How Do You Help a Teen Figure Out Their Future Without Overwhelming Them?

Hello, everyone, and thank you so much for joining me once again on The Lighten Up Project. My name is Malcolm Grissom, the stand-up CEO and founder of World Laughter Organization, and my guest today, you're going to love him. I don't know how he got this name, maybe his parents were, you know, they liked washing things, but Donovan Washer is his name. No, actual actually, his name is Donovan Dreyer. Dreyer, Dreyer! I I can't I can't really talk right now. It's one of those one of those times when I'm having difficulty actually talking.

It's all good.

Very interesting cuz I'm an interviewer who cannot talk, but today on The Lighten Up Project, we are actually talking about a rather revolutionary topic, which is supporting young people before they start panicking. Who knew? So my guest Donovan Dreyer, he is a school counselor for over 17 years. He has experiences 17 years experience. He is now a coach who works with high achieving teens and young adults during their very difficult what now moments. Donovan, he noticed something very important that is rather revolutionary, which is maybe the best time to help people is not during a crisis mode. So he happens to work with students when they are in their technically fine stage, but you know, their nervous system is waving that tiny white flag thinking about, Help, I don't know what's going on. Well, Donovan to the rescue! His work helps students stay calm, self-directed, confident without the burn-on pressure and the motiva or the motivational speeches like the TEDx Talk that just goes on and on and on and on. Sorry, TEDx, I love you. And parents trust his ethical, compassionate approach. Students feel safe and seen when they work with him, and this is what the World Laughter Organization is all about, and specifically to Lighten Up Project. So I'm very, very happy to welcome him today, Donovan Dreyer.

Thank you so much, Malcolm. It's great to be here.

Yes. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Donovan, would you mind starting out with 20 seconds of spontaneous laughter?

20 seconds! Oh, my goodness!

Yes. All right, how about 20 seconds is an old long time.

Tooth, my tooth is too hurty. It's 2:30 over here in Colorado.

2:30 is It's It's It's too hurty. It's 2:30. 2:30.

2:30,

too hurty.

I probably destroyed all the laughter, but you know, the side-eyes and the rolling eyes, that's what you know, that's that's how I connect with the young people.

Yep. I gotcha. I work with young folk myself. So yes. What you do is very, very needed, and it is very important to work with students when they're not in that crisis mode. They're not in that fight-or-flight mode to get them prepared. So Donovan, what was your favorite game as a kid?

Huh, my favorite game was probably baseball as a kid, and so yeah, I was a pitcher, and yeah, that was that was probably my favorite game by far as a kid. Definitely like commanding the the mound, and then later on, you know, I I help kids take command of their lives. It's not about like what are you going to do, what's next, and just thinking about what's that career you want to do. There's so much more than that, and it is about being able to take command like you might on the mound, and it's about really trusting their inner guidance.

Yeah.

So it's complicated to figure out what you're going to do when you grow up, but it's also just an oversimplification of what's really going on for them, and they truly do need to find that place of groundedness and confidence and self-assuredness and self-direction. And they're only really going to get that when they've got their inner compass or their inner guidance system in place, and so that's kind of even more complicated than just figuring out what you're going to do when you grow up, but that's just such a played-out question, and then they just give a, you know, sort of half-hearted answer, and we don't even know what there is going to be to do when you grow up 5 or 10 years from now.

Right, exactly, exactly. World's always changing. Well, I ask you that because one of our favorite games here at The Lighten Up Project is Two Truths and a Lie. Two truths,

2:30 and a lie?

Yeah. Two, two, toots, two toots. The youths, the youths. Two youths! Two youths. So yes, so Donovan gave me a couple of truths and a lie. I'm going to read them to you, and then the audience is going to put on their detective hats, and throughout this interview, they're going to be listening carefully, piece together the clues, and then afterwards, Donovan's going to say the lie. All right. So first of all, Donovan is fluent in four languages. Fluent in four languages. Second, he learned to fly an airplane, and third, Donovan can juggle.

Wow.

All right. Yes, that's

that's pretty good. What are we doing this coaching thing for? Even if you got two and three, two out of three of those Two out

of three of those, that's right, yeah. But that I'm sure that's something you can use to connect with the children. Well, aren't children? There you go with the children. What is with the children? With the teens and the young

The youths. Yeah.

