About

Former head, teacher, parent and founder of Life Lessons Mentoring

Zoe Dennis – Why Life Lessons Mentoring?

Hi, I’m Zoe, a mentor passionate about helping young people feel seen, heard and understood. My work is grounded in compassion, real-life experience, and a drive to call a spade a spade.

I don’t believe a single one of us is flawed. Low confidence and poor self-esteem aren’t flaws, they’re simply reflections of our experiences, the emotions we felt, and the messages we took from them.

We live in a world full of influences telling us who and what we should be. However, for genuine happiness and fulfilment, our paths must be self-led. My passion is to help young people to do just that.

Self-leadership doesn’t remove the need for motivation, grit or effort but it does ensure we’re moving in a direction that aligns with our passions, interests and innate strengths.

‘Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others.‘ – Brené Brown

My mission is to support young people to find their voice, self-worth and purpose – and to move away from the belief that they need to ‘fix’ themselves.

About me…

I’m a teacher by trade and former headteacher. During 26 years in education, I saw too many children struggle to believe in themselves – convinced they were somehow flawed or less valuable than others.

I believe the way we think and feel about ourselves affects every aspect of our lives: relationships, work, finances, health, the choices we make and more.

I haven’t just seen this in others — I’ve experienced it myself.

Poor self-esteem is a huge barrier to learning and accessing a future of your choice. My aim is to give young people the tools and essential thinking skills needed to navigate life’s ups and downs so that they can go on to live happy, healthy and productive lives.

The Origins of Life Lessons

Life Lessons started as a school-based programme for children in Years 5 and 6 (9-11 years) to build self-esteem and inner confidence.

What began as a pilot quickly expanded across multiple schools. Later, we trained in-school facilitators to continue delivering the programme after we’d stepped back.

Then came COVID.

When schools closed, we took the opportunity to pause and rethink how we could reach and support young people even more effectively – beyond the classroom.

Our Approach

Why this isn’t a core part of the national curriculum remains a mystery. But until it is, Life Lessons Mentoring offers one-to-one support to help young people develop a more empowered, compassionate and realistic view of themselves — and of life.

How we view ourselves governs every aspect of our lives – what we say, how we act, the choices we make, what we pursue, the relationships we form, and the boundaries we do and don’t set.

That’s why Life Lessons Mentoring supports young people to address the following:

• Understand where their inner-critic or self-doubt comes from
• Discover what’s working for them – and what isn’t
• Step out of old, unhelpful patterns of thinking and behaviour
• Build new habits aligned with how they want to live
• Set healthy boundaries and make conscious, empowered choices
• Relate to themselves with more compassion, honesty and self-belief

Why it matters

When young people learn how to lead themselves – despite fear, pressure or past experiences – they gain the greatest gift of all:

a self-directed life that aligns with who they are and what they want to contribute to the world.

A world where people like and value themselves has got to be better for everyone.

In the words of former Life Lessons mentees…