Tom Brown

“The Dash in the Middle”

An exclusive interview with Tom Brown, community leader and founder of Training Grounds, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to offer Personal Development, Professional Skills and Entrepreneurship Training to youth and young adults. Brown is also a mentor to thousands of youth and young adults, changing their lives for the better.

If you need someone that can offer a listening ear, words of wisdom and the message that we are more than our bank balances and educational backgrounds, then Tom Brown is the man for you. Possessing knowledge and wisdom uncommon for a man barely out of his 30s, Brown tells me that no matter how difficult our lives are right now that we have just as much self-worth as anyone else. He says that we cannot allow external things to define who we are and that we need to embrace our value and worth.

Brown is humble when telling his story: raised by a poor mother and being abused by his often absent, drug-addicted father, Brown struggled against the pervasive pressures of drugs and violence to make it out the other side. Once out, it was not so easy either - 13 years ago after losing a business and surviving the public exposure of personal information, Brown admits to a suicide attempt. He believed he was no good, was not a productive part of society and felt nothing but shame, embarrassment and pain. When asked what got him through, he says that he finally and not easily realized his self-worth even if that worth was simply  to have woken up that day. His message is clear and one that he himself struggled to learn:

Most of us fall into the trap of believing that we have to have the great job, the great house or the perfect relationship to be worthy. Brown tells us that our feeling of self worth starts with knowing that we have the great advantage of simply waking up today, breathing the air around us and that we can change the past by simply making a different decision – today. Sure, some of us may have woken up on the street, or in a downsized apartment after losing our job, or in a bad relationship, but we have all woken up and that is the common ground we all share. Brown says that the man who is homeless is worth more than the man who dies in a mansion – simply because he is alive and has the chance to change.

He tells us to just stick around, embrace the humanity that we are offered and allow life to unfold. He wisely tells us that millions before us do not have the privilege of being here and now, of breathing our share of oxygen, of having the opportunity to change the past by taking a different action today. He says that if we could only see that our worth and our value are in our living, then we can then build upon this foundation of self-worth and confidence and make our lives and the lives of our families better.

Lastly, he leaves me with two images – one is that we should look at our lives like a cash register tape – every time we wake up, take a breath, and do the everyday things we do – that we are adding to the tape and increasing our value. He says that when you look at your life in that way, you will say “Wow, I did all of that?” The second image is that of a gravestone – how a person’s life is typically memorialized with a born date and a death date. He wants us to ignore those dates and instead think about the “dash in the middle.” Brown says that life is as simple and as profound as that – the dash in the middle – and I believe him.

Guiding Lights Weekend Information

Tom Brown: "The Imaginative Mentor"

WORKSHOP: Youth Entrepreneurs - A Business Plan, a Life Plan

Saturday, Session 2 – starting at 1 p.m.

Profiled in two nationally released books: Guiding Lights: People who Lead Us to Our Purpose in Life by Eric Liu, and I Said Yes by Julie Kantor, Executive Director, NFTE DC (National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship), Tom’s mission is to help young people gain the marketable skills and winning perspective necessary to succeed in today’s competitive employment market.

Donate to Training Grounds through Network for Good.