Ep. 212 - Anna Koppelman: How to Find Your World... Where You Belong

Anna Koppelman is an angel. She's the angel I wish I had looking over me back when I was being bullied. When I was a kid, it was "Lord of The Flies" on the playground. Nobody cared at all. Kids would kill each other at recess and whoever survived went back to class. But it's different now. Bullying is a thing. It has a voice. And there's a way out of the world of "you're not good enough" and into the world where you belong... I read an article on Facebook that was going viral:"What I know Now As a Teen With Dsylexia." Anna Koppelman wrote it. Then she kept writing. When I read the article, I thought Anna was one of those alien millennials taking over the world. But even worse, she's not a millenial. Ever since birth she's been on the Internet. She's an eleventh grader. Which makes her 17 or so. Generation Z... it's a totally different animal. Anna started a charity when she was 12 years old. At 14, she asked the Huffington Post to publish her work. They said yes. Then she wrote about dyslexia, bullying, intelligence, her crushes, her rejections, and each article felt like it was going a level deeper. Her writings were read everywhere by teens who had been through similar experiences. I wish I had this as a kid. A world where I could talk to people going through what I was going through. A way to connect to my "tribe". Or a way to reach out to people and we could all figure out we weren't alone. "I couldn't not say it," she said. "I had this feeling at school and in my life of just not being able to connect with people... I had a feeling of isolation since first grade, like there was Saran wrap between me and the rest of the world." Here's what I learned from Anna Koppelman about finding out where you belong... 1. Figure out another way When Anna's "friends" discovered she couldn't read, they laughed. "You're not smart enough to be our friend," they said. She was pushed out of the tribe. But then she learned from a moose. "I was watching the children's show, 'Arthur.' And there was this kid on there. He was a moose. He had dyslexia. So I turned to my parents and said, 'I have dyslexia.'" "How did this moose exhibit the dyslexia?" "It was all just about the same feelings that I was feeling... where he was behind in his class, but he had all these great ideas he wanted to get out but couldn't. And the feeling of being trapped because there's something in your brain that's processing differently." But she found another way. And learned how to read. But kids kept making fun of her. For the next 10 years. "I just wanted to connect with people," she said. "When I would write, I would be able to connect with people. When I would perform poetry, I would be able to connect with people." "What do you mean perform poetry?" I was confused. Because it sounded like her life was miserable at school. And instead of going to school with the eye patch and going straight home, she'd head back out to go read slam poetry in front of a dozen+ strangers. "What made you do that?" "I knew that no matter how awful school was there was a world outside of school and I just needed to find that world." 2. Use your skills Anna started out writing about her interests. People spend years writing about things outside themselves. I did too. But for years I was afraid to write about the things that really scared me, or drove me, or kept me up at night. I was afraid to write about the things that shamed me. Or I was afraid because I wondered what people would think. So I wanted to learn, what did Anna, at age 14, do differently? Start with craft. Write everyday. Use your brain. Develop your analytical muscle. Build your skills. Talent is the ignition in the car. Many people have talent. Many people never turn on the car. Many people never drive the car to get to their destination. Skills are just talent in its infancy. 3. Create from one layer deeper I asked Anna about... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.