A Vision Fulfilled by Michelle C. Ustaszeski-Hutchinson

I think The Teen Mentor, LLC https://theteenmentor.com/ had been brewing my entire life. When I was in my early 20’s, I remember being tremendously sad because I overheard my 12-year-old niece crying endlessly in her bedroom. I remember wishing that there were something I could do. She didn’t want to talk to any of us. That was the day I decided that I wanted to help kids through their rough times. I knew I would study psychology.

I recall crying myself to sleep many times when I was young because I felt misunderstood. I felt awkward. I didn’t know why I was so different from everyone else. Back then, we didn’t talk about feelings or why people did the things they did. I didn’t know that being different was good. I didn’t know that feeling different was just synonymous with being an individual. I thought something was wrong with me and didn’t realize that I felt different simply because of my interests. Some kids enjoyed sports; I enjoyed thinking about the world. Some would grow up to study health and wellness; I would grow up to study people.

 I still remember wondering why I wasn’t interested in running around with the rest of the kids in elementary school.

Instead, I preferred to sit on the sidelines, or on top of the slide and observe while the kids played. I did a lot of wondering and daydreaming and I still remember feeling like an alien who was trying to figure out the human race. I’m still trying. I spend a good portion of my day simply thinking and wondering. The only difference between me then, and me now is that I couldn’t be happier or more grateful to be exactly who I am, and of course, I don’t scope out the world on top of slides anymore.

As it ends up, I did spend my whole life studying people, and as 43 years passed, filled with some of the most awe-inspiring ups and deeply depressing downs, I felt it was finally time to share all of those lessons so that the younger generation could avoid some of the pain I had to endure.

I would have loved to see my future self-come to me during some of those deeply depressing downs and say, “Believe it or not, this is good for you. This unbearable pain you are going through, that you never imagined could hurt so bad, is going to catapult you into higher levels of happiness and acceptance in the future that you wouldn’t otherwise experience.” I would have loved it if my future self-came to me during some of those moments of decision and said, “No, no, no, don’t do that! I’ve been there. I’ve done that. Here is what happened, here’s what I learned, and here are some alternatives.”

Of course, we all have to go through our ‘own’ pain in order to learn certain things. It certainly helps to justify the negative experiences we all endure from time to time, but it’s also true that we learn through the pain and experiences of others. When we witness someone getting hurt, we feel for them. When we see someone cry, we sometimes weep along with them, and when we hear the traffic report and learn of accidents, we learn which roads to avoid.

In 2013, I sat down and started to write a book that I had already titled, Untouchable: Breaking Free From Negative Emotional Confinement and Developing a Positive Mindset. It is quite the mouthful, yes, but I felt it was necessary. It started out as a guide that taught teens all the important stuff they weren’t learning in schools. It explained what each emotion was telling them and how they could master each one to the point of diminishing them, except in extreme or unusual circumstances, using a process that I called ‘Creating a Gap.’ The second half of the book was intended to teach them how to develop a positive mindset that would help them to live a longer, stress-free life.

I researched and wrote, but no matter how many chapters I added, it never felt complete.

It never lived up to the ‘vision’ I had of changing millions of lives. I was only touching the surface, and so two years and 56 chapters later; I finally realized that I needed more wisdom than I was able to conjure up all by myself. I needed the wisdom of many.

In 2015, I decided to turn the book into a 56 module course and called it ‘Total Mind Development for Teens & Young Adults.’ I started reaching out to experts to see if they wanted to add their own modules, and although the response was mostly wonderful, it still didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel big enough. It still felt too small even when I received comments like, “You don’t need my help. It’s already a monster course!” or “Teens are not going to be interested in all this stuff.” This didn’t stop me because I knew there were teens who would be interested. However, after hundreds of hours of sitting and entering content, I realized that no matter how many modules I added, it wouldn’t live up to this ‘vision’ that I had. However, I was getting close.

As with most things in life, because that didn’t work out, a door was opened to something better. That is when the idea of The Teen Mentor came to me; a home where an endless amount of wisdom could be shared and stored without limit… a ‘Portal of Wisdom’ if you will. Even though the book and the course didn’t work out, they were necessary. Everything you do in life leads you to the next best thing. You transform, and you evolve into a better version of yourself, and when you live your purpose and mission, your business evolves as well. The Teen Mentor, LLC now publishes the articles and the ‘Portal of Wisdom’ is where all of the articles are stored and searchable by title, author, topic, or keyword. They are synonymous.

The ‘vision’ I had for so many years has finally been achieved. Now, we just fill it.

This is what I do today. It is my passion and my purpose, and as the business grows, my actual ‘jobs’ are going to change as well, which is perfect because I will know exactly what needs to be done and what resources we will need to hire. At this moment in time, we do not make a dime, and I am the ‘everything.’ I am the secretary, the editor, the web developer, and the social media expert. I recall spending 4 hours one night trying to figure out how to add a second page to the website. I remember telling my husband, “I’m not going to bed until I figure this out!” When you are on a mission, there is no such thing as giving up or failure. You have no choice.

My husband is my biggest supporter

And without him, we would not be here. I could not build this and work an outside job right now because this is a full-time job. He believes in me and in The Teen Mentor, and he deserves an award for patiently listening to me talk about it day in and day out. We both believe that if we build The Teen Mentor strong and sturdy, from the heart, while considering the number of teens we are impacting as our paycheck, we are both confident that the publication will someday help us get by when we can no longer work. We believe that it is bound to grow into something beautiful as well as profitable.

We are unlike the average publishing company, rather than collecting emails and distributing articles to a specific list, our goal is to populate teen social media news feeds throughout the world and become the number one source of positive wisdom within a teen’s daily virtual experience.

We want every teen around the world to go on to their phones and see one of our quotes or articles that just may help make their life a bit easier and their future much brighter. We want them to learn something that could ultimately take them down the right path much sooner in life.

As of today, The Teen Mentor’s current combined social media following is about 60,000, and it’s growing steadily.  Our articles and daily words of wisdom currently reach the eyes of almost to one million teens each month, all without sponsorship. However, as we grow we hope to secure sponsorship from companies around the world.

We can’t wait. The future is going to be very bright.

About the Author: Michelle C. Ustaszeski-Hutchinson is the Founder and Editor of The Teen Mentor, LLC., an online publication, located at TheTeenMentor.com, that is dedicated to providing teens worldwide with real-life wisdom from today’s top experts and professionals from around the globe. Her personal mission: to help facilitate the sharing of wisdom from one generation to the next.

https://theteenmentor.com/