Eli Gasinu - SavvyGirl Success: Planting the Seeds to Evolve into a Successful Whole Woman

SAVVYGIRL SUCCESS

Copyright 2021 Eli Gasinu

All rights reserved.

Published by Publish Your Gift

An imprint of Purposely Created Publishing Group, LLC

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ISBN: 978-1-64484-502-8 (print)

ISBN: 978-1-64484-503-5 (ebook)

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Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.

Harriet Tubman

To the SavvyGirl Superpower who continues to beam bright in her own luminescent light.

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to my parents, Koku Gasinu, MD and Stella Gasinu, RN, for exemplifying excellence and instilling that within me.

Thank you to my coach, Draion (Dr. Drai) Burch, DO, who challenged me to tap even deeper into my own SavvyGirl Superpower to write this book.

WHO IS DOCTOR ELI?

I am the embodiment of excellence established in my bloodline even before truly understanding the significance of the calling.

I was born in Ghana, West Africa. My grandfather was a nurse anesthetist and a primary community healthcare provider in a country with limited resources. My mother followed in his footsteps by going into nursing. My father, who was top of his medical school class, became a physician. Through my father, I learned what excellence as a physician looked like during the Take Your Daughter to Work Day Initiative in junior high school. Now, I had a blueprint. It was there that my childhood dream turned into a solidified goal of becoming a physician.

Prior to becoming a physician, I had a myriad of valuable and enriching experiences, including saving a mans life. Doing so solidified my desire to make a difference in peoples lives by caring for their most precious possessiontheir health. I learned the true power of mentorship within my decade-long involvement with the Student National Medical Association pipeline, especially during my award-winning tenure as the Regional Director for pre-medical students. I consider it my coaching foundation for advocating for and mentoring young people.

Everyone has their own unique journey toward success. Mine had a few challenges during the medical school process, but I overcame them by remembering my foundation and passion. My journey serves as inspiration and fuel for our young people to keep their eyes on their prize and to continue dreaming and setting goals, despite unforeseen limitations. I serve as a bridge to assist parents and caregivers as they help the young people in their lives move toward a path of great success.

THE ADOLESCENT JOURNEY

Teenagers are in a transformational stage in their lives. Many things are ever-changing with their bodies, their relationships, and especially within themselves. It is an important time to create real excellence academically. And many of us focus on academic excellence, since education is a large component of the success equation. But how do they maneuver with their successes and failures along the way? How do they formulate the right relationships to take their intellectual success to the highest places? How do they foster a strong sense of self that allows them to withstand all obstacles without breaking? Yes, that takes the natural physiological and biological maturation, but it also takes strengthening other components of their intellect, including social and emotional.

Everyone knows that social and emotional intelligence are important. However, less attention is given to them, especially during the adolescent journey. Sometimes, people feel as if they just come with maturation. And yes, some of it does, but it is best achieved with guided maturation. Just as we guide teens through their academic journey, they need guidance along their social and emotional journey. Some parents feel as if they never truly got the best handle on the social and emotional intelligence side of things themselves to truly be able to teach it to their teens in ways that will guarantee full, well-rounded, and whole excellence and success in their teenagers. And some parents, for all the varied reasons, are working through it themselves in adulthood.

That is where SavvyGirl Success comes into play. It is an opportunity for guided maturation in other parts of intellect to help our teen girls be whole, fully well-rounded, and ready for the fullness of adulthood because they have a complete set and wide variety of tools in their tool belt, ready to use whenever the circumstance requires them. But to get to that level of SavvyGirl Success, you must understand all that is behind that SavvyGirl and her journey toward her success.

THE STAGES OF ADOLESCENCE

Before we enter the world of the SavvyGirl Success, lets talk a little bit about the physiological and psychosocial aspects of teens during their adolescent journey.

The adolescent period is approximately a decade long. It is a great time of change and crucial in human development. It is the bridge connecting the dependence of childhood with the independence of adulthood. Although early childhood life experiences begin to lay the foundation for temperament and personality, it is the life experiences in the adolescent period that make those personalities unique characteristics. Every teenager undergoes great social and emotional changes during this time, but every teenager undergoes those changes in unique ways to develop their unique qualities. In a nutshell, adolescence is a period of great growth.

Early Adolescence: 11-14 years old

Physiologically, early adolescence typically involves significant body changes through puberty and growth spurts beginning with girls. Additionally, during early adolescence, girls undergo changes involving the menstrual cycle.

Psychosocially, this is the period of concrete and egocentric thought. Teens within this period are very black and white about most subject matters. Additionally, everything is about them, making them more self-centered and self-absorbed, which creates more self-consciousness, especially with their appearance and what their peers think. They also tend to stay within their same-sex peer groups during this stage. They are starting to question independence but remain heavily dependent on the leadership of their parental figures and role models.

Middle Adolescence: 15-17 years old

In middle adolescence, the physiological changes in girls are ending, and they generally start to experience normalization of their menstrual cycle. The puberty changes continue in boys, and they begin to experience a growth spurt.