STEP 2018 Classroom #1: Dream Big, Design Your Thinking!

williamsyee (52)in #catalyst • 6 years ago

1 year ago I was in STEP2017 and this year I commit myself again in STEP2018 to continue to serve and to give back to the community. After attending the STEP 2018 Camp a few weeks ago and last weekend 31/3/2018 mark the first STEP 2018 classroom session with all the youth.

The STEP programme consists of few classroom sessions where every weekend will have a different activity or topic for them to learn. After few classroom sessions, there are few job challenges for them to experience how real-world workplace feel and get them to prepare their mindset.

So last week topic was about dream board. I love this quote from one of the volunteers

Every child deserve to have a dream and every child deserve to fulfil their dream.

What Is Your Dreams?

This session is a session for them to run wild on their dreams, there is no limit, no judgement, and no logic. You can write as crazy as possible such as I want to become U.S. president. We started by giving each of the youth a piece of A4 paper to write down as many dreams as possible. Some of them were very excited and started to write down all their dreams while some of them stuck at 1-3 dreams on the paper.

There were few dreams that really touched me and I'm on the verge of tears. he said "I want to have a complete family", it looks simple but it feels a lot to them. I'm so grateful I have a complete family and I told myself I have to appreciate and love my family!

I want to have a complete family

I then asked the youth what was his definition of a complete family, he wants to have a father, mother, and siblings. He wants to feel the love from parents and have fun with siblings. Most of us having such privilege when we born, but for them, they wish they can have such privilege to be loved.

What They Want in Their Life?

Majority of them want to become a successful businessman and want to become No.1 in whatever they interested in. I went to them and asked them their definition of a successful businessman, what they need to do in order to become successful, how they going to achieve it, asking all those questions that slowly lead them to think about the fundamental.

Then each of the group was given a stack of magazine and each of them was given a piece of mahjong paper (86 x 86cm). What they need to do was to find pictures from magazines that related to their dreams. For example, they want to become a successful businessman, they gonna find a man or women wearing a suit. The objective was to find as much picture as possible and glue all of them on the mahjong paper.

The Unexpected Moment!

One of the unexpected moment happens to me, one of the youth come to me and told he done his dream board and want me to have a look. Why this was unexpected because he open up to me & trust me compared to unwilling to engage with us in the camp. I felt so happy that he had changed and I asked him to share with me what was his dream.

After that, I went for few rounds to other youth to check how they doing, actually, all of them were very talented and know what they want in their life. They just not so engaging when asked them to write. One of them was swimmer that represent the state and his dream is to be able in Tokyo Olympic in the year 2020. Such a wonderful and fantastic dream! He won few gold and silver metals previously and he told me he trains very hard to win the upcoming competition. I then gave him some encouragements to boost his confidence.

Some of them were actually good at drawing and instead of looking for the picture in the magazine they decided to draw themselves. One of the examples would be, she wants to become fashion designer and she draws her own fashion design dress on the mahjong paper and the drawing was seriously good.

They Are Talented, But Why They Hide It?

Simple, they are shy to let others know their great talent! You may ask why they are shy? Well, besides shy they also lack confidence when they share their dreams with others and others just laugh at them or demotivate them such as "It's not going to work! Forget about it!" or "Do you think you can do it? Haha!".

Look at it! It is so negative and it doesn't help them at all. All they need is positive energy & positive motivations to get them keep going and march forward to achieve their dreams.

Below is what you can practice to make your own dreamboard and I summarize it to 5 tips to help you get started!

5 Tips to Design YOUR Dreamboard & Achieve What YOU Want in Life!

Write down at least 20 dreams you really want in life, go wild!
Be as specific as possible
Take a mahjong paper and start finding the exact picture in magazine or newspaper and stick on the mahjong paper. You can have more than 1 mahjong papers!
Stick all mahjong papers on the wall where you can see them every single day (bedroom)
The first thing to do in the morning is looking at your dream board!