Podcast with Joie Lacourse: Anchor the Joy

Parents, is your teen college ready? Are you feeling overwhelmed, stressed out, or excited about your teen applying to college? Do you know what colleges are looking for? And if your kid gets in, do you know what you'll pay for it? College admission has never been so competitive or expensive. Shellee Howard will take you on a journey to help you and your teen get college ready. Now here's your host, Shellee.

Hello listeners, this is Shellee Howard, the CEO of College Ready, and today on Parents, Is Your Teen College Ready? I have an amazing guest to share with you. Joey LaCourse is here to share her brilliance. Welcome to the show, Joey.

Thank you so much, Shellee, for having me. This is such an honor to be here. I appreciate it. You're welcome.

Can I have you give the listeners a little bit of your background so they know how amazing you are?

Absolutely. Well, I am almost 40 years old. I've never been married. I have no children, which is kind of the irony in why I do what I do. I was in— I was 14 years old and my mom, for reasons that I don't know if I'll ever understand, but she took me out of school and me and my sister both. And she told the school that she was going to homeschool me. Well, a year went by and I never got homeschooled. But I wanted to be with my friends. I missed my friends. I missed that interaction. I missed learning and being engaged. So I told my mom, I said, I really want to go back to school. She said, okay, well, next year we'll see what happens. I don't want to wait till next year. I don't want to be behind a year because now I'm going to go into 8th grade and then all my friends are going to be in high school now, right, in 9th grade. So I was like, I really That's not okay with me.

Yeah.

So I ended up begging my mom, let me go back to school. And we went to the school board and they said, well, here's the problem. You don't have an 8th grade diploma, so you can't just go straight to high school. So we'll make a deal with you. And what we'll do is you get straight A's, you be a model student, don't get into trouble, and we will bump you up halfway through the year with your friends in high school. Perfect, challenge accepted. So I did it. I got straight A's. I was a model student, student of the month, everything like that. They bumped me up. And then I went to guidance and they said, okay, great, you're here, but new challenge. You're already 5 credits behind the rest of your class. So if you want to graduate with your original class, you have a new challenge. You don't get studies, you don't get to get out early when you're a senior, you don't get any of that, that luxury. Okay, challenge accepted. And again, I did it and I graduated with my original class without having to stay back a year. Now, the whole— how this ties into what I do for a living now, which is I teach this course called Insight for Life for kids and teens, is if I had that course when I was a kid, maybe, just maybe, I would have said, Mom, you know, even though I'm 14 years old, I don't think it's a great idea for me to drop out of high school.

School.

I just don't think it is. I would have learned how to cultivate my intuition at a much younger age and it would have propelled me much farther, much faster. And a big part of that, you know, I never knew how to navigate relationships. I never knew mindfulness and emotional intelligence at a young age. It took me a lot of experiences, bad ones at times, into my adulthood in order to learn all of that. Um, so this course, that's really what that delivers for teens, is getting them life ready, college ready, uh, you know, work ready, all of that.

So thank you for sharing that. Wow. You know, I always find it interesting When I, when I work with teenagers, I help them find their why. And they're like, what do you mean, Shellee? And I'm like, why are you here? Why are you going to do X, Y, or Z? I'm all about the why. You just shared your why, which I love.

Yeah.

And we talk about core values. We talk about gifts and talents and advocacy, and it sounds like your program is amazing. What I was curious about is who is your ideal client? Like, as a parent, I'm going, well, I have 4 kids and I don't know really if they would need what it is that you have. I don't know the answer to that. So maybe you can go into that.

Absolutely. So my ideal client, especially when it comes to teens, is the at-risk students, the ones that may or may not make it through college emotionally, um, the ones that may or may not make it through, um, high school even because, um, they're being bullied or they are a bully. Um, and you know, if you are a bully, there's typically some trauma behind that, right? It doesn't necessarily make you a bad person, you know. So those are my ideal clients, is those ones that that need to really learn how to have some emotional intelligence to help them get through challenges in life so that they don't— they can stand up to peer pressure, they can stand up to bullying, or they, if they are a bully, to know how to be a better person and look at people with compassion instead of judgment.

Wow, my mind races, right? I'm like, I know so many teenagers who would This would be— I mean, there's a lot of opportunity there. Um, College Ready gets some of the very best and brightest students. And then we also understand that sometimes that overachiever hits burnout, and then it gets really scary because they've always been this overachiever, overachiever, and now it's taking their breath away. Is that somebody you can help as well?

