038: Nurturing the Next Generation of Confident Girls with Jill from Girls Mentorship
May 08, 2024
Amanda Schaefer
Today on the podcast, I sat down with Jill from Girls Mentorship. Girls Mentorship is an organization specializing in nurturing young women with skills that foster perspective, ownership, worthiness, empowerment and reassurance. They seek to help each girl embrace her potential and prepare to take on any challenge with confidence. In this episode, Jill and I talk about the need for mentorship to help guide young women and how to help your daughter develop confidence in an increasingly digital world.
Highlights:
How the organization was founded in the middle of the pandemic
The impact of mentorship on youth
How to help your daughter manage screen time
Strategies for meaningful engagement with your daughter
This summer, give your daughter the gift of growth & confidence. At Girls Mentorship, we specialize in nurturing young women with skills that foster perspective, ownership, worthiness, empowerment, and reassurance. Through engaging guest speakers, interactive activities, & meaningful connections, we help each girl embrace her potential & prepare to take on any challenge with confidence.
Is she ready to discover her best self? Join us for a summer of powerful transformations! https://www.girlsmentorship.com/summercamp Use the code ‘PODCAST’ to receive a $100 discount when you sign up!
Today on the podcast, I sat down with Jill from Girls Mentorship. Girls Mentorship is an organization specializing in nurturing young women with skills that foster perspective, ownership, worthiness, empowerment and reassurance. They seek to help each girl embrace her potential and prepare to take on any challenge with confidence. In this episode, Jill and I talk about the need for mentorship to help guide young women and how to help your daughter develop confidence in an increasingly digital world.
Highlights:
How the organization was founded in the middle of the pandemic
The impact of mentorship on youth
How to help your daughter manage screen time
Strategies for meaningful engagement with your daughter
This summer, give your daughter the gift of growth & confidence. At Girls Mentorship, we specialize in nurturing young women with skills that foster perspective, ownership, worthiness, empowerment, and reassurance. Through engaging guest speakers, interactive activities, & meaningful connections, we help each girl embrace her potential & prepare to take on any challenge with confidence.
Is she ready to discover her best self? Join us for a summer of powerful transformations! https://www.girlsmentorship.com/summercamp Use the code ‘PODCAST’ to receive a $100 discount when you sign up!
Welcome to the fearless warrior podcast, a place for athletes, coaches and parents who know the value of a strong mindset. I'm your host, coach AB, a mental performance coach on a mission, former softball coach, wife and mom of three. Each episode we will dive deep into all things mental performance, mindset tools and how to rewire the brain for success. So if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, mindset tools and how to rewire the brain for success, so if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, you're in the right place. Let's tune in to today's episode.
Speaker 1:
I am so excited to introduce to you Jill and Mary of Girls Mentorship to speak about the pressures tweens and teens face. The mission of Girls Mentorship to speak about the pressures tweens and teens face. The mission of Girls Mentorship is dedicated to empowering girls aged 10 to 18 by developing crucial life skills, including social, emotional and academic competencies. Their mission is to instill resilience, mental well-being and emotional intelligence, preparing young girls to confidently and authentically tackle life's challenges and seize opportunities. They strive to guide each girl towards realizing her fullest potential. What an incredible mission and I'm so excited because today we have Jill representing the duo. Let's jump in. Jill, so great to have you on the pod.
Speaker 2:
My gosh, I'm like were you talking about me in that intro? Were you talking about us? Hi, Coach AB, hi fam, thanks for having me on the podcast today so excited.
Speaker 1:
We love doing bios live because I feel like it's more of an authentic conversation than me recording it later, and I'm just so excited to see where the conversation flows today. And I'm just so excited to see where the conversation flows today. We've had interactions on the grams and just following what girls mentorship has done in your community and beyond, and you guys have brought so much awareness to my mind about the impacts of social media. You guys have a trend report that you put out and you're just so attuned and connected to what these girls are facing. We should just jump right in. Give me the one-two punch. Where are you guys at, what are you doing and what are you excited about?
