LAKELAND | Champion wrestler and mixed martial arts fighter Daniel Puder on Friday told about 120 young people from Lakeland and Melbourne about his experience being bullied as a child.
LAKELAND | Champion wrestler and mixed martial arts fighter Daniel Puder on Friday told about 120 young people from Lakeland and Melbourne about his experience being bullied as a child.
One might think he advised the participants in the Youth Leadership Group hosted by the Lakeland Police Athletic League to learn how to fight, as he did.
Not even close.
The key to end bullying lies in fulfillment, not fists, Puder said.
“If somebody’s ful- filled, they’re not going to be bullying people,” he said. “If somebody’s fulfilled, that gives them self-confidence, and they won’t be bullied.“
It was the fulfillment he gained as a professional athlete that turned around his life, said Puder, executive director of My Life My Power, a not-for-profit organization he founded two years ago to work with youth on anti-bullying and self-development.
Puder was bullied as a youngster growing up in California with reading problems, which got him labeled as a “slow learner” and put in special education classes, he told the PAL members.
He first publicly talked about being bullied during a November 2010 interview on the TV entertainment show TMZ, Puder said. When he offered to show up at any school with a bullying problem, Puder got more than 10,000 emails from 12 countries during the next eight weeks.
My Life My Power was born the following July.
Puder summarized his program at the end of his hourlong presentation — mixing talk, games and audience participation — in three words:
Hope — what dreams motivate you;
Plan — set goals to achieve that dream; and
Friends — find mentors to guide you to success.
“Most of the people I hang out with are over 60,” Puder, 31, said of his mentors. “There’s wisdom and knowledge in life.“
The ideal mentor should be a nonparent who already has achieved the dream the young person aspires to, he said. Puder advised the young people to Google people who could serve as their mentors and to email them in hopes of starting a relationship.
Tim Abram, the executive director of the Lakeland Police Department’s PAL program, said he invited Puder after he spoke to the national group last year in Orlando. The program bought into My Life My Power then.
“These are the life skills kids need, more day-to-day mentorship,” he said.
The message got through to Anthony Dozier, 18, of Lakeland, who will be pursuing his dream beginning Monday in the U.S. Army.
“The program helps me choose my decision instead of following what other people tell me,” said Dozier, who added he, too, was bullied in middle school because he was “kind of nerdy and soft-spoken.“
PAL “taught me to stand away from the crowd and be a leader,” he said.
[ Kevin Bouffard can be reached at kevin.bouffard@theledger.com or 863-401-6980. ]