The youths, the youths. That's right. What what age range do you work with normally?

Ah, then I've I've found that the lane lately has been like 18 to 20. That's kind of like right as they're finishing high school, or they have finished high school, or they're off after high school. So, that's kind of really been my my wheelhouse lately. And it's yeah, it's the like I said, like we like you talked about, it's these high achievers that actually they kind of get left in a space where it's expected they should already know how to figure out what they're going to do when they grow up. They should already have a steady, you know, guidance system within to make them self-assured and make those choices, and yeah. And it's not true. I've got a kid that I've been working with, he's now 23, and we started when he was 19, and there's always something that he needs to get reoriented around. So, if we get oriented, that's cool, and you've got that ability to have that inner guidance system, every once in a while it just like goes off track, and every once in a while it really helps to have somebody you can truly trust and who cares about you to to say, Hey, can I have a little helping hand and get the aircraft back in control? And then you know, they take that pilot in command stance again, and then off they go flying into life again. And yeah, so I think it's that's the lane. There's some kids that are really go-getters that are ready a little bit younger, and there's, you know, I've worked with people all the way up to age 85, but my lane is like 18 to 20. Going from teens to tweens, or tweens to 20s, actually. Tweens to 20. Teens to 20. 20s.

Tweens to 20s.

Yeah. It's all kinds of Ts in there, so like we're we're struggling tonight with the two yutes, the two truths, the two tooths, the teens, the twenties, the tweens. Tweens. Oh, my goodness, Malcolm! How are we doing this job?

Tweens, not teens, tweens. Right.

My goodness!

Too much. Too much. Too much. Too much. My mouth's getting workout. So, tell us, what is one tool that a student could use today to feel less overwhelmed or less alone?

Yeah, you talked a little bit about, you know, being in this space of crisis mode, and I've, you know, put the thumb on the dam of so many crisis situations as a school counselor. But what I found is I've got a traffic light system, and so one of the tools you can use is for self-awareness and the awareness of others. Use the same traffic light. We don't want a bazillion emojis. We don't want a bazillion different colors. We don't even need more than three, and we don't need all of the different facial, different expressions. But really reducing it down to these three things. And when you say how you are, you know, How are you doing? to a to a young person, a young man, for instance, and they could just point at my chart, and I do use a timeline on it as well, How are you doing today? Yesterday? Day before? It could be like dot, dot, dot, and when I connect those dots, I've got basically an x-ray vision into the mental health of a young person. And if we can think about a wavy line in the green and maybe getting into the yellow a little bit, that's what living life in the zone looks like. And that's a powerful tool to actually be able to check in with our young people in a way that they It's universal. Like when we're driving down the roads and we're going 60 miles an hour and that light's red, we better get to a stop before we get to that red light. And we don't really want to be like deciphering 10 more different colors. We don't want emojis on the lights. That's not necessary. We don't have just want to have one light with a numbering system on there. We just need to really know what to do on the roads. And that universal system we already understand is something that I carry into helping with self-awareness. Many, many people have kind of take the ball and run with it and actually brought back more confusion by wanting more emojis or more emotions to explain things, but not good. The constraints of just these three allow us to figure out the

utility of what form of help is needed. If you're in the green, you need self-help, and we don't need a helicopter. So there's a do and a don't. If you get to the yellow level, then this is where your self-help is not enough, and you need some co-regulation maybe with somebody else. If we get to the red zone, that's where we are in that red zone mode or that crisis mode. Now it's time for a mental health professional, or we're really in a state where our brain's just not at its full capacity anymore. And how can anybody, you know, really function in life if they're not in the zone and in fact they're in that that mode where it's just crisis mode? So that is a crazy simple way to demystify self-awareness and other awareness at the same time. So when we want to be aware of our friends as young people, same system. When parents want to be aware of kids, their kids, same system. Parents aware of themselves, school counselors aware, teachers aware, everybody can be locked in and know what to do and what not to do based on where that student resides and their current mental health state. So that's the tool that is my springboard to everything.

Mhm. Okay. What's the biggest shift you've seen in students emotional needs over the past few years?