Speaker 2:
Ooh, the one-two punch. I love it. Let's go Well. First and foremost, I feel like why our missions connect is because we actually at one point in our business this was before Mary and I became the dynamic duo I was actually I was a mental performance coach for high school athletes, so we really connect in that way and during the pandemic was when everything obviously we all remember that. Can you believe that was four years ago, by the way. Four years.
Speaker 2:
What that? What happened with my athletes was, you know, they had to stop everything Everybody did. But it was the families that reached out to say, hey, my daughter is struggling and are you putting anything out there to bring them together or help them through what they're experiencing? And at that time, I had a preschooler and a kindergartner at home and, as you can imagine, doing online learning with those littles was challenging, so my capacity was not even thinking about serving the community. It was like I just got to get through this online stuff. But we had so many inquiries that I was like, okay, there's something here and my athletes aren't doing any sports right now. So how do we actually open it up for all girls to come and have this conversation around the pandemic and the feelings around it and them not being able to see their friends? So we just like threw something out there to say, hey, we're hosting an online camp and I I'm inviting all girls really around that teenage age to come and hang out with us for four weeks.
Speaker 2:
It was one call a week for an hour and I knew I didn't want to leave it alone. So that's where I pulled Mary in. She was a dear friend of mine. We formerly worked together at Lululemon and she was kind of transitioning out of her full-time. She owned a CrossFit gym, but she was at this transitional point in her life that she was ready to let that go and look for something different. So, of course, what else was she doing during the middle of the pandemic? She was like, yeah, I'll totally leave this with you.
Speaker 2:
And after those four weeks happened, we felt something together that we were like wow, there is something so much more than us just focusing and working with athletes, like the background of what we used to coach our athletes and how she used to coach her athletes in just a different setting. We were like all girls need this conversation. So that's where girls mentorship really was born, was out of the need of um, saying that, like, really, we all are athletes. Um, whether you believe it or not, you don't need to be playing a physical sport. But man, how do we like be playing a physical sport? But man, how do we have these conversations with these girls to peel away the fear and the limiting beliefs and the self-doubts?
Speaker 2:
So that's where Girls Mentorship was born was in the kitchen right behind me here in 2020. And fast forward, four years later we've grown this thing and we've tried so many things and really what we have landed on is summer camp. Summer camp is our Superbowl, it is our favorite program that we run and we serve girls entering fifth grade up to eighth grade, and then we have peer leaders who come in, who are like at that high school level, to come in as youth volunteers and it is like the most profound, magical, amazing experience where we like talk about things that girls really need so that they know their true potential.
Speaker 1:
I love that so much. I mean it's rhetorical, of course. I love this, which is why you guys are on the podcast. I think this is such an incredible story and why you guys are so magnetic is that you're not just teaching these camps, you walk the walk, you talk the talk, and you guys are so invested in knowing and kind of just enveloping yourselves in their world, which is kind of our basis of the conversation today is like what are you seeing? You know, post pandemic I'm sure that was a completely different set of problems, but if you could kind of like grab the parents by the shoulders and say, look, this is what we're seeing. What are some of those fears that they're talking about?
Speaker 2:
What are some of those?
Speaker 1:
insecurities Like what are they facing?
Speaker 2:
Okay, so I'll. I'm going to say two things. I'll talk about the girls and then I'll talk about the parents, because really, without the parent support, we're going to continue to see the problem unfold. So girls are struggling, struggling with friendships. They're feeling super isolated, even though we're post pandemic isolated even though we're post pandemic. We're just seeing that they have really they're lagging, but what we're seeing is that they're lacking, they are completely lacking the skills to put themselves out there and connect with girls face to face. They feel way more comfortable online. They feel way more comfortable to strike up a friendship through their phone, but they have no idea how to belong, and that's really what they're seeking is a sense of belonging. All of those things are happening, but what we're also seeing is that there's so much coming at them at all times. There is, I mean, especially if girls have a device, that they are connected 24-7. Where, when you and I were growing up, you know, what I mean.
