“Soldier Mentality” Youth and Young Adult Leadership: Balancing Education, Empowerment and Entertainment
How can youth and young adults build the mentality that will cause them to rise above negative circumstances, reach their highest and declare “We Got Next” in leadership?
Many people are concerned that Generations X and Y, also known as the Hip Hop and Social Media generations are increasingly apathetic and unfocused on living productive lives. Furthermore, many criticize that youth only inundate themselves with things that only entertain them such as hip hop, video games and parties. Is attacking youth culture and removing the forms of entertainment the answer? Or is that the method that causes our youth to rebel at home, school and the community leading them to poor academic performance, negative social behavior and falling below their leadership potential? Have we replaced racism with ageism?
Soldier Mentality provides the understanding for the method of building leadership through establishing a mission or desired life destination then marching towards that mission through balancing Education, Empowerment and Entertainment. Further, Soldier Mentality addresses the common struggles and obstacles of our youth and young adults and challenges the “Elder Statesmen” to engage youth culture.
Soldier Mentality addresses key principles and habits that must be consistently enforced to build unstoppable youth and young adult leaders:
- Mission: Identifying a purposeful vision and allowing it to guide your actions and decisions can be a matter of life or death your leadership potential and all those lives that are connected to it.
- Aggression: Accomplishing goals and dreams of any size will have difficulties but strengthening focus, action and persistent will result in mission accomplishment.
- Positive Self Image- The self perception of youth is often molded by the nature of the self images that they experience. Does our self-image promote faith and belief or fear and doubt?
- Affirmation: Consistent confirmation and celebration of growth and improvement, builds unshakable confidence.
- Expectation: Settling for no less than the best from those that we lead causes our results and relationships to be more productive and satisfying.
- 3E Balance: The elements ofEducation, Empowerment and Entertainment all have extremely crucial roles in building leadership in youth and young adult leadership, but when they are out of balance the potential greatness that we desire is jeopardized.