not already convinced).  When I was in High School, I thought I knew what I wanted to be, how much I would make and how to become successful – little did I know what path I was headed down or where it would lead. I decided along with my best High School friend that we would go to college.  This was not a popular decision at my house since my father considered it a waste of time and money – he was a tool and die maker and he felt that learning a trade was the only way to go – well you know I was determined to show him.  Anyway my best friends’ father was a degreed engineer and making a staggering $10,000 a year – way more money than anyone I knew.  My best friend and I were taking advanced math and were pretty good at science so this only made sense that we follow in his father’s footsteps.  That was my decision process – it did not consider what engineers do, whether or not we had the personality or that we were really good at – our strengths.  Yes we were good at math, but we did not love math.   As it turns out neither of us were cut out to Be engineers, we both turned to Business and did become successful – well at least by the world’s standards.  So deliberate choice of a career without knowing who we really are and what we are intended to Become turned out to be a poor choice.  How many of you can at least in some way relate to this type of decision process?  So what is a better way???  What Teen Career Insurance could we have invested in?  Oh, one other thing – I had to earn my college education and this uninformed method of choice was turning out to be expensive – at least it was at the time.

I have worked with a local school district and YMCA to put together a 12 to 24 week session on Career’s for Teens program.  Although enthusiastically received, they either did not have time in their current programs to add such a time commitment or they did not have a current high school group available.  I am also working with others to see if a local church group has an interest in such a program.   My research has shown that Mother’s of teens are the most influential in determining whether or not their children choose to attend college.  I have decided to aim current bogs to Parents (especially Mother’s of teens) and perhaps Grandparents (as they may be supplying college financial support).  Details on how to present the program to teens is fairly well established and will be used in actual classes.  So here goes:

What is Career success?  What does it look like?  Why is it important?

• Career success is made up on a number of factors -Doing something you really enjoy, are really good at, in a place you enjoy and with people you like and contributing to something bigger than you while making a difference.   Oh yes it is making a good living as well as life and contribution.
• What does it look like?  Here is a picture taken from Richard Bolles’ book (What color is your parachute?) and modified to some of my material.

Flower picture of job of your dreams

Why is it important that you select the correct job or college program that reflects who you are as a person?  That matches your personal gifts and talents? That you are very good at?   Well if you do not choose it (job or career) then it will choose you -through the circumstances that you are involved with over time.  This trial and error process takes a lot of time and expense (if you choose the wrong career for you).  Perhaps most importantly, you will lose valuable time that you could be thriving instead of just existing.

• So what does it cost to let your career choose you? Here are just a few interesting factors to consider:
  • Many good paying jobs are being “outsourced”, yes sent overseas – why?  One factor is cost ( it is cheaper) another factor is something called “Brain Drain” – where we are not keeping up with developing professional and technically prepared professionals fast enough for current and future demand.
  • Here are some sobering statistics about our current (State of Washington) educational population – where will your student fit?
  • Many High School kids do not know or have given much thought to what they want to do next?
    • College? Which one?
    • A job? Which or what kind of job are they best suited for?
    • Do they have what it takes to be successful in the next phase of their life after High School?
  • High School Projections (Bureau of Labor and Statistics projections for 2014 and Washington State Educational Statistics)

90% of the Students attend Public Schools
77% of new wage jobs will require workers with an education above High School
Currently there are about 532,000 Washington State  K-6^th grade students who will graduate ready to pursue some form of higher education

About 112,000 will drop out
About 373,000 will graduate on time  -this means that 62% of our students will be pursuing 23% of the living wage jobs available to those with only a High School Diploma.

Only about 202, 000 will go on to a 2 or 4 year college – will your son or daughter be one of these?  Are they ready?  Do they know what they will ultimately be happy and successful doing?

• So if your Teen is going to college what will it cost?  Have you already explored the costs and alternatives?

College Costs are increasing every year.  Here are a few examples – College Board projections released Oct 29, 2008.

The 2009-210 school year total Student Budget was estimated at:

• Community College  $14,285
• Public University       $19,388
• Private University      $39, 288   – higher education costs are increasing between 5-6% per year

Have you seen the papers lately on the Public education crisis –the state is cutting our public education support – it is hitting the college level and the response per Seattle Times” Gov. Chris Gregorian and leaders of four-year institutions have asked for an eye-popping 14-percent increase each of the next two years. Not to mince words or math: Compounded one year over the other, that’s a 30-percent increase”.

• So not only is a College education expensive, but colleges and universities are getting ever more difficult to get into.  As prices escalate, students will hunt for those that are the best bargains – this means your Teen will be competing with both students from around the United States and around the World.  What can you do and what are you willing to do to protect your most important Investment – your Teen’s Future?

First, sign up for future Blog Postings where I will walk you down the path of what you can do to Insure your Teens future success