Speaker 2:
It was like okay, see ya, it was Friday, if we didn't have a sleepover, I'm going to see you on Monday. Great, we had time to disconnect. These girls are constantly plugged in and what they're also seeing is that these messages are coming at them at all times and if they don't have the foundation to know how to sift through that, it is going to start to infiltrate who they are trying to become. So the world is telling them who they are, versus them being able to tell the world who they are. So we're seeing a lot of self-absorption, meaning it's like okay, look at me, look at me, look at me because I want to get validated, I want people to see me, I want people to like me. And then what's happening is that the self-absorption is so drastic that empathy is drastically on the decline. So they don't know how to empathize with other people because they are so into themselves without them even knowing. So it's being able to.
Speaker 2:
Then now I'm going to shift it to the parents to say it's knowing how to teach these girls A the vocabulary.
Speaker 2:
They need to know what it is that they're feeling, what they're lacking, to help them and teach them how to overcome that and how to practice it a little bit differently. And unfortunately, everything Mary and I always say things are caught, not taught. So what is it that they're seeing in us as parents that they're then adopting, and that for parents, is like oh, whoa, okay. Well, how often do I bring my phone around and what is it? When my daughter is trying to talk to me, am I putting it down to really connect with her and showing her what it is to connect and be present? As silly as it is, it's like we just are, like we're operating in this hustle culture and we're not realizing the impact of our action is actually just sticking to our kids. So parents need to just be aware of their own actions as them being the best role models for their girls, and what I'm also seeing, and what we're also seeing, is that we want our kids to be successful at life. We do, but what we're not doing is proving it to them.
Speaker 2:
So, proving it in terms of like, where are you investing your money in your children? We hear a lot is like whoa, your camp sounds great, but it is a lot of money. But we're like but you're going to stand in line for, like, the latest, greatest Taylor Swift concert tickets. Or you're going to stand in line and get your daughter that iPhone 15 plus or whatever it is, and is that really serving her self-image, her self-confidence, her sense of belonging? So it's just also having that in the back of our mind as parents of like, what are you proving to your daughter? And put your money where your mouth is. And I'm not trying to like come at parents by any means, but this is the reality of our decision-making and how it's impacting our youth.
Speaker 1:
All of that was absolutely incredible, and what I'm hearing you say is that it's twofold. With parents, it doesn't have to just be resources Obviously resources of finances and where you're putting your money where your mouth is, but also the resource of time and attention.
Speaker 2:
Right, those two buckets are huge and you just hit on it.
Speaker 2:
Huge, yeah. And for parents it's like you know and I'm a parent, so I totally I'm empathizing with all the other parents of like the juggle, the schedules, all of the things, but at the end of the day, what our kids are craving is for you to listen and for you to empathize and that, like a bonus, is to validate them. You to empathize and that, like a bonus, is to validate them. So if we, if we can like, really, really listen to our kids and we can empathize and validate, that's where relationship happens. Our kids want to have a relationship with us.
Speaker 2:
But the second we lose the connection and the relationship with our kids. Guess where they're going to go? To their friends who know exactly what they know, or they're going to go online, and the more that we spend time online, we know that algorithm is feeding them what it is that they're looking for. So what we like to say is you are the guide of blank. You are the guide for them to understand technology, and if you're not connected to that, they're going to listen to what is feeding them their friends YouTube, Instagram, snapchat, tiktok, you name it. That is what's feeding them and then that's what's really developing their brain and we have to be so careful because at the end of the day we're geeking out over here on the teenage brain but if we're not helping them set the foundation and give them the skills to be successful, that brain that they're developing now is going to carry with them into adulthood. And their brain is so malleable right now that we can shift, change, adjust.
Speaker 2:
But as an adult it's a lot harder to undo those patterns, those behaviors, those thoughts. So we like to say what's the cost? The cost is when they become an adult they're going to have to spend more money on therapy. They might get into a really toxic relationship that ends in divorce. There's so many things that we're not even thinking about because we have a 10-year-old or we have an 11-year-old. So that is the magnitude of what we want to really highlight. With parents is, like man, we can, and not just parents. It's not just the parents job to do this. You can find people in your community to love on your kids and pour into them the way that you want them to grow and develop.
