From Victim to SelfDesigner
Another enthusiastic self-declared SelfDesigner is on the British Columbia Ministry of Education's books as a drop-out. Her father, a friend and business colleague of ours at the time, phoned us and asked us if we would go into his daughter's high school and get her out of there. This was her first year in Grade 10 in a big high school and she was becoming lost in the overwhelm of the machinery and inhumanity of a huge school.
From Victim
Her sense of oppression led to confusion as she was being attracted to a rather unsavory group of people who were getting into some serious trouble under the very noses of their overwhelmed teachers. We met her at the door of the high school at her father's request and we invested the day in conversations about the meaning and purpose of life. She realized that her outrageous behaviors were part of a legitimate search for life's meaning and yet that she was getting lost in the sub-culture associated with the process.
To SelfDesigner
We began a conversation that continued for several years as she elaborated on her deep search for meaning and understanding. We mentored her over the next several years and helped her SelfDesign her own learning program. She began deep research into herself and her community and traveled to India as part of her global search for answers. She remained out of school until she was eighteen and was fully practicing SelfDesign - free to learn in the world and to realize one's full potential in harmony with others. She decided she wanted to go to university and engaged in discussions with a local college. They asked her to do her GED, which she studied for for three weeks. She got very high marks and they accepted her into their program. Her father phoned me this summer in tears of excitement, a few minutes after he got a phone call from his daughter. She had just informed him that she got straight A's in first year university including an A in university math based on only finishing Grade 9 math. He was so thankful that we had helped her shift from being a victim to being a force to be reckoned with - a SelfDesigner.
