Scott Schimmel (00:03.662)
Your kids are going to have to pay their own bills someday. They're gonna have to earn a living. They're gonna go to work. What I hope for my kids is that they take proper inventory of the skills that they have, specifically the skills that they are innately and naturally drawn towards. The ones that you would say and I would say are the ones that they're gifted at. They have a natural knack for these things. I want them to build a life around those skills.
because I'm sure your kids are just like you and me. They can do a bunch of things. They know a bunch of things, but not all of that belongs within the workday. There are only certain things that every person should do. Now, how do you help someone figure that out? How do you help your kid? That's what we're gonna get into. I'm Scott Schimel and for the past 20 something years, past two decades, I've been coming alongside young adults to help them go through a self -discovery journey so that they can own their identity, their purpose.
and build a community of deep connection. I work with parents and other adults like you to guide and teach you how to guide them so that they become self -aware and conscious about the decisions that they make. When I was growing up, particularly teenage years, there was a key moment for me that I will never forget. I had always felt like someday I'm gonna grow up and be a writer. I didn't have imagination necessarily to be a fiction writer, a novelist.
But something about writing had always done something for me, even at a young age. When I was a junior in high school, my English teacher that I really liked and respected, a young guy, funny, dynamic, engaging, wrote a really quick comment on one of my papers. I don't remember what the book was that we were reading or the poetry that we were analyzing, but he wrote, you're a gifted writer. You should keep doing it. That's it. And somehow,
that external validation from an adult that I respected changed my life. From that moment forward, I felt like I was putting on a coat that fit. I've always known it, I've always wanted it, I've always wondered, and now I have the proof there is something here. A few years later, there was something that I was complimented and affirmed in, given validation for also by an older mentor type, an adult that I respected and looked up to.
Scott Schimmel (02:30.158)
in something that I never had any imagination or ambition for that was public speaking. I went to give a short announcement in a club meeting, an organization with a bunch of other students. And afterwards, that adult came up to me and said something really similar that my English teacher said, you're really good at this. You should keep doing it. And somehow, even though I never ever once wanted to be a public speaker, in fact, I at all costs avoided speaking publicly.
I cannot remember more than twice in my entire time in school, kindergarten through two years of masters. I didn't pass, I didn't finish. Never once, maybe more than two times ever raised my hand to contribute something. Never. I never asked to be a speech, a speaker, whatever you call those. I didn't join the debate team, Model United Nations. No way, no how.
But somehow when that adult validated and affirmed something in me, what he saw as a natural talent, it ignited something in me. Speaking and writing has been essentially the two foundations that I've built a career on for the past two decades. It's how I earn money, it's how I provide for my family. Your kid, I hope, would also discover skills that they have that they could.
invest in to become sharper, more refined, more robust, more potent, more informed so that they can build a career off that. Isn't that what you want? Where they would go to work every day recognizing that who they are and their natural wiring and makeup has a use. Other people like it, appreciate it, need it. They're a part of contributing to a team or solving a problem. People need them. Tomorrow,
when I'm going to bed tonight, I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna give something that only I uniquely can give. That's what I want for my kids. Now, how do you do that? Yeah, you can tell them. You can say, little Johnny, you're such a good writer. And that, and those deposits over time will contribute to a positive self image. But, and this is what happens, I think, more often than we realize. We inadvertently...
Scott Schimmel (04:51.438)
affirm and validate things we see in our kids through the lens of a bias. Particularly two things. We see ourselves in them or want to see ourselves in them. And so we look at them and say, you're a writer too. I saw that. I read that five paragraph essay you did and you're pretty good. You might have what I have. Or you hear them give a presentation and say, man, you should be a public speaker like me.
We want to often create to recreate them in our image. That's dangerous Secondly, we our other bias is the survival bias at the end of the day one of the only things I can judge my parenting over 18 ish years the success of it and I'm saying this in a kind of a critical way is if my kids launch successfully financially and become self -sufficient
And so when push comes to shove, my bias is I'm going to look to validate and affirm the skills in my kids that have a value in the workplace, in the marketplace. I'm going to inadvertently kind of index and weight extra affirmation on the things that when push comes to shove, they could at least earn a living doing those things. That's dangerous because I don't want my kids when they're
30 or 40 or 50 to look at me and have an honest conversation and say, I actually regret the path I took. I did not know myself well enough. And instead of getting to know myself, I decided to go down the path that I thought was supposed to be my path. I listened to external voices and did what I felt like I should do.
And I've never found joy. I've never found purpose. I never went to bed with my head in the pillow excited about the next day. Because behind that is not just a lack of fulfillment or satisfaction that I want them to have or happiness behind that. Also, this is what research shows, the people that have an innate draw, an intrinsic draw towards work will achieve more.
Scott Schimmel (07:10.894)
frankly, they'll work harder and they'll achieve more. So it's not just that I want little Johnny to feel happy when he goes to work and be fulfilled and be self -actualized. I care about that stuff. There's also a pragmatic sense of I want you to find something that expresses your natural innate skills because that's gonna be better for your survival. So how do you do that? We have a process, it's very narrative based. There are assessments, I want you to know there are assessments that you can take.
Strengths Finder, there's a bunch of others. If you want, reach out to me. You probably know them from work. Your school probably offers them already to your kids. The problem that I've seen is not the inaccuracy, those assessments and tests, those inventories, but their skills and talents and their strengths. The problem is we rarely actually walk through with the results of those things with our kids. So it becomes something that they own.
So they understand it, own it, and use it to make decisions. Instead, what we found over working with thousands of young people, lots of transitioning veterans and other people, is that walking them through a narrative -based approach to identify the threads of skills and talents within their own personal history is a much stronger foundation for them to, one, get clear, but two, use that clarity to make better decisions. So.
We have that available in an article on our website. We'll leak a little bit to the show notes here. But what we want more than anything is for you to feel equipped to help your kid figure out for themselves what they're naturally wired to do. I'd love to hear from you what you've been learning about how to do this well. Maybe some of your regret stories about how you listen to external voices and unfortunately took you down the wrong path. Something that has not fulfilled. I'd love to hear those stories. Not because I want to commiserate.
because I wanna build a larger bank of people like you that wish when they were 17 or 20 or 12 had been given the opportunity to be guided to self -discovery and clarity because I think kids need to hear those stories as well. So I'll see you soon.
