Get A Leg Up: The Learn-Earn-Give Toolset for Teenage Purpose and Optimism

By Manny Padro

You don't have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream.
—Michael Dell

Each of us has a purpose—a reason for the decisions we make and the actions we take. Sometimes it only lives within us, unacknowledged and unidentified. Other times, our purpose is a force to be reckoned with. It drives us to set goals and accomplish them. It helps us build our own path. It enables us to recognize our success and celebrate it.

Being successful down the road means identifying your purpose—and values—now. In Get a LEG Up, Manny Padro shares how he's achieved a life of happiness and fulfillment by learning to recognize his purpose and value system through behavior modification. Growing up in a low-income neighborhood, Manny relied on mentors to point him in a successful direction. Now, along with insight from dozens of other mentors, he's sharing what he's learned as a toolkit for young adults to gain a jump-start on a successful life. With exercises, anecdotes, and strategies for living each day with intention, this is the workbook you need to create healthy habits and commit to the future you want.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781544525051

Book preview

Contents

Advance Praise

Foreword

Introduction

1. Learning

2. Values and Purpose

3. Goals

4. Importance of Adult Role Models (and Best Friends)

5. Earning

6. Giving

7. Putting it All Together

Conclusion

Additional Resources

Workbook

Acknowledgments

To my wife Laura for being my rock

and for supporting my adventures and dreams.

And to Chet and Norma Goguen

from Worcester, Massachusetts, and Don and Shirley Torgerson from Torrey, Utah, for trusting me.

Their guidance, friendship, love, and support

have blessed my life significantly.

Foreword

My name is Doug Lennick, and I am one of the co-founders of think2perform , where we develop exceptional leaders through self-awareness and emotional competency.

I met Manny Padro more than thirty years ago, as he started learning with our company. In Manny, I found a person from humble beginnings who had a voracious appetite for learning and self-improvement.

In the years we have known each other, we have both seen how educational and earning gaps are getting wider both in the United States and globally, and we have seen how poverty limits the opportunities and hope of youth. We see how young people are growing up in a reality where they and their families struggle with basic survival, often without needed resources such as healthcare.

As Manny learned more about himself, he realized that his own personal values led him to the purpose of learning, earning, and giving, and he also realized that the only way to increase financial earning potential is through education.

Manny saw the toll that comments such as pull yourself up by your bootstraps were taking on young people. He recognized that when you are barely surviving, the weight of the world rests on your shoulders, and it is harder than many of us imagine to even think about overcoming the obstacles that are holding you back and keeping you in your current situation.

Knowing that and having lived it firsthand, Manny knew there had to be a better way.

So he developed his own process for a way forward, and he shares it now with all of you in this book. Manny’s goals are to encourage lifetime learners, help with earning potential, lessen poverty, and enhance the giving that we all do for each other.

By moving the poverty line, and by inspiring a kinder, more supportive population, we will see a generation that is ready to help heal our world and its turmoil. Inspired young people will see how their own aptitudes and attitudes can make a positive difference for themselves and those around them. Together we’ll see a lessening of hopelessness and grow inner-city populations who embrace all types of learning.

This book is an act of love, hope, and determination on Manny’s part. The process he has developed is one that took him much of his life to fully actualize. By sharing it with young adults, we know it will make an incredibly positive impact on their lives, and on the lives of their families and communities.

Learning, earning, and giving will change the lives of youth, and therefore change our world.

Doug Lennick, think2perform

Introduction

Each day, millions of students enter and exit through the doors of high schools across the United States. As they do, they contemplate their own self-worth, their place in the world, and their prospects for life. Some feel positive about the future, but unfortunately, many feel an almost crushing despair without hope for a positive future for themselves.

This book is for those students and their educators.

I spent the first few years of my life on a plantain and coffee farm in the mountains of Puerto Rico. There was a wooden bridge by our house that crossed a canyon to get to the main road. My dad carried me when we needed to cross. We would drink milk from fresh coconuts, enjoy fresh sugar cane, and listen to the coquí frogs sing. In Puerto Rico we only spoke Spanish. My parents wanted us to have a different life and moved us to Philadelphia when I was five years old. We were too poor to rent an apartment so we lived in my aunt’s basement in North Philadelphia to avoid being homeless. We lived in a row home, surrounded by other row homes and buildings. My father took odd jobs in order for him to provide for our family. Life in North Philly was completely different from the life I lived during my early years on the family farm.

I started attending school. A few years later desegregation became part of my daily life. I was bused from the local elementary school to a school farther away from home. My experience with desegregation meant violence in and out of school. I wasn’t safe walking on the sidewalk next to my aunt’s house, walking to school, riding the bus to school, going to the bathroom, or even playing at recess. The teachers in our schools weren’t prepared or equipped to prevent or handle the violence that was erupting in our community, much less prepare us for the future. It wasn’t a place I wanted to be. They couldn’t break up fights without possibly being assaulted or having their tires slashed in the school parking lot. They did the best they could, especially since they were given no support, but in these circumstances my education was not great. Additionally I had to learn English since I only spoke and understood Spanish. My sisters and I learned quickly that we needed to talk white and act white. It helped us blend in better with some of my peers and deal with less racism, but we still had to deal with racism.

We were able to move out and into our own place after my dad had found a job and started bringing in wages. Eventually we moved out of North Philadelphia to Levittown. This move did not change the considerable chaos around us. There was less violence, but the education wasn’t much better. I trudged through school, not sure what I would do when I graduated from high school. You may wonder why I’m telling you about my background. It’s something I don’t speak about often, but I want you to know that the challenges you face, whether they are like mine or different, do not have to stop you from finding and developing your talents and finding your passion in life.

I am writing this book to share what I have learned over my lifetime that has helped me be successful in my business life and personal life. This knowledge from thirty years of actively learning is something I wish I would have had in my youth to help me achieve what I wanted to do with my life.

Much of how students view themselves comes from how they think adults view them. And those views can be limiting. Former President George W. Bush addressed this in his May 16, 2015, commencement address at Southern Methodist University. In his unique style, he encouraged the students: To those of you graduating this afternoon with high honors, awards, and distinctions, I say well done. And as I like to tell the ‘C’ students, you too can be president.

President Bush was pointing out that what we achieve in school isn’t the be-all and end-all of our potential, nor does it have to limit us.

The problem with hopes and prospects for life is that we often prescribe them for students. Many young people from poor, inner-city neighborhoods like mine was, are asked, Why would you think of college or trade school? Meanwhile, many from wealthier suburbs are prescribed four-year university educations, whether it’s their passion or not. Generally, their futures look entirely different. If the parents work blue-collar jobs, then the student likely will too. If the mother is a lawyer, then the daughter will probably go for a graduate degree.

Instead, what if there were a different way to approach