A Radically Different, Refreshingly Positive, Totally Customized Approach To Helping Teens

What I do is unconventional. And it gets results.

If your teen is struggling, chances are he or she isn’t mentally ill and doesn’t need psychotherapy. Until now, parents concerned about their teen, had few options. Hire a shrink. Get a prescription. Take a parenting class. Tough it out… Now there is something else you can do to help your teen besides the conventional paths.

Therapists help teens solve problems. I help teens grow into people for whom those kinds of situations just aren’t problems

Therapy diagnosis and treats psychological disorders and mental illness. I help those who are simply struggling with growing-up issues and are not mentally ill at all.

Therapy helps teens cope with reality. I help teens lead thriving lives in spite of the obstacles they face (and today’s teens face more than most adults realize)

Therapists ask “What’s wrong? What bothering you? Tell me more.” I ask, “What do you want? What’s working? Let’s build on your strengths and teach you what works.”

What Sets Evolution Mentoring Apart: 5 Biggest Differences:

Somatics – All change begins in the body, not the mind. Ancient wisdom understood this. Modern science has proven it. Modern psychology though is still obsessed with feelings and thoughts.

I teach the most sophisticated body-awareness, internal-control techniques available anywhere in the world – and have taught them on 3 continents and 10 countries. I will teach them to your teen too.

Sophisticated Success Skills – Most problems teens have are resolved when they have the tools and the maturity to implement them. 70% of what I teach teens are communication skills, Decisions making skills, relationship skills and to have the discipline to achieve their personal greatness.

24/7, 365 - It takes more than 50 minutes a week listening to problems to change a person’s life. Therefore I am available to teens as life is happening. My clients have access to me by phone, text, etc, never needing to wait for a future appointment to get input when a situation is urgent, a question is weighing or support will make the difference between failure and serious success.

Positive Bias & The Right Brain - My clients learn to always orient towards possibilities and solutions, regardless of how stressful life may be or the challenges they face. They learn to avoid negativity and negative people and to build alliances with positive minded people. They develop their creativity and critical- thinking skills, gaining access to ‘right brain’ thinking – the kind of thinking most cutting edge experts agree will be critical for success in the 21st Century.

Results - Clients who come to me in crisis, generally experience positive change in their lives in a matter of a few sessions. Those who come seeking character and skill development, find continual benefit as the relationship we form, the mentoring I offer and the resources I point them towards becomes an invaluable resource as they advance their lives and meet the challenges of growing-up.

Four Types Of Teens Who Will Benefit Immediately

Offices in Marin (Mill Valley), San Francisco,  New York & London. Clients anywhere the phone and internet can reach – currently includes Florida, Massachusetts, Arizona, Texas, New Jersey, Colorado, Washington, Washington DC, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Denmark, Israel, Ireland,  Spain. The point: There are no obstacles when this is the right match.

• Teens who are struggling with the demands of teen life and it is effecting their overall well-being:

• Stress
• Motivation
• Decision making
• Academic pressure
• Social issues (too much drama or not enough!)

Once they implement the things I can teach them, they will begin to find life getting easier and better. They’ll be more at-ease, more positive, lighter and more hopeful. They will be happier, more confident, more secure, more sure of themselves and better prepared for life’s inevitable challenges.

• Teens who are smart, sensitive and deeper thinking and struggling to be themselves in an otherwise shallow, short sighted world.

These kids often find it hard to find fulfillment in today’s shallow, hedonistic, instant-gratification teen world. Some get discouraged. Others just get angry with the stupidity and hypocrisy.

They do not need to be in any crisis to work with me. Many aren’t. Rather their parents recognize the profound value of offering a kid like theirs a resource like this that feeds their soul.

These kids need the kind of relationship, support, guidance and education they get here. I believe in the depths of my soul, if the world was filled with the quality and caliber of people these kids are trying to be, we wouldn’t have the problems our world now has. If we help kids like yours grow into the quality and caliber of people they can become, one day we won’t have the problems we now have.

• College Students (and post-grads) who are lost, struggling and needing immediate help finding direction and getting their young adult life moving and happening now. This is the second fastest growing segment of my client-base. This is a whole different domain of mentoring, involving a re-education as well as a new education. Results will begin happening by the end of our first session.