Yeah, we're post-pandemic, that's one major historical thing. We're in kind of a crazy upheaval, existential crisis on people's mind, that's another big thing. But I think probably the biggest thing of all is that we're the only human beings, you and I and other people of this age, that grew up with just two worlds. The biggest thing weighing on kids is actually three worlds now. We grew up, and there was just the inner world and the real world. Now we add the artificial world, and that probably was here, you know, with the with the dawn of the internet and all the screens, but we grew up pre-screen other than a television. And so this is the only time in human history where the people that were born before this technology with all the screens are walking the earth and role modeling for these kids and being the wise guider, you know, the the wise counsel, the mentors, the coaches, the people guiding this screen generation. This is it. From now on, everybody is going to be born post technology, post screen generation, post artificial world. Everybody now is going to be born into the three-world life. We have just a little bit of time, historically speaking, for the people who were born on this planet with just two worlds, and so these kids have to juggle the three, but they don't really understand the value of the outside of the artificial. This is so addictive. It's getting more addictive all the time, this artificial stuff, that we really need to help them because this is it. We're the only ones that truly understand what it was like before these three worlds existed, and so we've got to get that kind of stuff across to them, that message across of the value of being able to interact, socialize, have conversations, laugh it up, you know, we're just, you know, spitballing like we are in any direction with the two youths and the truths and everything else. So, these are skills that are very powerful that we have that we need to pass on to them, but

just that juggling of three worlds is brand new in human history.

What does Lighten Up mean to you?

It's interesting. My dad actually made some Lighten Up t-shirts way back one when in the, you know, 70s, 80s, cuz he was kind of like a like a hippie, and that's where that Donovan name really comes from is Donovan the 70s, 60s and 70s singer. And so, Lighten Up to me is about It's, if you think about that light, light again, we want to be riding in that green zone. Lighten Up means like make your inner world green. We can, you know, have a toxic world and try to chronically live in red. That's not going to work out. We can't redline our cars. We can't redline in anything before it just breaks. And our mental capacities are really low in the red. Our mental capacities are a little bit better if we're co-regulating with somebody helpful in the yellow, but the ideal is to have the inner world green, just like we want a green environment. And so, Lighten Up means you're in the zone. You're living life in that high green zone, not the low where you're too complacent doing nothing, but that upper green zone is locked in where you truly are at ease. You're going through life with what I call contagious ease, cuz like you like we couldn't even get this thing started, we were laughing so much cuz laughter's contagious, well ease is contagious as well, and it's the antidote to all of this dis-ease in the world. So if we want an antidote to the dis-ease, it's contagious ease, and it all starts with getting locked in on that green zone proactively, not getting out of crisis mode, but really proactively setting ourselves up to just live and exist in this green zone as much as possible.

Okay. So now, going back to what you were saying about the three worlds that our students today need to work on, and they need to know how to navigate, and what you just said about lightening up, can you give a specific take away to our students? Say there is someone who is listening or a parent of a student who's listening that their student is going through this tremendous overwhelm and having difficulty navigating the three worlds.

Yeah, I would say you said navigator, and that's exactly it. I help kids become better navigators of these three worlds and of this transitionary period. Going from your teens throughout your 20s is a big transitionary period. I call it nest life to best life. You know, so you're living totally dependent, you know, at age zero on up to still pretty dependent in the nest, to all the way independent and hopefully wonderfully interdependent as great contributors in our society, living their best life. So navigating this makes me think of this. So back to the client I had, Jared, who I have had for going on five years now, he started off not knowing his major yet, so we picked a major. What that involved, you know, I have a seven-step process, so that really helped with picking a major. We didn't get it right. It's whatever, we need to like reorient, and then we got to navigate that next choice. And so he selected a new major, and we didn't get it right again. And so I could relate to that. And and when we think about getting it right or not getting it right, like, How is this a good story? How's this going to end up? How's this going to work out? Well, he graduates college and he ends up wanting to actually become a chiropractor. And so now he's currently in chiropractic school, and he's halfway through that at this point, and he's really dialed in now on not just a career pick, but we've had now like dozens and dozens of conversations to really help him calibrate a true calling that comes from a place of inner knowing, that comes from a place of soul searching. So we did this soul searching. It's not something like I got a I got a lickety-split soul searching tool that we can get this process done and make this transition and navigate this this journey, you know, with one five-step process. That is not a thing. You know, the reality is I I really truly get to know the individual needs and the individual desires and really the true

calling on a lot of levels besides career, too. His sister is another client of mine, and she really wants to create a family as her main thing, and so she was almost She was actually apologetic oftentimes, like, Ah, I don't know if this is okay for me to, you know, to to not be more of a a go-getter, a leader-type woman out there in the world. I really do feel like I I want to apologize for wanting the picket fence and a and a beautiful house that's nice and to raise a family, and and is that okay? Yeah, everybody's individual choices are okay, and and there's a lot to it.