Absolutely, absolutely. Again, navigating emotional intelligence is a huge umbrella of feelings. It is overwhelm, it is burnout, it is shy, it is not being able to communicate very well or even speak very well. It's also confidence-based. You know, sometimes, you know, they may have gone through school as, you know, the jock, the popular jock, and now they're in college and it's a whole new world that they didn't expect. And they get shy and they, you know, kind of get a little sucked into introvert, you know, and well, you know how— and so emotional intelligence really and teaching them mindfulness tools really helps them navigate through all of that without feeling overwhelmed, and it gives them anxiety techniques and everything. We do a lot of journaling and meditating as well.

So, okay, that was my next question. So I have a child in mind, and, um, what can I expect? Like, I give you my child, what do you do with them?

Sure, of course. So the Insight for Life course, it's a 9-week course. There's an orientation, which is what we go over with the child or children, um, what to expect every session. Because with kids and teens, we really want to be routine, right? You want to be routine and have a day-to-day ritual. Routine is very important at that age. So it's— we go over that and what to expect, and we start every session the same way, and that's with a word card. So they pick a word. It's always a nice word like kindness, joy, laughter, wonder, anything like that. And then they journal for 2 minutes about what that word means to them, where they see it in their life, and where they'd like to see it more. And then we also do this thing we called write and rip. Okay, this is the fun part. So they get out a blank piece of paper, they have 2 minutes to write down everything that they're upset about, everything that upset them throughout the day, what they're depressed about, what they wish had gone differently, any embarrassing moments they had throughout the day, anything like that. Nobody's going to see it. After the 2 minutes is up, they pick it up, they rip it up, they throw it in the trash. And that's just so that they can start their session with a clear head, you know. And it also teaches them to get their feelings out on paper and that it's okay, because you don't want to keep everything up here. Yeah, right. Eventually that comes out in your body somehow, some way, whether that's through disease, illness, body aches. That kind of stuff really shows up. So then throughout all of the other sessions, we teach stuff like every session is a different topic. And then starting session 5, we start integrating the tools in with real life issues like relationships or money. And then so like module 1 is or module 2 rather, that's a really good one. That's no judgment. That's where we teach the children to see people with compassion instead of judgment. And so that's one of them. Mindfulness is another one. That's where we kind of, we go into like a visual meditation so that, and then they journal about it after what they saw. And that we teach them that that has some real insight into how they handle challenges. And so they learn from that. And then another one that we, that we have is they learn intuition. We help them cultivate their intuition, which is really what the ultimate goal is with this entire program is to really help them determine what are the voices in your head that are judgments and what's your intuition saying and how do you tell the difference.

Wow.

Yeah.

Right. And that's what the ultimate goal is of the Insight for Life is so that when they stand up to peer pressure, they know they're making the right decision out of their intuition from their gut and not out of fear.

Wow, I'm just processing all of that. Like, why is that not taught in high school?

I know, I know. Yeah, it blows my mind. But one of my goals, which I've actually just recently achieved, is to get this course into schools. Um, so I actually launched this course with 5th moderators in this fall 2023. So it's going to be, it's going to be amazing because it does need to be in schools. Teaching mindfulness in high schools especially is, is just as essential as teaching math in my opinion, because if you don't have mindfulness and emotional intelligence and you don't know how to navigate, you don't know how to navigate those, those challenges. It's— you can be a great accountant that makes $1 million a year, you know, it doesn't mean it's going to bring you happiness, right?

I was reading a brilliant article yesterday about this very subject and what they're saying about colleges right now. So parents, this is mind-blowing. I would quote the source, but I can't remember. In the article, it was stating exactly what you're saying. Colleges are looking for students to show emotional intelligence on their application. So they want to see, when this happened, what did you do in this situation? How did you handle it? And so what you're teaching is a life skill that's going to stay with them for the rest of their life. Amazing.

Yeah, and the great thing too is after they go through this, course, they also get a certificate of completion. So that would also probably look good on a college application as well.

Oh, it would look fantastic. Right now, diversity, inclusion, and emotional intelligence, those are all of the key things that colleges are asking us. Where is it?

Yeah.