Speaker 1:
Going back to what you said about empathetic and validation how I love this.
Speaker 1:
So let's kind of dive into how, because you guys, are experts of how, and so when you think about being empathetic, one of the things that came up as you were kind of talking earlier is it's hard for us as a generation.
Speaker 1:
And now you know millennials are having kids and there's some Gen Xers that are having kids and you know grandparents are boomers, and from boomers to millennials there's a disconnect, but now there's an even bigger disconnect with Gen Z, and so it's like how do we be empathetic about a childhood that we didn't experience? Right, and that's such a I know, wow, that's the thing when I was in college, and so, as a parent, I'm thinking about all of these parents out there that you're learning at the same rate as your daughter. The algorithm Instagram is updating, snapchat is updating, tiktok became a thing. You're learning at the same pace as your daughter. And if you're not on those apps, seeing what it's like, or even something as simple as the empathetic of you know, think about how much faster trends happen and at the speed of which those trends are happening, because they're seeing it on social media. And when you go, when I go to my athletes and I show up with my Stanley, stanley's are a thing of the past.
Speaker 1:
It's now on the water bottle and I you know it goes from the hydro to the Stanley, to the wall is in, and something as simple as being empathetic with them about. I understand the pressure you're facing to have the right water bottle.
Speaker 2:
That must be really hard. That must be really hard. The valid right You're validating, I totally get that.
Speaker 2:
Even if you don't understand why. I've experienced that before. You're validating that immediately is like wait, you do. Oh, you see me, you're listening, thank you. Yeah, that's so true. But to go back to you, highlighting how important it is for us as parents to be on these apps and we're not saying that you do need to be up with the latest, greatest trends Follow people who spend time doing that, and then that's where the dialogue and the conversation gets to happen.
Speaker 2:
I know every parent knows when their kiddo really opens up to them. For my kids it is in the car and right before bedtime it's like and then I'm like, oh gosh, here we go, I have five minutes, and but those five minutes can be so impactful. So it's being able to like, just understand their world, understanding that these kids did not choose to come into this generation and we have as a society like they are. They don't know the world without technology, and technology and social media truly is not going anywhere. So, again, as parents, we need to be the ones leading them in technology or whatever it is that they're into, is going to feed them. I'm going to say that, I'm going to constantly be saying that because I want parents to see like, wow, if I'm not connected to, like what they're watching on YouTube or playing on Fortnite or playing on Roblox, like who actually has my kid's ear? And the more that whomever has our kid's ear. That's the messages, the subliminal messages. It's what's feeding their self-image and that's where the negative self-talk comes in. That's where the pressures come in.
Speaker 2:
And all of a sudden, as parents were like whoa, it happened. You were such a confident kid and now there's something going on. Because that's the question and I'm sure you get it too that's the question that we get all the time with our parents. It's like she used to be so happy, she used to be so confident. I don't know what happened. And if we were to like really kind of peel back the layers, it's like what is she influenced by and who is she influenced by? And that's where we were to like really kind of peel back the layers. It's like it's it's what is she influenced by and who is she influenced by. And that's where we need to start and not saying like throw away the cell phone, stop all the things, but it's like being able to monitor it in a healthy way and knowing what it is that she's listening to, watching, so that you can have that healthy dialogue, to be able to listen, to be able to empathize and to be able to validate and then be able to say you know what?
Speaker 2:
okay, I really don't love what she's saying to me and, as opposed to just like jumping down her throat and trying to correct, it's like, okay, I'm listening, I'm taking it all in, and then, hey, maybe at a different time, like we're going to actually talk about how I can teach you how not to do that in the future, because it's going to happen again. Right, it's not an if, it's a when. So, as parents, we want to jump in and solve our kids' problems, but really we need to take the approach of being their consultants, right? It's allowing them to go through the mess ups and then for them to come back to you and be like, ok, cool, let's problem solve this without us jumping in and solving their problems for them.
