I had my computer open with a video ready to play. “13 minutes?!” My 15 year old son said in protest. “What else do you have to do right now? Do you have somewhere to be?” I asked. “And you would watch Tiktok for 3 hours if we let you,” my husband said. Let me back up a bit to fill you in…

In my blog ‘Happy Money’ from a couple of weeks ago, I told you about a question one of the radio station had posed about what everyone had wished they learned in school.

The main answer was about money lessons and finance. Also how to change a car tire, and how to cook meals. I found the book Happy Money to completely give me a new view on how I understood Money. I read that book and wished everyone in the world could understand these concepts.

With that concept behind Happy Money being the main driving force, I was wondering how all teens or youth could learn this before they are emotionally ‘scarred’ by Money beliefs they experience growing up. But not only for money, but so many things that they may wonder about and need guidance on. How to learn, how to grow through their life, how to build meaningful relationships. The list goes on.

I thought about a sort of mentorship website, for youth, that could show little videos of these brief life lessons. Why videos? It’s all youth want to view now, with YouTube or Tiktok or Instagram ‘Reels’ being hugely popular. When Ted talks began, they had a rule that the talk couldn’t be more than 18 minutes. For an informative lesson talk, this was the key length of time. I think to engage youth now that are used to quick entertainment clips, mentoring lessons likely have to be very brief. 5 minutes or less. If they found a topic they are interested in, they may just have to engage in multiple videos to get all the information.

I thought about who could offer such a site – why reinvent the wheel if an organization already has the infrastructure to get this out to people. Maybe there already is such a site? I searched youth mentorship sites. I checked out Mindvalley. I was delighted to find a page in Mindvalley for teens. If you aren’t familiar with Mindvalley, it is an amazing personal growth and development site, human transformation, they call it. They offer Quests, which are various guided lessons in a variety of development topics. Which is where I found ‘Be Extraordinary For Teens.’ This one is a free 10 day quest, about gaining confidence, learning to set goals and being happy with yourself and self love.

I enrolled and went through the two intro videos. The day 1 session, being 13 minutes is where the initial pushback came, obviously because this was my idea.

I am excited about this one, and out of curiosity, will sit in on each day with him. If I just get some expanded awareness out of him, I would be happy. For him to understand there can be such potential for his life, he can dream big, set intentions and find his passion. We already very much limit his screen time with games and phone (which we get a lot of pushback from), so to have him interact with something to do with development is amazing. He was definitely reluctant to participate because it was my idea, so watching together will be the key to success for us. Day 1 was about intentions and using wording like, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if…’ and completing the phrase with how you want your day to go. I think it was also eye opening to hear Vishen’s story about his pimples as a teen and understanding he can affect the world around him and not live in a ‘victim’ state.

We will give this session a go, and I will consider this mentorship idea more, maybe Mindvalley will expand on their teen and youth offerings. 🤓

Sending Love,

Devon