9 Steps to Help Youth Activate Their Dreams and Aspirations

9 Steps to Help Youth Activate Their Dreams and Aspirations

by | May 2, 2019 | Blog

I recently co-hosted a Kickstarter launch party for our documentary film, A Billion Entrepreneurs, in Dallas and New York City. During the Dallas event, one question really stood out from one of the attendees.  He asked the panel how could we implement more programs in the public school system that teach entrepreneurship.  Each panelist gave their take on what they thought could be an option to his question.

They never had entrepreneurship days.  Come to think of it, I don’t even recall hearing the word entrepreneurship.

On the plane ride back to New York, I gave the question more thought. During my school days, the public school system would hold career days.  They never had entrepreneurship days.  Come to think of it, I don’t even recall hearing the word entrepreneurship. So on my three hour flight, I decided to envision how an entrepreneurship day could impact our children and wake them up to their full potential by creating some thought provoking steps towards entrepreneurship.

Instead of listening to people talk about their career paths, how different would it be to listen to entrepreneurs that had a vision and created that vision? Listening to someone who was passionate about their dream and their purpose? Challenging children to think about the “what if” and asking them to imagine and dream? I think kids are more often told to wake up to reality than to dream and this needs to change.

My entrepreneurship day would include asking the children to write down their vision and their dream or their “what if” on a piece of paper.  The next step would be to take this from a vision and dream to an actual action plan and discussing the following successful traits of an entrepreneur.

  1. Determine your purpose in life.
  2. Clearly define what it is you want to do and make sure it aligns with your purpose.
  3. Determine all the things you would need to create this dream.
  4. Determine who is in your circle of people you could tap to for support.
  5. Determine who or what position is not in your circle and determine how to get it.
  6. Create a plan of action with objectionable goal to help you measure progress and success.
  7. Put the plan in action.
  8. Don’t get discouraged if you fail.
  9. Learn from your mistakes and continue to move forward.

The overall objective is to actually create a plan based on your dream.  Keep in mind that it might change over time.  But  if you learn how to visualize, plan, and activate, you can begin to create the world that you want to live in and modify it anytime you want.  When you make a plan, all of a sudden it becomes a possibility.  And when it becomes possibility, you become activated.  And when you become activated, you become contagious.  When you become contagious, you catalyze action.  Let’s be contagious together.

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