Inspirational Success

Stevie is passionate about young people and in particular about them having every opportunity to shine and be successful in life. 

This week Stevie volunteered to work with a young person who has come through the care system and who just needs some guidance and pointed in the right direction. Today was the first of the sessions.

Having been advised of some of the challenges this young person is facing Stevie took a relaxed approach to working with him, setting a calm and safe environment for discussions to take place. This being said Stevie is a direct guy and he always gets straight o the point!

After speaking about his core values – trust, honesty and respect Stevie went on to share a story that would help to gain those values. Knowing that this young person has literacy challenges Stevie spoke to him about how he listens to books rather than reading them and that he writes in capital letters because he can’t write in joined up writing. Immediately this had the young person’s interest and established an area of common ground between them.

Another strategy used by Stevie is humour; the next thing he said was “sausage”. The young person was confused by this and found it very amusing! Stevie then explained that he wanted to know what image popped into the young person’s head when he heard the word sausage. He shared this image with Stevie and Stevie shared his – of course they were different. When Stevie explained that this was the whole point and that everyone in life sees things differently this was a real lightbulb moment and the young person said “I never knew that – that everyone sees things differently”.

The next step was to discuss moving things forward and in order to do that Stevie asked the young person what he was good at and he said sports. This really struck a chord with Stevie because he too is passionate about sport and he has all of his sports memorabilia up in the office. He then asked the young person if he wanted him to show how he could be in total control of his feelings, having said yes, Stevie then took him to the memorabilia and to a picture of Mohammad Ali, one of Stevie’s role models.

He showed the young person how his heart was beating faster and that the picture was having a positive impact on him because the image was inspiring. This proved that by associating images and words with certain feelings we can stay in control of them.

The next steps will be for the young person to complete an outdoor activity course as part of a team showing that he is valued and is not being judged. He will also undertake a personal training session with Stevie’s boxing trainer Bernie.

This young person whose life seemed so closed has now had doors opened up for him and he left the office relaxed, content and with hope. Stevie’s parting words were “Let the journey begin!”
 

1 Comment

Posted by Roger McGeachin on 14 January 2011

This is fantastic! We within KDS Training see this type of interaction often, but it never stops being truely amazing.

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