Envision your life in three segments.  The first segment is your youth, from birth to age 15.  The second segment is your personal development from age 16 to age 35.  The third segment is your family and your career from age 36 until you retire, and the rest of life is a bonus.

The challenge is to make it into the bonus round happy, reasonably healthy, financially stable, and with friends to help you enjoy it.

The first segment, youth, for much of it you are dependent on others.  You see, “others” – your parents, your relatives, your friends, your teachers, people you don’t know – lay the foundation for you.  It’s those “others” who set an example for you, “others” who teach you, “others” who guide you, “others” who discipline you, “others” whom you have to rely on.  If you’re lucky, you are born into a family that understands how life works.  They will expose you to interesting, educational, challenging opportunities that will help you develop your mind and your body.  If you’re real lucky, you will have the good sense to listen to them and realize that they’ve been down the road of life before you and they have every reason to steer you in the right direction and no reason to hurt you. 

If you’re not lucky, you are born into a family who ignored those opportunities when they were presented to them, or possibly the opportunities were never presented early enough in life, and therefore you are not getting the benefit of good information.  Timing and preparation are of course crucial to development.

Now, if you make it to age 16 with a good attitude and an excitement for learning, if you manage to escape your formative years with your confidence intact, the chances are excellent that you will begin to move in the right social circles and begin to make connections that will benefit you when the time is right.  See, there’s that timing and preparation thing again.

From age 36 until you retire you will enjoy great family relationships and great career experiences.  Life will be good.  Oh, there will be challenges along the way, but you should be able to navigate through them if you use the network of friends and professionals you’ve met along the way as well as the good mind you have developed.

If at 16 your attitude has been beaten to a pulp by disinterested parents, neighborhood bullies, lousy teachers, if at 16 you are well-entrenched into the seedy side of life – drugs, booze, crime – well, it’s pretty much over.  Unless you find someone to trust who can slowly bring you back, life at 16 and life at 65 will be pretty much the same – painful.  Hey, there are people all around you who will help to bring you back if you show them that you can be trusted and that you are serious.  Give them time to make their own assessment of you.  You’ll be asking a lot of them at that point.  They won’t want to waste their time.  Allow them to ask you the tough questions and to get to know you.       

Parents, show your teen this Pearl.  Then dad, you read this, dude.  Finally, invest $4.95 in your offspring and buy them this handy fun family booklet.