In today’s world we see young people perishing in apathy and passivity or anger at what is happening in the world or escapism into drugs, alcohol or other addictive behaviour (including to social media or other gadgets).
The first step toward SEEing a better world is to have a Vision: We can Inspire and Empower the next generation to have a VISION for their lives, at least for now. This could be a short, medium or long term vision as long as they are headed somewhere they desire to go to with intentionality, rather than being buffeted by the changing winds of popular culture and those who would manipulate it.
SEE your Way to a Better World is about a new paradigm and winning strategy for life – or rather ancient wisdom reapplied to today’s modern world. SEE stands for Social Enterprise Evolve.
This means that we teach young ones that love and money are needed for a better world. Community development is awesome and equips people in the community to take charge of theirs lives and yet to run community development programs costs money. These could be sporting, arts, spirituality or many others. If people continue to volunteer without limits as is mostly the case with community development programs they can become part of the problem (heading toward poverty) as over time their own funds deplete and they do not have enough money to pay their own bills and/or hit burnout as they are working two jobs to be able to volunteer while they work to be able to live and pay basic bills. One only needs to look at the not-for-profit sector with notoriously low salaries and people doing the jobs where they are initially were so passionate and worked crazy long hours only to succumb to burnout and/or feelings of being overwhelmed and even resentful within a few short years. I am not referring here to people with healthy boundaries who limit their volunteering to say up to five hours per week.
Economic development without a wider community purpose leads to greed. A smarter choice is to educate people regarding financial intelligence so they come to understand money as tool rather than becoming a slave to it and feeling like they have no choices in life. Love and money to the individual is as community and economic development to a community or nation. We CAN learn new ways to bring in income and decrease or reduce expenses or alternatively come up with totally new ways to overcome needs and/or social ills.
Once people have a vision which could be as simple as ‘peace at home’ with the solution of committing to being more respectful of parents such as paying money toward bills or if that is not accepted, working out a way to demonstrate commitment such as promising to undertake certain duties as part of the team at home. This could be via doing housework, maintenance or a special project eg creating a new vegetable garden. Commitment is promising with follow through, actually doing what you promised to do.
A few years ago, I was given new language for what I had been teaching / coaching / encouraging others to do since 2002 when I had my own revelation. This became the transformational 4 step Imagineering 2 a Better World strategy of Vision – Solution – Commit – Partner. Since that time however some people have not achieved their goal/s or maintained the momentum. The most common factors standing in our way to success are character, stewardship and intimacy/vulnerability. But first Vision…
Imagine (Vision): What does your better world look like to you? This could be for you personally or for a wider group or globally – refer to various pages on the website to find out some examples.
Solution: What can you do today, this week or this month toward that vision? This must be a SMART goal – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. Eg for above vision of peace at home, consider and research how one could respect parents more in the home. One solution is to commit to mowing the lawns once per fortnight or month rather than paying the lawnmowing man or waiting until the already overburdened parents have time.
Commit – Sign to say ‘I will do it’ or post it on social media.
Partner – have someone to hold you accountable and encourage you to follow through. Put it to your parents. This should be a win-win solution to demonstrate initiative and reliability for the youth or young adult, (plus get paid if the job is done as well as the lawnmowing guy/gal if there is one), parents see young adult becoming more mature and learning more life skills (which lessens stress as they realise the young adult may actually be able to look after him/herself with basic life skills when they do leave the nest). Plus let’s say in this case the lawnmowing guy/gal had too many clients coming into summer and was happy to let a client go!!!
So SEE your way to better world – Social Enterprise Evolve. More will be explained regarding Character, Stewardship, and Intimacy/Vulnerability in upcoming articles.
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Articles are written by the author of Prosper as Your Soul Prospers: A Holistic Approach to Basic Money Management from a Soul & Spirit Perspective. Available in bookstores nationally in Australia or ebook on Amazon.