When I was young, I was involved in programs at a church in the low-income, predominantly African American neighborhood where my family lived. One day when I was 16 years old, some friends and I were walking down the street when we came across a couple of shiny new vans delivering a small hoard of white […]
Tag: personal development
Personal Engagement is the sustained connection a person has to the world within themselves. —Adam F. C. Fletcher In places throughout our society, people are wrestling with a challenge that feels insurmountable: People just don’t care, they aren’t showing up, or they’re not doing what we need them to, what they’re supposed to do, or even what […]
I don’t understand. In the neighborhood where I grew up, in this last week there have been A LOT of shootings, several murders, three home invasions, and a lot of robberies. I turn on pop music though, and here’s another rapper claiming to “rep the hood” while they’re driving expensive cars, wearing expensive jewelry and […]
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Join Me in Marin!
Join me today in San Raphael, California for a series of presentations! This morning I’m talking with more than 300 middle school students focused on my talk, GET ENGAGED WITH PURPOSE, PASSION AND POWER! Then this afternoon I’m talking with community members, including parents, nonprofit workers and others, focused on The Big Ideas in Youth Engagement. […]
Beyond the research, statistics and reports, there’s a simple truth about youth engagement: When young people experience sustained connections to the worlds within and around them, their lives become better, and the lives of those around them improve, too. For a long time, I forgot to say that. Instead, I focused on the […]
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Change Takes Time
Life isn’t about immediacy! Sometimes I get anxious or excited, and I want my way to be the way. I get disappointed when I set myself up that way. I’m learning not to be in the immediate gratification crowd that believes you can actualize your dreams almost the instant you form them. When I was younger and […]
My childhood was rough. As a way of coping with the experiences I had, somewhere along the way I started to gloss over details of my days by concentrating on big pictures. That was fun when I was younger, as it afforded me views I didn’t experience a lot of my peers having. However, it […]
Carl Jung once wrote, “Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” While a lot of things in our world want us to watch shiny, flashy stuff going on around us, the practice of personal engagement encourages us to look inside. That doesn’t mean […]
“Slap! Slap! Slap!” The sound of flip flops slapping across the old oak floor of the gym greeted me every hot summer night of 1995. That year, I was a determined youth worker in the neighborhood I grew up in. The news blared to the rest of the city that our hood was racked by […]
More than a decade ago, I attended a seminar where the facilitator talked about clients’ walls. They felt stonewalled by someone they were trying to reach out to. Focusing on in-person meetings, using the phone, email and even social media, this facilitator shared 5 ways to destroy client walls and overcome reluctant prospects. From the start, […]
