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Speaker urges H-BC students to 'find harness' in roller coaster of their lives

Lead Summary
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By
Mavis Fodness

Motivational speaker Cory Greenwood encouraged Hills-Beaver Creek students to write on an index card one thing that gives them pain and discard that pain into a box.
Dozens of students rose from the gymnasium bleachers in Hills Monday morning to do just that.
The index cards join about 20,000 cards Greenwood has collected since 2019 when he began speaking about his own personal experiences.
He offered tips on how to find positive solutions to life’s problems and push past the limiting beliefs people put on themselves.
Dressed in a black T-shirt with the words, “The World needs You,” Greenwood introduced the sixth- through 12th-grade students and staff to various experiences in his life growing up in Grand Meadow, Minnesota.
“When I was your age, I thought the most important thing was what everybody in this room thought of me,” he said.
Years later, as an adult he sees those irrational thoughts magnified by social media and cell phones.
“One day you come to school and you have all these friends — finally I fit in, people see me for who I am and they like me — only to go home and see everybody is laughing at you online because they only wanted you to believe you were their friend. It was all just a joke.
“I know being a teenager is hard. It’s like being on a roller coaster ride,” he said.
Greenwood, who lives in Rochester, shared with the H-BC students that he recently visited Valley Fair Amusement Park with his daughter, and as they were about to enjoy a roller coaster ride, he noticed the restraining harness had a six-inch gap over his daughter’s shoulders.
As the duo hung upside down during the ride, he was relieved that the slack harness held his daughter inside the coaster and kept her safe.
He encouraged students to find the one person — or that harness —that keeps them grounded and on a positive path to the future. Parents, grandparents, a friend, ministers or anyone who could be a positive mentor.
“You see when I was your age, I thought I didn’t need anybody,” he said.
“I thought the popularity was enough. The girl was enough. The partying was enough. That was enough to numb the pain.”
Greenwood told of his teenage desire to have a relationship with his father. When his father reached out to him when Greenwood was 18, he was too angry to listen.
His father’s suicide when Greenwood was 19 led Greenwood to hold even more feelings inside over his father’s death.
His “harness” encouraged Greenwood to write a letter to his late dad as a healthy release of feelings. Greenwood wrote the letter eight years ago.
“This letter allowed me to breathe again — allowed me to start living again,” he said.
Greenwood said everyone has painful events in their life but the decision to let the pain go allows the past to fall away and have a future free from that mental pain.

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