Where It Began and What's Next

Six years ago I attended my first Breakthrough to Success training with Jack Canfield. I first met Jack at my very first professional development conference in the early 1980's. Thirty years later, as I was contemplating a major career change without a clear direction about what was next, I discovered  Jack again.

I was working an academic schedule and had a month off. A friend suggested that I take a break from all things professional, download a romance novel she recommended and escape into the audiobook as I paddled my kayak around the lake near my house. When I signed on to Audible, Jack popped up on my computer screen as I was trying to download the novel Joanna had suggested. Apparently, the Universe had other plans for my time off. There was Jack, on the cover of his book The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, along with a "get it free if you join Audible today" offer.

With the help of my teen neighbor Liam, I downloaded the Success Principles book onto an MP3 player and set out on my kayak with my ear buds and a bit of curiousity. As I listened and learned about the Success Principles, Jack talked about his Breakthrough to Success (BTS) live event. His mention of BTS struck a chord in me in that gave me goose bumps. I learned a long time ago to pay attention to whatever gives me goose bumps. Through what I now see as divine intervention, at a time when resources were tight, everything in my world lined up to support me getting to BTS. Two months later I was in the training room in Scottsdale, Arizona ... and my life has never been the same.

I thought I was going to BTS to make a career change and leave the work I was doing with teens. Instead, I got tremendous insight as the result of the work we did in the training room. Each night I went back to my hotel room, got out my laptop and began to revise my class curriculum, incorporating the success principles I was learning and incorporating some of Jack's activities into my lesson plans. I came home and began teaching the success principles into the middle and high school classrooms I was working with as well as into the clinical and community settings I served.

I fully embraced the principles in my personal life and achieved profound results. I began living my life according to my passions and got clear about my life purpose. I set goals based on my passions and learned how to incorporate planned and inspired action and accountability into my daily life. The results were astounding!  My relationships shifted, my work took on a whole new meaning and the fear that held me back for so long no longer controlled my choices. As I took 100% responsibility for my life and my choices and incorporated the tools I was learning into my daily life, my world, my work and my life transformed!  

​Two years later, with the support of a very generous benefactor, I completed Jack's Success Principles Train the Trainer program. Shortly thereafter, the Pathways to Success for Youth Project was born. I wrote some local grants, developed some private funds and piloted components of the success principles content into my classes as well as into my clinic's Peer Education program, professional and community trainings, and into my winter workplace where I run the ski and snowboard school at a local ski area.

Most of my time went uncompensated by money, but was compensated abundantly with results and breakthroughs in the young people and the adults I worked with. And my passion for bringing the Success Principles work to young people has grown exponentially and become my primary focus.

As of now, twenty team members have been trained in the Success Principles ... teens, twenty-somethings and adults with the experience, passion, vision and professional skills to support the vision. We've worked hard to raise the money and the support to continue our momentum. The next steps towards bringing this work to kids across the country are mapped out. We have already begun to raise the $100,000 needed for the development and production of a teen friendly video series to supplement the curriculum.

We are ready to move forward and are in the process of hiring a grant writer and gathering our team for the next phase of the project. And we are getting ready to implement an 8th to 9th grade transition retreat and a faculty development program focused on creating a positive school culture and classroom environments.

But first ... immense gratitude to all those who have supported us with donations, air miles, volunteer hours, gift cards, corporate matches, grants, moral support, scholarships, timeshare lodging, etc.

Please keep sharing our work, our website and our Generosity fundraising link so we can keep moving forward with our vision for youth. This is the kind of work that will transform our kids, our schools, our families, our communities and the planet.

With so much love and appreciation for your part in making this vision a reality,

Trisha Jacobson
Founder
Pathways to Success for Youth Project

---