So who was the the first person that ever made you feel seen, or heard, or safe? And what did they do?

Wow, that's pretty good one. I like that. Yeah, I think of Cliff Taylor getting me out of Detroit, Michigan. So Cliff actually gave away a lot of my good toys, but I think about like he must have been like, Ew, I don't want to touch this stuff from the inner city. It's so just like trashy and garbagey. Like, why would we put this on the truck to move you to Ann Arbor? So yeah, he he really you know could see the writing on the wall for my future in Detroit, with what some of the trouble that my friends were getting into, how I had gotten into trouble a couple times, and had no sense of anything, because you're like a sponge, immersed in your environment, and you have no idea how you're going to you know turn out to be a product of that environment, but he could see that. And my parents were divorced, so I was living with a single mom, and you know we definitely lived with super tough times with a single mom in Detroit. And so he really spearheaded the move to get us out of Detroit into Ann Arbor, and you know definitely was like one of those non-family-member mentors that was probably instrumental in my own life as kind of that father figure, that role model, and somebody who really saw me, heard me, understood me, and also saw, heard, and understood what Detroit was about, and knew that, you know, somebody in a split family with parents living an hour away from each other, that wasn't going to turn out very well. So yeah, that's I haven't thought about that in a while about Cliff Taylor. Yes, he's not with us, hasn't been with us for about 10, 15 years. But good question, Malcolm.

Yeah, thank you. I come up with those sometimes. Just a few times, when I can talk, of course, when I don't have to trip over Ts and two youths.

Don't trip over two youths or tutu!

No, Dawn in Worcestershire know this. So, what is one small moment that from your life that either now or earlier? So choose a moment in your life, but tell us about one small moment in your life that really changed the trajectory of your thinking.

Yeah, I am a trajectory changer, and that happened at Zingerman's Deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I'm going to give away one of my truths. The truth is I graduated with an aviation technology degree, multiple pilot licenses, and before I walked out of Zingerman's Deli, finding out from a airline captain what the life was going to be like in that field, I was done. I was done with aviation. So one of the most powerful things you learn as a pilot, you think about Sully landing you know that movie Sully where he lands on the on the river, and then the they can armchair quarterback for hours upon hours and scrutinize everything that he did and why he shouldn't have done it. But what you learn is the go and no-go decision. You need to make a decision like that as a pilot. So as the pilot in command of my life, I decided not to be a pilot. And now I help other kids become the pilot in command of their lives, and you know it makes a world of difference. I've worked with some older people that are trying to make a career change, and it's just a shame how many people run into a midlife crisis. So I'm all about midlife crisis avoidance, late-life regret avoidance, just like a midair collision is a good thing to avoid, so is a midlife collision with this crisis of like, Oh, man, I I wish I would have done the right thing coming out of the gates into adulthood. And they can. They can get started early. I had to flip that script in my life. I had to flip that switch and just make a new decision, and that's what allows me to help other people make sure they don't end up on the wrong trajectory is changing my trajectory that day in Zingerman's Deli. And I've seen so many super indecisive people, like this is almost like the plague or something. It's endemic that people just can't make a dang decision, and that's one of the most powerful things I learned as a pilot, and so that pilot no-go/go decision is one of these things that I actually,

you know, had Jared point out, Hey, man, I don't really, you know, take a week to make a decision that I can make in 30 minutes anymore. So super powerful for people to become better decision makers, to become better navigators, and and to be able to really orient themselves and then reorient themselves with some support as needed, too.

So, where in this piloting experience that you're talking about, where in this or is there a place in this, or is there a place for play in this experience?