• On occasion, I will work with a teen in crisis. If however they have serious substance abuse issues or severe family pathology, I will refer them to those who specialize in this. The intervention (NOT TREATMENT) I offer is intense, time demanding and requires a substantial investment. If you are the right kind of family for me to work with, you will also see very quick results – often within two months or less. Due to the demanding nature of this work, I only take two clients like this at a time.

The Challenging Journey Of The Smart, Sensitive, Perceptive Teen

Life presents challenges to all teens. It is especially challenging for those who are more thoughtful, sensitive and perceptive. 

They don’t find true contentment in the shallow, short-sighted, self-absorbed peer culture that dominates modern teen life. They grow frustrated with school busy work and the bureaucratic hoops they must jump through to gain college admission… Perhaps most challenging of all, how frustrating – even lonesome – it can be, finding people they can really talk with who truly get what they are thinking and going through, and who can help them navigate their way through it to build for themselves a deep and fulfilling, authentic life.

They also face these challenges

• Staying positive and hopeful, when the culture at large is so indifferent or negative
• Managing the intensity of what it is to feel so much, think  so much and question so much
• Leading a meaningful life that is deeply satisfying, intellectually, personally and/or creatively

Often they are more creative. They are more alert, more attentive, more engaged. They notice the subtle details others miss. They feel strongly and want to share this with others. Most importantly, they know instinctively that there must be so much to life than school work, where they go to college, how popular they are or how much money they make… They may have all those things, but none of them satisfy their criteria of what makes a life truly satisfying and truly worthwhile.

If you are raising teens who fits this description, the Mentoring offered here will make a huge impact in their lives.

Learn More Testimonials FAQ’s Benefits Newsletter

Who Are DreamKids?

A Third Voice

Whether we like it or not, there are two voices that our kids will listen to as they make the decisions, form the beliefs and choose the values that will shape their lives: #1: Yours as parents. #2: The collective voice of society.

Unfortunately, by the time they are teens, Voice #2 has far more influence on most of them. . . and it is not a voice that is setting them up to thrive.

Fortunately there is something very powerful you can do now that can override the negative effect of that Second Voice… but you must do it while there is still time.

Learn How

Evolution Mentoring Works. Here’s Why

For an untold number of reasons we’ve lost the role of elder in our modern societies. This means children, especially adolescents and young adults, are often  left to their own devices to figure out what life is all about. This process driven by trial and error often leads to significant and serious errors that are unnecessary because they don’t have a trusted advisor to turn to before crisis hits. Many of them won’t turn to parents precisely because their way to prove their autonomy is to prove they can handle things without needing the advice of the exact people they are establishing their autonomy from – namely their parents.

I’ve built my career around building the critically important relationship with them that they need during this stage of life…  holding that space where these teens and young adults can find the answers they seek … not in conversation, but by example and the direct advice that can only come from experience and expertise.

Brief Background of how my Evolution Mentoring model came to be:

I recognized very early on in my career that 99% of teens do not psychotherapy because they are not dealing with mental illness or psychological disorders. Rather they are struggling with growing up issues, and they need tools, perspective and training that equips them to manage the complexities of their lives.

The most effective way I have discovered for delivering this to this age group, is through creating a unique Mentoring relationship that is unlike any other in their life. I become a trusted adult advisor with whom they not only can turn to at any time but whom they also want to turn to and have in their lives.

This is modeled on the ancient practice of Mentoring and Apprenticing that was commonly done until the 20th Century. It is also based on models like Obi Wan Kenobi and other mythical Wise Elders who show up in a young person’s life to help them find their strengths, face their fears and set them on their way to thrive in life. My own personal models for this were primarily my paternal Grandfather, several teachers I had in college and graduate school, and Dr. Joseph Riggio who mentored and trained me in the powerful skill-set of Soma-Semantics and the MythoSelf Process. 

I call what I do for teens and young adults, being a Third Voice™:

Parents and adult caregivers are the First Voice of influence. The collective society – peers, pop-culture, etc – form a cacophony of noise that makes an often overwhelming Second Voice. Then I, as their mentor, offer a powerful and often invaluable Third Voice… a Third Voice that helps them navigate their way through the various opinions, distractions and temptations of life, to ensure they make the right decisions to lead the right life for themselves… a life that will be deeply satisfying personally and professionally.

My niche are teens and young adults who are deeper thinking, more sensitive and often very perceptive and smart. They have unique gifts that come with unique challenges.

