Three questions to engage our youth and spark reflective thinking

Perhaps no generation has been under fire like this current group of teenagers.  In my opinion, much of the criticism is unfounded and much of what we criticize is the result of lax parenting by members of my generation.  I believe this generation has as much potential as any previous generation and has encountered challenges unprecedented until now.  Moreover, I strongly believe that many, many members of my generation have largely failed to provide leadership, mentoring, and guidance for these young people.  That is not to say that these young people are not responsible for what they do and leave undone, but rather we need to assist them along the way and engage them rather than lecture and point out shortcomings.  I believe there are three questions central to engaging our young people and getting them to assume ownership of their future and their future success or failure.

            

Who are you?  This question is essential and must be asked first in order to spark their thinking.  Who are you--what different identities do you claim?  The initial response(s) may be surface level, but we need to dig deeper and provoke these students to think beyond surface level identities.  Are you the kid most people believed to be destined for success or are you the person other people doubt?  Are you the person that knows what it means to go to bed hungry and has had to fight and claw to gain an advantage their entire life?  Are you the person who embraces struggle and overcomes obstacles others cannot even begin to fathom?  Are you the person who gets up each and every time they are knocked down?  Or, are you the person willing to accept setbacks when life tells you that you were just not good enough this time?  Who are you?  Do you have any idea?  You need to start thinking about it; what you find has the potential to keep you humble and grounded when you most need these attributes.  Moreover, it may serve to motivate you when you need that extra little push to get you over the hump.  Finally, knowing who you are and where you came from allows you to celebrate progress toward becoming the person you wish to be.

            

Who do you represent?  You obviously represent yourself, but who else has a stake in your behavior, has a stake in your eventual failure or success?  How about your parents?  You did not get here all by your lonesome, so how often do you consider how your actions will affect those people responsible for giving you life?  What about your siblings and extended family?  Don’t they matter?  Are they not concerned with your life’s outcomes?  If you are an African-American you have a burden that people from other ethnic groups largely do not understand; you are frequently asked to provide the representative viewpoint for your ethnic group when in the presence of other ethnicities.  As if all African-Americans thought the same and were in lockstep on all issues, no matter how trivial or how important they may be.  Are you on a team?  Then you certainly represent your teammates and coaches.  Have you ever stopped to consider how your actions may impact them and their success or failure?  In short, it is time to think about how your actions, or lack of action, affect all the people directly and indirectly connected to you.  People care about you and they care about your future; with that in mind you need to think about all the people and groups you represent.

Who do you want to become?  Is there a better question to ask our youth?  Who among us doesn’t like to dream about the future?  Our youth still possess the ability to completely turn their respective ships around, no matter the direction they are currently heading.  That is extremely important, because we want those heading in the right direction to keep heading that way full steam ahead, but we need those heading in the wrong direction to think about where they may end up.  We need to ask them if what they are doing, their present set of cumulative behaviors, is going to get them where they want to go; and we need to revisit this question over and over with them.  Nobody wants to be a failure; they simply fail to see the eventual effects of their current behaviors and change course?  Who do you want to become?  Our communities are starved for leaders, so why not strive to make a difference?  Or, are you content to fall into the paradigms so many embrace for people of your ethnicity, gender, or socio-economic class?  Why not break the mold?  Why not strive for that which others believe to be impossible?  I don’t believe you were created to be ordinary; at worse, you were created to do ordinary things in extraordinary ways. 

            

Our youth need our guidance, support, and leadership, not our condemnation.  I have no doubt they have heard what they cannot do often enough to believe it; I also have no doubt they could greatly benefit from hearing what we believe them to be capable of doing.  However, this, alone, is not enough.  We need to get them to think about who they are, who they represent, and who they want to become.  In short, we need to assist them in taking ownership of their lives.  Too often they view themselves as victims of circumstances, constrained by the circumstances they inherited.  We, all of us, know this to be false.  Time and again we have seen individuals rise to heights far beyond what they believed themselves capable of reaching, all because someone took an interest in them and their future.

Create a great day!

How does your best day start?  Seriously, have you ever taken the time to deconstruct or reverse-engineer your best days?  If not, I encourage you to do so as soon as humanly possible.  Think about what happens or does not happen when you have a great day.  What variables contribute to this idea: Does it mean exercising before work?  Eating breakfast?  Constructing your morning routine in such a way that you do not feel rushed or stressed prior to arriving at work?  What is it that you do that results in you having a great day?

Last year I spoke to my middle school students about this concept.  As children, so many of them see the quality of their day, for that matter, the quality of their lives, as dependent upon the words and actions of others.  I don’t believe this makes them unique; I believe most people believe the quality of their day is largely up to chance and dependent upon the circumstances of the particular day and the actions, or lack of actions, on the part of others.  Is it possible to have a sadder paradigm of life?  People believing this would often see themselves as victims of circumstance.  They would not see themselves as in control of their lives and they certainly would not see themselves as William Ernest Henley saw himself:

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

This poem, Invictus, resonated with Nelson Mandela during his nearly 30 years in prison.  Mandela refused to view himself as a victim of circumstance, but rather became a conqueror of his circumstances.

           

There is a famous quote attributed to Charles Swindoll that also emphasizes the importance of attitude when facing the challenges that come our way: “The longer I lIve, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company...a church....a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our attitudes.”  So, based upon the poem and the quote, it appears that attitude certainly plays a role in determining the quality of our respective days, but I believe there is still more that goes into determining whether or not we judge our day to be great, good, average, or poor.

            How many of us spend time preparing for the day ahead?  I am not simply referring to a to-do list for the day ahead of us, but, rather taking time well in advance to control all that we can control in an effort to ensure that we are adequately prepared for the day, thereby drastically increasing the likelihood of having a great day?  Doesn't it seem logical that if we properly prepare for the many variables under our control then the probability of having a great day rises dramatically?  For example, each of us most likely is forced to interact with co-workers, students, etc. that we would likely label as difficult; that is, given the opportunity we would avoid them.  However, it is not always possible to avoid them, thus we need to create strategies to deal with them.  The most proactive among us do this when it comes to traffic.  We leave at a time that assists us in avoiding the worst traffic, or we devise alternate routes in order to avoid the irritation of sitting in traffic jams.  I am willing to bet that many of us also devise strategies to minimize the frustrations associated with meetings.  Perhaps we schedule meeting that are predisposed to “go long” toward the end of the day so that the co-worker who will just not stop talking feels some peer pressure to wrap it up so that everybody can leave the office at a decent hour.  Or we schedule the meeting that we do not really want to see on our daily schedule just prior to a meeting or commitment that we must attend, thereby providing us with a reason for bringing the bothersome meeting to a timely end.

            I shared with my students that I begin preparing for the week ahead during the weekend.  My preparation for a week full of great days begins long before the week begins.  Among other things, I make sure my clothing is washed, ironed, and prepared prior to Monday morning.  In addition, I lay out my clothing the night before in the spare bedroom in an effort to minimize any noise I may make while getting ready (my wife does not like my version of the 5:00AM alarm clock).  This preparation is the beginning of my morning routine and ensures I have adequate time to walk the dogs, eat breakfast, and catch a few minutes of Morning Joe prior to departing for work.  Occasionally, this even provides me the opportunity to run prior to work, which really gets my day started off on the right foot.  When I make prior preparations for my workweek my chances of having a great day increase greatly and I find that I am much happier and much more enjoyable to be around.  I owe it to myself, and to those I love and work with, to make sure I provide myself with every possible advantage when it comes to this idea.