This is not my usual blog post. I have those once in a while, so don't get mad at me (I wouldn't think that anyone would, but I just had to put that out there :)
The Rebelution Conference
To you who have seen me in the past 24 hours, I have been talking non-stop about my Rebelution Conference. Rebelution is a mix between a revolution and rebellion. The premise is that us teenagers (and anyone for that matter) should do hard things and exceed others expectations for us.
Our expectations are low. Alex and Brett Harris (founders of Rebelution, author of Do Hard Things) say that we should raise our expectations for ourselves. They found an Internet site that says that preteens/ teens (10-14) need to: make their bed, be able to take a message on the phone, and clean your room every week with parents help. The author also said that teens (15 plus) need to do only one chore a day, leave the gas tank above a quarter full, and to clean your room every week... without parents help! And there was a disclaimer saying that you don't have to force your kid to do ALL of them. Wow... those are such hard things... NOT! Us teenagers need to step it up, to do more than is expected. Some of you might think that, that takes too much effort. But we get satisfaction when we do, do it. Just do something out of your comfort zone. "Now wait a minute..." you might be saying, "I have to do above AND go out of my comfort zone???" YES! When you have an elephant (people in other countries still use them for farms) you need to leave it somewhere for the night. So they take string and tie it to the elephant's right hind leg to a post. And the elephant just stays there. How does that happen? Well, the elephant doesn't see the rope on his legs, but he sees the shackles in his brain. When the elephant was little, he was tied to a tree post with shackles. And with all that little elephants might he would strangle until it hurt. Sometimes the elephant would get cut to the bone. This big elephant could break the string in a second. Now, he just stands there afraid of the shackles. That is like us. We, us teenagers, think that there is a shackle and that if we go out of our comfort zone, we will be hurt. But that's not true. Please. Do something hard today and go out of your comfort zone. It will be worth it.
Now, This was a really long blog post, and I had a lot more than I wanted to say. If you liked the stories that I told, you should read the book, Do Hard Things. There are great stories about first shower experiences, a teenager who delt with anxiety and talked to over 2,000 people, monks, people who helped for a senate, etc. Please read it. It will change your life.
