The first concept of youth leadership development involves understanding your goals and dreams. This largely determines the direction in which you are going with your life. However a large interference of personal leadership development amongst youth is peer pressure. There is a time to resist peer pressure otherwise you will end up like the majority. There are two solutions of peer pressure; you can either lead your peers in the direction you want to go or you can change your circle of friends to those that have hopes and dreams like yours.
There is a magic formula, which is an essential part of youth leadership development:
- Believe you have the ability
- Set clearly defined goals
- Make the effort before you enjoy the results
- Increase your value as a person by continual self-development
- Maintain a positive mindset and mental attitude
- Have persistence and learn from failures
- Take full responsibility for success and failures
How to overcome failure on the youth leadership development road
At a point in every person’s life they encounter a failure. However don’t let the first defeat put you off trying again. Failure inspires winners, and failure defeats losers. It is important to remember that everything that is of value takes time, so if you wish to inspire your youth leadership development skills, you must stretch yourself, and try new things you have never done before. In fact, a great goal to start with your youth leadership development, is to sometimes stretch yourself outside your comfort zone. If you feel butterflies in your stomach at least once each day, it is a sign of growth and personal development.
Mistakes are not a bad thing to make. That is, as long as you learn from them.
Getting the most out of your mistakes:
1. Be honest with yourself; look at the situation and try to figure out what went wrong.
2. Tell yourself it was meant to be. Ask yourself if the situation has shown you a new direction.
3. Find something good about the situation
As mentioned in the above formula, maintaining a positive mindset and mental attitude is crucial to youth leadership development. By applying this strategy, (fortunately for us it can easily become a habit) we can change our life by changing the way we look at it.
When we look at the term “youth leadership development”, we must recognise straight away that we are talking about developing ourselves as a leader. We must also recognise that we are going against the masses of people. So do not become angry about the negative programming you have received so far. You cannot change what has passed and you will be wasting time by dwelling on it. Where you will be in the future depends on the choices you make from now on.
Important tips on developing youth leadership skills
A great way to improve your leadership development skills is by listening to audio CD’s, undertaking training courses and reading books. For a while you will be like a child on a bicycle. You will fall over, face setbacks and often things won’t happen as you planned. However, you will slowly make progress as the habits of success take over your thinking. Try to get into the habit of achieving small successes. Each success will give you the confidence to give you the next one. Soon enough you will not be perceived as a victim of the world, instead as the leader you have always wanted to be.
Until next time
The Dream Reality Team – Sean and Tegan
Make your dreams your reality.
Thank you. I believe to inspire and educate youth will create great change.
“The only failure is to not participate”
I found a great book on being a leader, getting up in the face of defeat and an inspiration to win was:
“Think Like a Winner” by Yehuda Shinar
A great book and he was involved coaching the English rugby team when they won the World Cup in 2003.
Great post and I hope many people take encouragement from it.
Loved this post on Youth Leadership Development.
I have two primary age children, and I am so well aware of the importance of promoting confidence and self-esteem in children from a young age. As they get older, there is more and more influence from external factors, particularly peers, and as you say, peer pressure can play a major role on your pathway through life.
Great Info, especially about training youth to ignore peer pressure. As someone who always wanted to be different, peer pressure was fairly easy for me to ignore, but I see lots of youth nowadays who have to have complete approval from their mates. A bit sad !
Cheers
Harry
ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE !!!