The Transformation of Young People

So as many people know, I have been involved with Landamrk Education since about 1996. Landmark has helped to give me tools to communicate, keep my past in my past, be present and create any future I want. It has helped me learn to get into other people's worlds, see their views, get the difference between things that have happened vs. my perception over things that happened. And it has also given me some of the most amazing friendships on the planet.

I have coached self expression and leadership programs, taken courses, etc. But this past weekend I volunteered to assist at the Landmark Forum for Young People- for kids ages 8-12, with a few 7 year olds as well. Of course I focussed on how horrible it was to get up so early, how my feet ached, etc. But that's what I do to not be present. And when I was, I got some amazing insights and the profound honor of helping young people avoid struggling and suffering for 20+ years as many of us adults have. They now have the power to realize that their thoughts control their reality and to change and monitor those thoughts in order to have a life of possibility, happiness and love.

One of the hardest things for me to be present to, as a teacher, was walking into a room full of 70 kids and seeing them all fidget, twist in their seats, talk and chomp on their name tags. I was incensed. They weren't listening! But through the coaching of one of the leaders, I got that it was I who wasn't listening. To who they are. When I told a woman that I preferred high school kids because they could sit still I saw that sitting still and "behaving", with your mouths closed and your hands in your laps, is the result of having your self expression squashed. I remember that in my own courses, I tap my foot, want to check my phone and sometimes poke my friends. And that little people who twist and fidget are actually self expressed. When they completely behave and never make a peep - they may have lost the light inside of them.

Now this is just one interpretation, but it's one that allows me to be, in my classroom, with kids the way they are. I think back to this one boy in one of my classes who moved around the back of the room and stood up a lot. He never talked or disturbed anyone and his parents had told me that he needed to do that. And yet I still saw that as "bad behavior." But if a child needs to move, and can do it for him or herself and not distract the other students, then they may just be expressing themselves and taking care of what they need. And it is not a personal failure on my part that they're not completely and deathly quiet with hands in their laps and glazed, obedient eyes.

This weekend when the participants' parents went to their own session they looked at what a "perfect parent" would be and filled a board with all their judgements, opinions and comparisons and saw that this got in the way of them just being with their children. It made me look at how hard I was on myself with my own images of what the "perfect teacher" would look like.

We saw how we all just have different views and the benefits of eliminating "right and wrong" from our minds and just seeing that we all have different views. And it good to often look at situations from the other's point of view.

And after all the fidgeting and talking and me worrying that these young people "just didn't listen or get it" I witnessed, at the end, these little ones get up, face their parents and each state a possibility for their lives, what they could be counted on for, what they were giving up and what they wanted to acknowledge their families for. And I saw that from 7-12 they each got it. And their parents were all teary eyed as their young ones said they were inventing such things as the possibility of courage, happiness and love; could be counted on to do chores, take care of their little brothers and sisters and go to college; they'd give up anger, boredom, bad attitudes and loneliness; and they acknowledged their families for loving, caring and supporting them no matter what.

So in the end, after escorting kids to the bathroom, making snacks, setting up a room and running microphones, it was the greatest privilege of all to be in the presence of these future leaders, knowing all the lives they would touch, move and inspire for the rest of their long and beautiful lives.