The Story of The Teen Mentor, LLC Written by the Founder, Michelle C. Ustaszeski-Hutchinson
The Teen Mentor, LLC had been slowly brewing my entire life.
I recall crying myself to sleep many times when I was younger. I felt misunderstood and alone. I felt awkward and different from the others, like an outsider. You see, back then, we didn’t talk about feelings or why people did the things they did. I didn’t know that feeling weird and different was just synonymous with being an individual human being. I also didn’t know that actually being different was a very good thing.
I thought something was wrong with me. I didn’t know that it was OK to have different interests than most other kids had. I thought I was supposed to “fit in”. Some kids enjoyed sports, some enjoyed focusing on the other boys and girls, some enjoyed their bikes and horses (I grew up near many farms) and what I enjoyed most was sitting alone, looking up at the sky, thinking about the world and the people in it, and then writing about it.
I still remember wondering why I wasn’t interested in running around with the rest of the kids in elementary school. Instead, I preferred to sit on the sidelines, or on top of the slide, and observe the other kids while they played. I did a lot of wondering and daydreaming back then. I actually remember the moment when I wondered if I was an alien who was sent to Earth to figure out the human race.
To this day, I still spend a large portion of my day simply thinking and wondering. The only difference between me then and me now is that I couldn’t be happier and more grateful to be exactly who I am… introvert and all. And of course, I don’t scope out the world on top of slides anymore. Now I sit in my home on the top of a hill.
We all need to accept and love ourselves just the way we are and I want to help our world’s children realize that. They don’t have to ‘fit in’. They need to know that it’s their individuality that makes them great contributors to society.
As it turns out, I did spend my whole life studying people, and as 40 some years passed, filled with some of the most awe-inspiring ups and deeply depressing downs, I felt it was finally time to share all of those lessons so that the younger generation could learn from them, and hopefully, avoid some of the pain I had to endure myself.
Of course, we all have to go through our ‘own’ pain in order to learn certain lessons. After all, it is our darkest hours that make any ordinary day feel so bright. But it is also true that we learn through the pain and experiences of others. When we witness someone getting hurt, we feel their pain. When we see someone cry, we sometimes weep along with them, and when we hear the traffic report and learn of accidents, we know which roads to avoid on our way to school and work.
In 2013, I sat down and started to write a book that taught teens about all the important stuff that they weren’t learning in schools. I researched and wrote, and researched and wrote some more, but no matter how many chapters I added, it never felt complete. It never lived up to the ‘vision’ I had of changing millions of lives. I was only touching the surface. And so, two years and 56 chapters later, I finally realized that my wisdom and experience was limited to a single life’s perspective and that I needed more than I could possibly conjure up all by myself.
I needed the wisdom of many.
In 2015, I decided to turn my book into a free course called Total Mind Development™ for Teens and Young Adults and started reaching out to experts and professionals to see if they wanted to add their own modules, and although the response was mostly wonderful, it still didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel big enough. No matter how many modules I added, it still wouldn’t live up to the ‘vision’ I had.
But I was getting closer!
As with most things in life, because that didn’t work out, a door opened to something better. That is when the idea of The Teen Mentor, LLC came to me; a home where an endless amount of wisdom could be shared and stored without limit… a ‘Portal of Wisdom’ if you will. Even though the book and the course didn’t work out the way I initially wanted them to, they were necessary. They were stepping stones to something bigger and better.
The Teen Mentor, LLC now publishes the articles of top experts and professionals from around the world and the ‘Portal of Wisdom’ is where all of our articles are stored and searchable by title, author, topic, or keyword. They are synonymous. Powered by Google Translate, our content can be viewed in every global language. We currently make over 2.1 million monthly impressions, accumulated over a quarter of a million social media followers, and have site visitors that span 182 different countries and growing steadily.
The ‘vision’ I had for so many years has finally been fulfilled.
And now, we fill it.
This is what I do today.
It is my passion and my purpose to facilitate wisdom and find experts and professionals who want to share their resources, experiences, knowledge and services with the world’s teens.
I believe that someday, millions of teens will go on to their phones and see one of our quotes or articles, and it just may assist them in going down the right path much sooner in life.
I believe that eventually, we can help pull back the self-help and personal development industry in order to finally encompass them, provide them with the real wisdom and tools they need in order to succeed, and rather than fix social and emotional problems when we are adults, we can do our best at trying to help prevent those issues to begin with.
Teenagers are our future leaders and they will be making all of the decisions concerning this world one day. Together as a global society, we can help them build strong and well-rounded foundations today, so they can make better decisions for all tomorrow.
Thank you for being here today!
I am so grateful that you found your way.
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