Their common challenges are:

•  Because they tend to feel things in a more intense way, things that most teens easily move on from, they tend to be deeply effected by (for better or for worse) 
• They also tend to be overly critical of themselves. 
• They can get distracted by an often constant dialogue running in their heads as they over-think almost everything.

 At their best though these qualities make them:

• Far more likely to find real love & form deep lasting friendships
• Recognize incongruence’s and hypocrisies’ in the system and become adept at finding leverage points to create influence in a positive way in the world
• Succeed in challenging, often competitive careers, in spite of the obstacles and challenges they will face 

My clients are the types of teens who will do things like one or more of these:

• Aspire to be Olympic athletes (literally in some cases but mostly as in there is no such things as ‘good enough’ as their pursue their interests and goals).. 
• They are the ones who want to start their own businesses, follow unconventional paths, and wind up succeeding as they do. 
• They are teaching themselves foreign languages, reading the classics, following political bloggers – giving themselves the education they don’t get in the classroom
• They are ones who prefer having lasting girlfriend/boyfriend relationships (instead of just hooking up), even when this isn’t the norm and when true love and loyalty is hard to find
• They are the ones who become leaders and influencers because they desire to right the wrongs of the world. 
• They are often the creative types, artists, film makers, designers, etc…  But they aren’t satisfied just toying around with their guitar in their free time: They aren’t satisfied until they are entering films into Film Festivals, getting impossible to get internships and jobs in the fashion industry and pursuing excellence in their crafts… 

On the outside they tend to look like any other modern teen. They can be highly social, involved in sports and other extracurriculars, working hard to get good grades… and they can also be more internal, more introverted, preferring alone time or a few friends.

 For every one who doesn’t go to college at all and still finds a deeply satisfying life, a dozen more are not just going to colleges but getting admitted to many of the elite colleges and unversities around the world.

Though their interests and passions can be in any area of life, all of them connect and commit deeply to the people and things that matter to them and to achieving excellence in these areas too.

I call this work I do Evolution Mentoring™

This work helps young people like them to not just manage the challenges of their teen lives (internally, socially, parental, academic, athletic, etc), but to learn and grow from these challenges to ensure that they evolve into thriving young adults.  To me they have truly arrived when they can function autonomously, enter into and sustain deeply satisfying relationships and careers, and make meaningful contribution to the world.

Specifically I help all my clients:

• Find their life’s direction and cultivate the tools, capacity and attitude to achieve success
• Find and build relationships with all the right people 
• Find their own unique authentic voice and gain the confidence to use it

Mentoring is a process both of education/training and modeling.

I am not just teaching my clients how to get these kinds of results, I am modeling it. Thus the relationship they have with me feels real because it is real.  It is also not bound by 50 minute sessions in an office as my clients can call, text, skype, IM, etc as needed to ensure they get the input they need in a timely way. We meet out in the world, I know their families and friends and occasionally they even come to know mine.

Evolution Mentoring is a results based practice. Thus I do not charge for my time. Instead I charge for the room to do what it takes to get results. Fees begin at $1800/month ($8500 for 6 months) for Unlimited Access. A lower level of access is offered in select circumstances for $575/month. 

Because of technology, Evolution Mentoring does not depend on where you live. Though I am based in the San Francisco Bay Area (with offices in San Francisco and Marin), more than half my clients are spread out around the world, connecting on skype, etc. I also typically do regular visits to New York to meet  east coast clients in person multiple times per year. 

Unlimited Access includes the time we meet in person,on phone, skype, etc. It includes access to me via text, IM, etc. Most messages are returned within 2 hours or less, and often I will be able to answer the moment a client reaches out to me. Often these impromptu conversations which may only be a few minutes in length, prove to be the amongst the most valuable exchanges we have – where one 10 minute chat can feel worth months worth of investment.

That is the power of Evolution Mentoring and it is the reason I only work with the right clients who are committed to working with me in the right way to make this work.

Comprehensive Initial Consultations are always free. Expect they will last several hours in most cases. We have to determine if this is the right match before we both commit to working together.

Results Happen Quickly: If we do work together, your teen we will begin experiencing results almost instantly – they will be lighter, more hopeful, more talkative and more confident. At first this may last only for a few days at a time…  but soon enough this way of life will integrate and permeate who they are and the quality of life they will come to live.. a quality of life I aim to help make extraordinary. 

To learn more, contact me directly at 415.441.8218 or email Jeff@Leiken.com