Who is the student and why do they matter? Why are they applying here? It all goes back to the why, right? And so what you're trying to help these students do is get to the why. Why are they here and what are they doing about it? Now, you, you spoke as we— is it you in a group? Is it a small group? Is it one-to-one? Is it in person? Is it online? Like, the, the, the— what is that?

I say we because I have a business partner, and her name— well, I shouldn't say business partner, she's my partner in teaching, um, the Clarity Catalyst course, which this Insight for Life is a branch off of that. She helps me not teach it, but she helps me integrate it by— she has a doctorate in expressive therapeutic expressive art. And so she helps integrate the information with the child or children through art pieces.

Wow.

So we do art pieces every session, we do some kind of art. And that just helps, you know, them understand and really kind of absorb this information through their own creativity. You know, and another important thing to point out about this course is It's from Stanford University. It's a very renowned course and it was created by Dr. Michael Ray at Stanford in 1979. And it wasn't taken out of Stanford until 2002 after 9/11. It was gifted to 500 women that lost their spouses. In 9/11.

Okay.

And the results were profound.

Wow.

And that's when they were like, wow, the world needs this course. So they took it out. And then the train the trainers, Jennifer Grace out of Florida, she found this course and then she partnered with Dr. Michael Ray and said, hey, There's a million other types of people other than just adults and workforce that need this information. Can I reword some of the lingo to make it more appropriate for children, kids, and teens, and, um, train people and certify them to teach it? And he said, absolutely. So that's how the Insight for Life program came about.

Okay. Yeah, that is the we in what you're talking about.

Yeah.

So what is the hope when, when a student goes through your program? What is the desired outcome?

The desired outcome is for them to understand that The person they are now is most likely not the person that they were when they were born, because everybody's born with compassion, everybody's born with intuition, everybody's born with, you know, hey, I'm wonderful, fantastic, I'm great. Everybody's born with that. But then as you go through life, people say things, you know, well-intentioned and sometimes not so well-intentioned people. They say things to you, and when you take it to heart, a gremlin pops up in your head and it becomes this judgment. And this judgment you identify with, and it becomes your new way of being. So what we do through this course is make them realize that that's not who you are at core. Who you are at core is this fantastic, awesome person. It is just, you are great, you know? And, you know, what everybody else thinks, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. You follow your intuition. So that's the ultimate outcome is that they learn to control the judgments. Become a leader in their own lives as well as for others. And, you know, just be able to navigate through life because, you know, life is hard and it gets harder the older you get. And, but even though it gets harder the older you get, it can still be so much, so happy. It can be so happy and so fulfilled. And you can have the life of your dreams. You just have to know how to navigate your emotions to get it.

Wow.

So what ages do you work with?

I work with all ages. Well, I shouldn't say that. I work from 8 years old up.

Adults. Yeah. Grandparents. Yes. There's nobody you can't help.

There's nobody I can't help.

Outstanding. So if somebody wanted to reach out to you, how could they get in touch?

So my email address is anchorthejoy@gmail.com. Anchor the Joy is the name of my company, um, and my website is anchorthejoy.com.

Okay, excellent. And on the website, would it kind of explain what it is that you're offering. And then if there's more questions, is there a place for them to reach out and contact you?

Absolutely. On my website, there is a contact form that people can fill out if they'd like more information. There is not a whole lot of information about Insight for Life on my website yet. Um, there will be, but they can still go there and do a contact form and I can email them you know, directly with any questions or even information. I have a whole breakdown of what's entailed in the course and all of that. And the reason for that is because I am a life coach. So my website has been more geared towards life coaching. So I have all of my life coaching programs on there. Which is love and relationships, health, career, that which is greater, among some others. And so my website is really kind of geared more towards that because, you know, with the schools, it coming into schools, this course, I don't necessarily have to do too much marketing. It's more so meeting with the admins, meeting with the principals, the school board, and all of that. So I don't have a lot of information, but I do do this course one-on-one with children. Um, I also do it one-on-one with adults, and I also can do it in small groups of children. So if you have a, a family of 5 kids, um, or if you and your sister have 6 kids between the 2 of you, I can do a group like that. Anything like that.

Excellent. Thank you so much for all your wisdom and your passion to serve and make people's lives better.

Thank you so much for having me. This was such a pleasure. I truly appreciate it.

So you heard it from Joey that life can be everything you dreamt it to be. Please go into the week, enjoy yourself, and thank you for listening to Parents as Your Teen College Ready.