Well, the joke's on me. I called the thing Teen Takeoff, so, you know, I couldn't help but put Takeoff in the name because it's about, you know, taking off from nest life to best life. And and just really that concept of yeah, when we do get to know each other, it's easier. If you actually make this connection with somebody that you truly trust, you get to play, you get to have fun, you get to be real with each other. So I think you can't have this five-step program or watch a video or get in touch with AI and really make a connection where somebody truly gets you. And when we get each other, we can be like nobody nobody was talking about two tooths or truths or anything else before we got on the phone, or tweens, teens, and 20s, all these T's, and it's just you drop into it as needed. So I think, you know, wittiness or or just this gift of being able to have fun is just something that comes from getting to know somebody. You We're not meeting each other for the first time, so you have to truly get to know somebody, and it takes some energy and effort. Just like Cliff Taylor got to see into my world and and hear, you know, what I was going through and understand what I was going through, that's when we can actually goof around and have fun, too.

So, what do you think young people are actually saying and asking when they say, You just don't get it?

They're saying it's a test. There's two tests. One is, will you take that at face value and not go deeper with me? And if I say, Uh-uh, will will you stop there? If I go, Uh-uh, twice, if you did, you know, you got through one, I don't know, will you stop there? And the other one is, will you throw the towel in on me? That white flag, as a parent, we can wave that white flag and say, I'm throwing the towel on you. And those are the two dares that all young people have is I dare you to go deeper with me. Prove that you care. Prove it. If I throw I don't know or two at you. And then the second one is, will you throw the towel on me? Okay, cool. How about if I do this? How about if I do that? How about if I do this? How about if I do that, and the other, and the other, and the other, and the other? We cannot do anything except unconditionally love our kids. And they will challenge us to no end. And sometimes it's the first one, and we got to just figure out a way to get through and show that we care. And we got to develop some skills with communication, some skills with relationship, and some parenting skills to get through. And we'll rise to that challenge. They'll dare us, and we'll come through.

Mhm. Mhm. What's something you used to be afraid of Excuse me, not used to be afraid of. Something you used to be afraid to laugh about, but you're not anymore?

My inexperience and my lack of being cool and my lack of really understanding teenagers. I think about actually being afraid of and afraid of laughing at that first parent that walked through a school in a counseling office, and they were a high achieving parent or a high achieving student with a parent that was super demanding. Like, Don't let my kid fall through the cracks. You know, help them fly. Help them stay on a trajectory that's, you know, aiming high. And they came up with some challenges that that I crashed and burned on, cuz it was my first person that walked through my office with serious demands that like, I didn't get anything from my master's degree on these questions, this level of detail of of what the needs were for a a high-achieving high school student. Now, I'm going for those side eyes. I'm going for the eye rolls. I'm going for, you know, we tell a 2:30 joke at 2:30 and they just like, No, Mr. Dyer. Just no. And I'm okay with not being cool, with not, you know, not getting true laughter, but that's a connection to be able to to be able to just go there and meet them at the side eye is okay to just You know, I I can't I can't know you to that level. I can't understand what it's like to actually be in a world with three worlds to juggle as a 18-year-old or a 17-year-old or a 20-year-old right now. Can't know it. So it's okay to just know that that's not a level of empathy or understanding that I can ever have. But I'm definitely going to work to create those bonds that come from caring about them enough and letting them side eye me and eye roll all they want. Because that's that's part of the game.

Okay. So, how do you help your how How do you

How just blah, blah, blah the good?

That's exactly Thank you. Yeah. Yeah,

Yeah, Yeah, I feel you, I get you. All right. same wavelength.

Yes.

Try again.

How do you help yourself feel safe enough to be honest with kids?

Oh, that just comes from 25 years of experience. You said 17, I have 17 at the high school level, but 25 years of experience, I'm studying this constantly. I worked with people as a business coach for for people that were like 20-something to 80-something, and then I worked with kindergarteners through eighth grade for a little bit, so I got about 5 years doing that. So, nothing other than becoming a master expert helps me actually feel that comfort comfort to laugh at myself, comfort with still needing to learn things, comfort with existential crisis things that we face—not exactly comfort, but willingness to to face it, and then the willingness to face just these three worlds to juggle, anything that they throw at me, man. It's like, they say, I don't know. I might say, I don't know, but I'm about to figure it out with you, so together we can actually figure this out. So I'm never I'm I'm fearless on doing what it takes to actually help them feel cared for. I just want them to know they're supported.

