At the end of high school, my teen daughter Eden took a personal development course for teenagers and came back very disappointed. In a two days workshop, every speaker talked about hitting rock bottom before finding the light and that light, for some reason, was a way to make money.
She paced back and forth and stormed, “I never see myself not having money for food or sleeping in my car because I have no home to sleep in. I never see myself without a family to support me. All I got from these presenters was that I must get very low if I want to be successful, which means I’ll never be successful. What kind of motivation technique is this?”
I said to her, “I’m sure that’s not what they meant” and tried to convince her to find something she could still learn from her experience, but it was no good.
4 years later, I think this course has done more damage to her attitude than I thought initially (although it may still contribute to her personality and attitude towards life in a positive way).