Speaker 1:
Well, I'm plain curious, asking questions, validating, empathizing that actually brings up. So I guess an example that kind of comes to mind is you were saying you know what feeds them. And so if we tell our athletes if I use an athlete example not to compare yourself, well, what are they seeing Twitter, instagram, recruiting profiles and game changer and their stats and their batting averages? And you're telling them, hey, don't compare yourself to others, but what are we posting as parents, immediately If your daughter wins a tournament, what are you posting the picture of her holding up her trophy on your Facebook page?
Speaker 2:
So what message are you?
Speaker 1:
telling your daughter this is important. So therefore, she's going to crave more of that. And if you go deeper, what I'm hearing you say is connect and build those skills and have those conversations around you are amazing, regardless of how you perform Totally, I love you, no matter how you perform in the softball field. Your stats don't define my love for you, but we assume and I make this mistake too we assume that our kid knows that, but if they're in bed comparison and social media they're going to assume that they're going to let us down or that my parents are analyzing me as well. Oh my gosh, yeah.
Speaker 2:
A hundred percent. And you're right in, in in the, in the context of comparison, like, just don't compare yourself. It's like okay, well, how do I not do that? I've done that for the last 10 years. So you have to also think, if we haven't taught our daughters these skills, it's not going to happen overnight. We have 10 years of programming that we have to decode and unprogram. And where does that start? You're exactly right. I love you, no matter what. And you know what.
Speaker 2:
Let's celebrate those failures, because without failing, you won't ever experience the joy and happiness that winning brings. Right, we can't enjoy these beautiful sunsets without darkness. Right, it's all about opposition. And if they can really start to see that, like man, I have to go through those ugly moments to like really feel the beautiful moments that is so cool, to like express and start for her to like say huh, okay, that kind of makes sense to me. And what did it take for you, even though you failed and we're not even going to say failed, like, even though you learned? Right, there's always a lesson in the loss what did it take for you to put yourself out there? That is so hard? Right, again, we're empathizing, we're validating. I feel you? Do you see anybody else in the bleachers doing what you just did? That took hard work, that took preparation, that took you literally having to do your homework in the car to get to practice, to eat the food right.
Speaker 2:
It's like celebrating that because softball sports one day, all of that is going to go away for them. And if they can start to say, man, I actually have this like inner willpower, this inner lioness, to go and kick ass in my job or in college or in a relationship, those are the transferable skills that we want to highlight and extract, whether they win or lose. But those are the conversations that you want to start to have with your daughter, to start to unprogram all of these things that she's developed over the years. And we can't expect that it's going to happen overnight. Because, truly, why I'm obsessed with this work is because it's given me so much freedom to let go of the stories that I've told myself that I'm not smart enough, that I'm too masculine in my body because I have muscles, right I mean.
Speaker 2:
The list of my woes go on, but I didn't find this work until I was 20. And to me, how lucky for me, because people still in their 40s are struggling with it. So if we can help our kiddos at such a younger age imagine their potential when they do get to 20. And they're like I got this, I got this, I got this. If I fall down, I can just bounce right back up. It might hurt, it might sting, but I'm going to rebound a lot faster.
Speaker 1:
So good, I Jill this. I'm going to have to like think on this, but I just wrote this down. I'm going to have to like think on this, but I just wrote this down. This has got to be like a training or a quotable opposition versus elimination. So, when you said the sunsets versus the darkness, we can't be in a sunset all the time, you can't be in darkness all the time. And the biggest mistake that athletes come to me, especially on one-to-one calls, they say, coach, ab, can you get rid of my frustration, can you help me not to strike out? And it's like that's not possible. We're going to eliminate the strikeouts, we're going to eliminate the failure. That's a false reality, that they're wanting to get rid of these icky experiences and it's like, yeah, going back to that opposition versus elimination.
Speaker 2:
I love it. You cannot eliminate those feelings. So what do you do? And, oh my gosh, right Again, a lot of themes in this podcast is like empathizing it, man. I hate when I feel frustrated. Man, feeling frustrated, is it it? It overwhelms you, it overtakes you. Right, like you, empathize with your daughter.