Yeah. All right. So, what's a joy that you felt as a kid that you're just now reclaiming, or that you'd recently reclaimed?

Comfort in my skin. One thing I did feel in Detroit is probably comfort in my skin.

So,

you know, maturity-wise, being left in a in a in immersed in an environment that wasn't going to be great, wasn't going to be great, for sure, for sure. But what I did feel is just that confidence, cuz there were no cliques. Moving to Ann Arbor, suddenly I discovered there's cliques, and there's in and out, you know, and you're an outcast for different things. So now, you know, I totally embrace this, I guess maybe the Detroiter in me, the the status of, I've got a unique perspective, I'm a I'm an original, and I like it.

Yeah. Okay. Well, you you definitely laugh, and you joke, and you experience joy a lot. So, what is the bravest thing that laughter has ever helped you do?

Bravest thing connecting bravery and laughter? Hmm. That's a good one. You know, I don't know, just like even a smile is is is a thing that's contagious, too. So, if the laughter's contagious, a smile's contagious. Probably sales, like you know, I think I started doing sales calls for coaching to get coaching clients at 0 for 11 or worse. And I think just being willing to still smile on call 12 and laugh at the, you know, the past of like, I guess that was terrible. Like, okay, it's it's all good. So we could laugh at just that inability that we have, and then move on to just still be able to smile through that next one. And, you know, it's awkward maybe if you're just laughing for 20 seconds straight on a sales call, but I think just knowing, yeah, that I that I can convey this sense of care, might not even have video. But that smile, that laughter, those kind of things are contagious, like we said earlier.

Mhm. Mhm. If there was a message you could hope, a message of hope that you could send through laughter, who would it be for?

Yeah, it'd be for that young person that is looking at all these things that look scary out there, and they want to be part of the solution. You know, being part of the solution could look like a off the charts, way too huge of of an undertaking. And to think about a calling or a mission or doing soul-searching as a young adult, that's a little bit much. But if you can just make that lighter, it's You know, I think what I've seen is the if you don't give them the answers and you don't give your wisdom, you don't give your advice, and you actually have this ability to draw out great, great original thinking from young adults, it's off the charts. It's amazing. And it can be a lot of fun, too. Mhm. Mhm.

So, what is one thing that a young adult who's listening could could do to things things lighter for them?

Well, it's a heavy question to ask, What you're going to do when you grow up?

Yeah.

So what makes it lighter, for real for real, is not to come up with just some other different random question. It's about truly developing that inner guidance, you know, to be able to make a go and no-go decision on something that's going to affect the whole trajectory of your life. So, man, if you have radical confidence around that, then that's going to make things way lighter. And so they're going to make decisions that actually hold. And so what if it doesn't? If you make a decision that doesn't actually hold, and you can reorient yourself and make another command decision, like a pilot, like a captain, like a boss, then that's going to make things a whole heck of a lot lighter.

Donovan, I know that in our show notes we list all of your websites and everything that you're doing, including your free gift. I hear you have a a gift for the audience, and we list all of that. but right now I'd like to give you the opportunity to go ahead and verbalize your free gift and/or any way that people can reach you, connect with you.

Yeah, like CHIRPSS. That's the sound that birds make is chirps, and I've got a a program or just like a one-sheet called Dare to Dream, and I think a bunch of these chirps are on there. And CHIRPSS stands for: C, career. So what are you going to do when you grow up? That's just the C out of chirps. But we want to think about our health when we grow up, and the impact that we're going to make as a contributor, contributing citizen in society. So that's the I in chirps. Then R is for all the social things, all the relationships. So all things social should be considered when you're mapping out your future. And then P is for those personal interests. So what is it that you just love to do? Like you said, you know, from from when you're a child, what do you want to carry on into adulthood and still keep that thing that's fun for you and is just your personal interest? And then finally, there's two S's. One is for your soul, like what really fuels your soul or serves you on that spiritual level. And that last S is really a dollar sign. So what kind of finances do you want? It's You don't have to be apologetic about the finances piece. So the dollar sign is the last S in chirps with two kind of S's. Okay. So that's That's what you get at getreadycoaching.com is the Dare to Dream one-sheet so you can help your kids think through that. So if you get I don't I don't know from them, you could walk through those different aspects of the future, not just the What are you going to do when you grow up? element. Cool.

