“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” -Buddha
It was about five months ago that I sat behind a table at our local high school recruiting kids to join the new Positive Charge club. Our mission was to design and landscape an interior courtyard at the school as a memorial to a pair of students who were lost in a tragic accident last year. These two boys were full of life and vibrant with positive energy. Our courtyard project is a memorial to that spirit. The kids were all really motivated by memorializing this tragedy and were equally inspired to regenerate the community support that grew up around them during this difficult time. Many of them voiced the feeling that they didn’t want things to go back to how they were before.
It is not always easy to know how to get involved when your kids are in high school. So I started this group believing that with the right vehicle, the community would help the kids again Also, I knew from my own positivity work, that there is nothing like an action plan realized to make you truly understand how much positive power we all carry inside. I wanted the kids to have this real life experience of imagining something beautiful and subsequently working to make it real.
The last time anyone did anything with this courtyard space was in 1958 and it has been decades since the space has been open to the students. We began the project by getting more than 500 signatures to get the administration’s permission to do the project. We spent the last several months working with a local landscape designer to create a beautiful space that facilities management approved. Now, we have a great idea of what it will look like when we raise the $20,000 we will need for its completion.
The Positive Charge club meets two to three times per month. We have grown from 15 kids to more than 50, in part I think, because we provide home cooking at the meetings. It is a small price to pay for the positivity we are already generating by our first fundraiser. The group also designed a wristband that says, “you are what you think” and inside “think positive.”
We have so many cool kids in the group wearing the bands that they are becoming wildly popular. Inspired, new members to join the group everyday. Soon, we will have enough money to start the real work in the garden. They are so motivated that they are thinking about how we can sell them at the other high schools in town.
Best of all for me, is how the kids are soaking up the work of generating positive thought energy. It is so simple to learn to watch your thoughts and, just by paying attention, to realize how quickly negative thinking can become neutralized with space for positive thoughts. The positive wrist band program really works; I know because I have been practicing for years now. What a gift it is to watch it become a new trend in high school.
