Written by: Emer O'Donnell, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
When sending children out into the world most parents wish for one thing. That they will have done everything necessary when raising them to ensure they have a happy life when they leave home.
Many young people today however who have not even left the nest of home are already struggling to navigate their way through the fog of internal and external uncertainty they feel, in our psychologically demanding world.
It is a world that is constantly telling them to be one thing or another to be accepted. They end up pleasing no one, often feeling they have failed and so can become very far removed from who they are in the process. Finding their North Star, or even a glimmer of it can be challenging.
Insight No. 1
If coming from a place of fear, not the tiger in the jungle type, it is impossible to make quality decisions as you run away from what you want rather than create what you love. You are in a looped reaction mode to the externals in your life rather than in proactive focus mode from within, with a known destination, whatever the weather.
So, for young people who are filled with talent and potential, being able to find a way to reconnect with their real selves brings enormous well-being, mental fitness and performance benefits, but let’s explore their world a bit more first.
Many have a dream for their future. Many also struggle with the ability to calm their minds, know who they are and be accepting of themselves, be able to focus, live more presently and take decisive action. So, the delivery of their dreams becomes an uphill struggle. This creates no visible progress, causing a feeling of being stuck in a kind of brain fog on a production line where they get disheartened and disconnected from their true potential.
I often hear at the start of coaching young people, if asked a question, an almost automatic response of “I don’t know”. It’s as if they have been exposed to so much information, they are swimming in data and can no longer figure things out. They don’t trust themselves to know the answer and the fear of getting things wrong is real.
They also have a lot less opportunity to test things out in their daily life by being able to be out on their own, to find their value and capabilities to create, where they can grow and adjust their behaviours for success. They don’t get to run free and learn through that process like previous generations.
Without this outlet to explore the real world on their development journey, they can feel left behind, with no control, like rabbits in the headlights, frozen, with unhelpful internal stories unchallenged by lack of experience running around their heads. This creates stress and anxiety about their future and where they belong in the world, especially when they think everyone else is nailing it. The daily illusion of social media also feeds their minds where they self-compare with the filtered fiction of others' success.
Insight No. 2
When we believe we have less than an 80% chance of attaining our goals, we don’t even start them.
Indeed, with so little real practical experience to draw on to ground young people’s thinking and decisions, mental resistance, which we all experience throughout our lives, stops them from moving outside their comfort zone.
Insight No.3
With mental resistance, there is a need for courageous action and experience to manage it.
We shouldn’t, therefore, be surprised when it comes to leaving the nest that many are terrified. It is like being thrown into the deep unknown ocean, with the potential of sharks appearing without the skills to survive. Ultimately there is nothing like learning on the job, which they are not getting! Here is a simple example to demonstrate this.
At 14 years old, I worked in a local chemist shop on the weekends, chatting and serving customers, re-stocking shelves, creating window displays, handling, and earning money. I loved it. I was learning real-life skills of communication, planning, creativity, focus and plenty more besides. It built a scaffold of experience to be able to organise my thoughts and to know what action was needed to achieve my goals.
Now move forward to 2022. When coaching 17-year-old Rachel (not her real name) who wanted among other things to get a weekend waitress job while studying, she was told we don’t hire anyone until they are 18. Reality check here. Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, was flying a plane when he was 15 years old. He wouldn’t be allowed to do that now! My point is we are telling young people they are not capable when they are more open and primed for learning and self-discovery than ever.
The impact is they don’t get to understand what they are good at. They don’t get to generate value for themselves and others. Education is filling them up with stuff that they are often not excited about, or it just feels irrelevant to them to be able to thrive in the real world. Indeed, in many instances, education is now more a system of measurement, rather than one of enlightenment.
We must therefore find alternative sources to address this lack of self-learning. If we want to support young people and empower them to shine, we must give them personalised, meaningful, self-awareness-building tools ideally through the education system. It is obvious stuff that they need a new way to be able to understand and ground themselves and calm their minds. They need to access a foundation of self-knowing, to be able to articulate who they are, and know what they want so they can go and get it. They need to be able to operate from a place driven by their passions and heart, not from an identity of worth based on just educational grades, along with the daily judgement to fit in they feel from the modern world we have created for them.
Insight No. 4
When we are aligned with our hearts, we can access the courage to push through the blockers, we perceive to be there.
We need to adapt education’s filling up of a pale approach, driven by the system's need to have students in performance boxes, to being focused on igniting their inner learning fire. If we don’t change, we will drown our children’s minds with data that no longer serve them in the modern world compounded by their immature brains not fully built until their mid-20s. As adults, we struggle with data overload, and we have fully mature brains.
Insight No. 5
Research with teenagers who attempted suicide highlighted the things they felt most important to them was a sense of belonging, family, a purpose in life, to have power over their emotions, the need to communicate with someone, and meaningful friends.
Without empowering them to create these things many will be observers on the sidelines of life, worn out and shadows of their potential. Like baby birds, they will wait for the worm to drop into their beaks because they don’t know what else to do. They will be too fearful to show up as themselves, losing so much energy compensating for what they feel is missing and not being active participants in creating what they love and were born to do. The very things like purpose and a sense of belonging that they so want and need for well-being and performance will be denied. Without these, even as adults, we can get lost in the world and struggle to find our place and anchor. Mental health issues will rise along with the costs of managing them in systems already unable to cope with demand.
What can we actively do next?
Consider this.
Future employers need future talent to ensure their businesses survive. There is a predicted cost of skill shortages of £120 billion by 2030 just for UK employers. Businesses are also facing rising mental health costs (4 billion per annum in the U.K). Young people are top of the vulnerability list. None of this trajectory bodes well for businesses, parents, or our children.
What if businesses were more focused on supporting the education systems from which their future talent will emerge? Schools are in a funding crisis now with spiralling energy costs. Shaping them and providing funding for new programmes that can deliver young healthy minds fit for working and living beyond the school gates is a no-brainer investment. Without well-being, you can’t sustain performance. This creates a proactive rather than a reactive approach so young people can learn meaningful skills for the challenges of the future with well-being, mental fitness and performance as the core foundation stones. It is obvious.
To know about my work to support young people, along with the innovative programmes being delivered in partnership with https://www.letslocalise.co.uk and https://ark2030.org please get in touch. Let’s make a real difference, together, today.
Emer O'Donnell, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Emer O'Donnell’s work focuses on removing fear from young people’s lives and supporting adults not to create it with their own fears. As a specialist coach, she understands what successful people do differently to achieve well-being and performance. Her mission is to bring that learning to young people, so they are empowered to transform their lives, find their purpose, and thrive in our modern, stressful world. She combines 5 factors to achieve this outcome ‒ Science, Psychology, Coaching, and the 7Q Fast Track TeenReconnect Formula. She’s a Founder of TeenReconnect and a creator of Q Pathfinder.