Very good. What's one thing that you want our listeners to remember after the episode ends?

I think if you can only remember one thing, with, you know, back to Let's take it back to the thing that's that hinges on everything I do, and that's this self-awareness chart. There is a yellow zone gap in our society. And if you think about the green was the self-help, and you don't need a helicopter, and the reds, it's an emergency, you need to go to a mental health professional, well, in between is what I discovered is the yellow zone gap. And this yellow zone gap becomes is because we don't have enough people that we can get supported by. We don't proactively build a support system enough. We don't have enough trusted people we can turn to, especially in the middle school years or the high school years, or even into adulthood, where we really feel like oh the the pressure gets packed on us instead of the co-regulation or the support that we really need, somebody to lean on. We need more people to lean on. So this yellow zone gap is cured by thinking seriously about who are these trusted people you're going to pull into your life? Who are the people you can laugh with? Who are the people that you can just know well enough and deep enough that you can trust them and lean on them in a time of need, and maybe they're going to lean back on you as well. So that's the number one thing. So and that's why coaching's so powerful. You know, investing in somebody who's going to be a mentor with, you know, a quarter century of experience is priceless, invaluable. And so that's the cure for that yellow zone gap. My own coach, Shamieka Tankerson, she said, I'm always going to be coached up. I loved that. She's always going to be putting some investments in. If there's something red zone, of course we got to get a mental health professional or, you know, there's still a stigma about that. If we're in the green zone, do we need help? No, we don't. We actually can just be performing with the things that are green level for us. But in between,

we're always going to be able to be better served if we've got this support system that we invest into. And I love this idea of always being coached up to combat this yellow zone gap, because if we don't have it, kids I see go straight from green to red, sometimes like that, because they just don't know how to lean into somebody, trust anybody, and their trusted support just is is is nonexistent.

Exactly. Okay. Okay, well, everybody, you've heard it straight from Mr. Donovan Washing Machine. He has told us She knows that. Man,

the kindergartners, thank That's what I'm still hurting from Detroit when they picked that up in kindergarten. And now the new kindergartners, now that I'm working in a K through 8, they're they're They call me Mr. Washer. Don't Don't encourage them, Malcolm.

Well, you know me. I might be the first one, Hey Mr. Washer! Mr. Washer!

That's okay, Grisball. Or is it Griswold?

Yeah, Malcolm Griswold. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go. We'll just end up renaming everybody in class. Hey, all right. So, thank you so much, Donovan, for this full of gems. I swear, the the young green, yellow, red light, that everything is just full of gems, lots of laughs tonight. And thank you audience for tuning in. Let us get to the three truths and a lie. Okay, so if you were listening closely, some of these were already answered. You should know the answer. But once again, let me say. Okay, Donovan learned- learned how to fly a plane. He is a- he's learned how to pilot planes, he can juggle, he can juggle, and he speaks four languages fluently. Drum roll! And Mr.- I was gonna say Dryer though.

Okay,

so, Mr. Dryer, which one is the lie?

Yo no hablo mucho español. Solo inglés y no más lenguas.

Aha. Okay. All right.

Only English.

Only English.

And whatever you'd call what I just did there, but that's not fluent, I'll tell you that much. That

was That was I I don't know what that was.

It wasn't fluent anything.

Right, no, no, definitely not, but it was probably better than I could do. So, un poco

español, but not fluent.

I speak Spanglish.

I speak mostly English with a little bit of Spang. Okay. So

audience,

thank you very much for tuning in to yet another episode of the Lighten Up Project, and if you're out there and you are feeling emotionally troubled or unsteady, don't be afraid to reach out, call someone, let someone know. And if you are a friend or someone who sees someone else that is in that state, just laugh. Laugh, because healing doesn't have to be heavy, and if you laugh, then that is contagious, as we've proven in this episode. Until next week when we talk to yet another fascinating guest, I wish you adieu.

Thank you, Malcolm.