Testimonials - What are participants saying?

Parents

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Family goal setting. "Running Start helped me use my judgment to figure out which objectives are more important than others . . . I enjoyed knowing which [objectives] I believed were more important to me and realizing how many I even think about . . . Process is helping me plan for our future, making steps to reach goals, setting time frames . . . The goals are set to improve my life. This is a challenge to try to accomplish."

Mentoring teenager. "My wife and I feel like we need a parent's guide. Our son completed Running Start two weeks ago and now talks and acts like a different person. He's taking initiative and asking us for help. It's like he changed from passive to active over night. But we find we are moving too slow for him, still saying the same old things to the boy he was two weeks ago."

Social Service Agency Staff

CEO. "Family goal setting is very important – to the families we work with but also to our agency. It’s a requirement in continuing our funding. We have to check the box in our review process. But with Running Start there’s a lot more behind the box. It brings out the best aspirations, builds real achievable plans, helps with career development. Our job is to break the cycle of poverty."

Family Service Staff. "Running Start helped set more and better goals, get deeper personal insights, clarify priorities and organize objectives and projects. The vision for the long term helps with the goals, and will motivate pursuing them over time."

Career Counselor

"I have been working with individuals for over 30 years in various work environments including: Social Security, Ticket to Work, Workers Compensation, Workforce Investment, Veterans Services and State Vocational Rehabilitation. The “Running Start” tool helps individuals transform beyond their barriers to career and life success. I know, because I use it for myself. The coach’s manual is easily transferable to education, employment & training and vocational rehabilitation professions."

Corporate Trainer

"Running Start organized a lot of complexity in my life in ways that not only articulated my loftiest goals, but made them attainable. Fabulous! Now it is helping my most challenging clients."

Veteran

"After leaving the army and some time in civil service and industry, I utilized the Running Start Process to define exactly what my core purpose in life was, and more importantly, just how to go about achieving it with day-to-day actions. I built a life plan that energizes me and guides me thought tough times and good times. My clarity of focus and understanding of purpose is recognized by those around me and I am able to help many of my friends and family realize their core purpose also."

College Counselor

"This process works extremely well for counseling multiple kinds of people in varying situations, including college students. I particularly think of one senior who had been through every counselor and every test our office provided, to no avail. Finally I took her through the seven steps and we drilled down to the realization that no-one before had ever helped her thoroughly define and articulate her own personal aspirations – and show her how to achieve them.

She was thrilled with the ability to create her plan for herself from within her own imagination, rather than being shoe-horned into a box based on some source outside herself such as an interest inventory or personality type indicator."

"As a professional counselor whose time is pressed, I especially value the software’s ability to facilitate group counseling. What works really well is setting up students in pairs with the counselor efficiently guiding a large group, in one or more sessions."

High School Guidance Counselor

"Running Start is an investment in the future that my students cannot afford to pass up. It is the hope for their future success. It teaches students a process that helps them be enthusiastic about their lives. Above all, it helps them become accountable for their own futures, and lets me be accountable for helping them achieve their goals. The best gift we can give our youth is a roadmap of their futures."

Adult Education Coordinator

"Running Start process has been carefully crafted to give my students the ability to think big and plan small, manageable steps. It is a wonderful process for helping them get in touch with their dreams. It helps them to stop, ponder, reflect and plan. Very useful!"

Teacher

"What a program! This was quite an eye opener for me. This program could be used in the classroom setting to help students learn how to plan out long term projects."

State Official

"Running Start™ is the best process I have seen - and believe me, I've seen them all! What I like is that it is so personal. It's the only process out there that allows students to really take control. "

Youth Program Administrator

"Five years ago I started a federal program that addresses the needs of low-risk juvenile offenders, people who are most often given community service sentences.'

"Before using Running Start™, my interaction with members was sporadic. Those who could ask for my time and attention got it, otherwise they didn't. The only way some members had to deal with their issues was to create a crisis. Program members had no way to look inside themselves, no opportunities to be self-aware. "

"Running Start™ has given me a way to interact with them, to get to the real core of what is true for them and who they really are. It also gives them a process in which they can validate their conclusions about who they want to be in the future. There is a lot less negative or crisis dynamics in the group. I'm a lot more efficient, and they are getting more from their time with me."

"Running Start™ is compatible with all the other tools we use. It gives members a timetable and a framework for making choices about what they want to do with their vision and goals. For me, the most important measure of success is to create young citizens who will be productive citizens. That's the bottom line!"

Students

"The best thing is that I was free to think about what I really want. I like it that the program asked how I want to live, rather than just what I want to do."
"It really all came together for me. I liked seeing the Matrix of where I'm at – it's very different from just talking about it. The Matrix made it very clear what I need to do right now!"
"I took one look at the Matrix and said, “Wow – that shows me exactly where I am at this very moment!” What I like best is that the whole plan is down on paper now. That feels very different from having ideas running around in your head."
"I thought the software was well organized. It was easy for me to go back and add things to sections I had already done. The big surprise was that I created more ideas about my future than I ever had before."
" Running Start™ was much better than any of the other programs I've done in Career Ed. or Guidance. The step-by-step script really worked."
"This was the first time I really saw the steps I will have to take to achieve my dreams."
"It would be valuable for all kids to have a course that taught this process, so we could do it again, whenever we wanted to."

Running Start™ Testimonials

Users of Running Start™ share their experiences (and their photos).

Go to Testimonials Slide Show (Shockwave)

Personal Success