Teaching your teen about jobs vs. following a dream

Pastor Jimmy Bartz discusses how to teach teens about pursuing their dreams and choosing a career path
Parenting Teens | Teaching your teen about jobs vs. following a dream
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Teaching your teen about jobs vs. following a dream

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Sometimes people ask me advice, especially parents of teenagers, about how do they encourage their children to pursue their calling versus a job. I don't see those two things as so diametrically opposed, though they can be certainly. But I think what we do is we seek to cultivate a broader vision with our children and how they might live out their life. So one thing that we may do is you may talk to your child about how you have engaged many different things in life and that life gives you opportunities to always make different choices. I grew up in one state. I moved to another state where I have decided to live and raise my family. Many people have started in one occupation and ended up in another. So I think the basic advice on parenting teenagers who are struggling with this choice between really pursuing their calling or really pursuing a job is I'm not too sure that those two things are diametrically opposed. Let's try to think more broadly about how you might experience life outside of the expectation that you just have to get a job, and that that job would be your identity and how and where you sit in the world. Some more practical advice around dealing with that, following your dreams versus pursuing a job, would be really cultivating courage. Helping your child face his or her fear, because it's in that practice that leads them a life that is more creative and innovative where they will find a way to pursue the desires of their heart and a logistical regular living in the world. It's through the practice of courage and then the cultivation of creativity and innovation where that child will really in the long run be able to put the pieces together that will make sense to them and be able to provide depth and meaning to their lives in the long run.
TEEN, Responsibilities, Jobs

Pastor Jimmy Bartz discusses how to teach teens about pursuing their dreams and choosing a career path

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Jimmy Bartz

Priest

Jimmy serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Prior to coming to Jackson, he was the founder and priest at Thad’s, an emergent Episcopal Church in the Santa Monica, California, in the Diocese of Los Angeles. He has also served as the Campus Missioner at the University of Texas in Austin, at All Saints’ in Austin, Texas, and All Saints’ Parish in Beverly Hills, California. He is a graduate the University of Texas at Austin and Virginia Theological Seminary. Presently, he serves as the Chair of the Board of the Episcopal Evangelism Society, and in years past has worked with Red Bull High Performance teaching athletes spiritual disciplines, with Naval Special Warfare working to create systems for character development within special operations teams, and was a speaker at TEDx, Venice Beach.
Married to Cindy and dad to Jas and Jade, the Bartz family loves to spend time outside mountaineering, skiing, fly-fishing, hunting and surfing.  Jimmy is currently writing a book on the spirituality of risk.

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