Speaker 1:
That must feel. Listen to the way that Jill is saying this. So, Jill, you are saying this as a parent, as a parent. Steal these lines, use these lines Like here's the script. Hey, like these exact words.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I see that. I see that you're frustrated because you handle yourself the same way I do validate. I see that you're frustrated because you handle yourself the same way I do validate. I see that you're frustrated because of your body language. You're shutting down Gosh. You act just like me because I do the same thing and you know what it makes sense.
Speaker 2:
I want you to know that you feeling this is temporary and that you need to feel it because you will bounce back, and that's where you insert a strategy. Do you need time for yourself to just breathe or listen to some music? How can I support you? Okay, In five minutes I'll come back and I'm here just to listen or whatever. It is right You're going to have to. As a parent, you got to just try things. You're going to mess up, You're going to say dumb things and you're going to walk away being like what the hell? But then, right, it's just like they need.
Speaker 2:
Our kids need to feel discomfort, period. Parents love to make our babies not feel that and because we love them, not making anybody wrong. But the beauty in feeling the discomfort is that they need to wrestle with it. They need to dance with it. We like to say dance with those fears, Dance with it, because they're going to be able to. You can't go around it, you got to move through it. So if they can dance with it to move through it, then they're going to feel that opposition. They're going to feel frustrated to then calm, or frustrated to joy, frustrated to happiness or just to like an even playing field, Like I'm coming back to myself.
Speaker 1:
Amen. I started crying, I started tearing up when you said how can I support you If you forget anything else in this podcast? Hear that, hear that. We have listeners from all over the country and just recently we just closed enrollment. We have a couple of fearless families from Sweden. We have a member in Sweden Whoa, Do we have the air horn? Yeah, um, so you guys are in Arizona. And so if you were in the Arizona area and you're thinking, oh my gosh, we need to meet Jill, we need to connect with Mary and girls mentorship, what is the best place to connect with you guys?
Speaker 2:
We are very active on the Instagram. So come hang out with us. We would love and truly we say hello to everybody who follows us. It's really important for us. It's like, even though we're online, we're inviting you into our kitchen and you better believe if someone's walking through that front door I'm giving you a big old hug, like welcome to my house, welcome to the family. So come hang out with us, give us a follow over at girls.
Speaker 2:
Mentorship spelled the normal way no Y's or Z's, um and there we love to just like Um and there we love to just like, like coach AB said, like we love to put our pulse on what girls are, are into and what they're experiencing. So trend reports, social media stuff, all the things that you're like whoa, I'm not on Tik TOK, maybe I should be now from this conversation but they're really into. Like we have we know what's going on and we love to put that value out there for families. So come hang out with us there. And then on our Instagram, on our website, we're launching summer camp, so that is coming up all of June. So it's a week-long camp, a Monday through Friday camp 9 to three, four girls ages 10 to 13.
Speaker 2:
But we also have peer leaders who are high school to come in and support and lead and develop their skills as well, and we're running six weeks of that, so all of June, every single week in June, and then two weeks in July we're skipping the 4th of July week. So check out all of that information on our website, our Instagram, and we would be thrilled to have out-of-state families come join us and even Coach AB, depending on when this podcast airs. I'm happy to send your listeners a code if they are interested or whatever, if they want to buy a ticket and come hang out with us in Arizona, we can do something to say thank you to your audience and get you know a hundred bucks off their ticket or something.
Speaker 1:
That's incredible and I always say you guys know when you listen to our podcast that any resources we'll link below in the show notes. So if you can't find it, you can always DM us. You can DM Jill and Mary and say that you listened to the fearless warrior podcast and this community and Instagram is how we connected so totally.
Speaker 2:
Yes, and now we're. Now we're fast friends. You know social media can be, you know it could be healthy and it can be unhealthy. In this situation, it was definitely a healthy um, a healthy exchange Impact impacting.
Speaker 1:
I love it Well healthy a healthy exchange Impact. Impacting. I love it. Well, jill, thank you so much. Send Mary my hellos. I will, and I appreciate your time today, of course.
Speaker 2:
Thank you so much and listeners catch on the next episode. Huh Bye everyone.
