This is part of the transcript from a high school leadership workshop Dr. Lauber conducted in Indiana, PA in 2011.

Well, let’s start – I think I handed out a sheet of paper to everyone.  If you didn’t get a sheet of paper, raise your hand.  Blank sheet of paper, and you all have pens.  We’re just going to make this interactive as we go.

At the top of the sheet of paper, I want you to draw a line all the way across.  And on one side, the left-hand side, put the number 0.  And on the right-hand side, put the number 90.

Right across the top margin of the sheet of paper is your personal timeline, folks, if you live to 90.  You make to 90, hey, this is what your life is like.

Okay, let’s divide that in half, put a mark there and label it 45.  That’s when you’re going to hit at your halfway point.  That’s about how old I am.

Now let’s go to the left and divide that in half again, and that should be 22.5, if I did my math correctly.  And what happens at 22.5 roughly?  What’s the major milestone most people hit around that age?

Correct, graduation from college.  I’ll just write “graduate from college” there.  Let’s divide that in half again.  Let’s go down to 11.25.  I can’t think of a major milestone there, but let’s label that 11.25.  And then, let’s put your current age.  So if you’re 16, 15, try to define that mark, label that where you’re at now and just call it “now.”  All the advisors are kind of bummed because they’re not anywhere near that part of the line anymore.

Here’s the first thing to recognize, folks.  How far along are you in your timeline?  Not very far, not very far.  You’re just at the beginning of this.  Here’s another thing.  Have you changed since you were 11?  Everybody, agree?  Do you know some 11-year-olds?  Are they sevvies?  What’s below 11, 6th graders?  In our high school, they call them sevvies if you’re a 7th grader.

Question: you’re very different from a 5th grader, aren’t you?  You’ve made a lot of changes in three or four years to where you are now.  Extrapolate that for the next 75 years.  There’s a long way to go and lots of changes ahead.  Hey, that’s good news.  You’re not going to be the exact same way, 10 years from now, that you are today.  But there has to be a process of self discovery and self growth.  There’s going to be a lot of changes that go on.

So let’s ask ourselves “What are we shooting for?”  Let’s go down to the 90 point on the timeline. We’re going to write a couple of things here.  You’re going to do it yourself.  Incidentally, I’m not collecting these, so this is just for your own benefit.

I recently read some interesting survey results.  They did this survey with thousands of people across countries all over the planet.  And they asked, “What would a satisfied life look like?  What are the most important things in life?”  I want you to write a couple of quick answers for yourself.  What do you think, at age 90, you’re going to say to yourself are the most important things in life?

I need some people to give me a couple other answers so we can hear them out loud just so we can all benefit from all the creative thought in the room.  What’s a potential answer to this?  What do you think are the answers?  Raise your hand.  Yeah?

A big family?  All right.  Thank you. Excellent answer.  What do you think?

Peace and health, good answer.  We’ve got one over here.

Nutrition, being healthy and nutritious.  Any other answers?

Friends.  Everybody, agree?  Now you can benefit from their answers.  Yes?

Happiness, thank you.  What’s your answer?

Knowing you made the best of what you had, that you did all that you could do.  The Army motto, “Be all you can be.” Perfect.  I need one or two more answers.  Yeah?

Adventure, getting to see new places.  How about you?

A house.  How about material well-being?  Wouldn’t we all like to be kind of well off?  One more.

Education, having a nice education and keeping your mind stimulated.

Great answers.  You can write these down if you want to, folks.  This just gives us goals.  What are we shooting for?  When it’s all said and done, we would like these things.

So let me share with you the results of this international survey compared to your answers.  Write them down if you’d like to.

Here are the top six answers: Social Relationships. I think, somebody said friends, that sounds close.  Family, we heard that right away,  Material well-being, we heard that as well.  Job satisfaction – it sounds really important, right? Health, we heard that also. Outside activities, I guess that means hobbies and things like that that keep us satisfied.

Those are kind of what you’re shooting for in our life story – in YOUR life story.  So now the question becomes “How?”  How are we going to make this happen?