After a late night last night laughing with the very excellent Tim Vine, I was going to share the joy of laughter with you this morning. That can wait until another day because instead, I’m delighted to introduce the lovely Ben Lumley from 6aliens.com. Until I came across Ben’s blog, I hadn’t heard the phrase ‘life hacking’ but Ben’s blog is devoted to doing it with a twist. Ben, over to you …

Hello I thought I would use my first community post to talk about something very dear to my heart and something Eleanor and I were discussing recently. We often feel that we want to take on the world and affect a massive change. We look for volunteers and ideas from people in our immediate circle before trying to widen our reach looking for like-minded fellows.

It’s obviously a sensible idea. When you try to take over the world, you often look to those around you to help. But when we want to grow and develop we often look for fellow adults to help us along the way. I want to suggest another way.

Young people get a bad rap. Lazy, offensive, drinking, mardy layabouts; we often see the worst in them. I work with around 10,000 young people each year, ranging from the ages of 11 and 18. I get to see young people from all kinds of backgrounds and walks of life and I’m here to say that yes, young people can be lazy, that yes, they can be rude at times, yes they can get themselves into mischief when they shouldn’t, and yes, they can be mardy but weren’t you at their age?

But do you know something? Most of our young people today are; wait for it…..bored! They haven’t got much to do if we’re honest. The gap between the generations has grown and young people can now very easily distract themselves with many things we as old ones don’t agree with.

The very cool thing about young people, though, is that they have amazing ideas and are really rewarding to work with. They can come up with solutions to problems that us wrinklies could never get to – all you have to do is tease it out of them and give them an outlet. I’ve seen kids ,who usually struggle and are disruptive in a structured environment, flourish in a creative situation where they can have direct input into what’s going on.

So when you’re wanting to take over the world and you need help, look to young people and you’ll be surprised at what they can do.

Tagged as: How To, look to, Young People