This post is made right here due to a dearest brother’s request. I was a teenager and I get it how hard it is to take the stand as a responsible person than just a chill out guy.
There are many situations in our lives, with more freedom all the teenagers are only seeing through a simple thing that ‘time has not come yet’ or ‘we have more time in the future’ well, there is nothing wrong with such thinking. There is always more time and that doesn’t mean we have to waste the time which we have right now.
Responsibilities are only learned with responsibilities, what I meant to say is, that there will be no mentor to teach you how to be responsible, you are your teacher and there are few things which will make you realize how to be that responsible person despite all the distractions the teenage life throws us at.
Being you:
You should always have to be abiding with the rules and limits which you have to design on your own. Now there might be any situation where it requires breaking the rules, you should stick with your rules. And how to design these rules? We will be discussing all this in this post.
The first thing you need to do is stop wasting your time on things that are not important to you. As a teenager, your primary goal should be your knowledge, and there are many more ways to gain knowledge and education is just a part of it. If you are unable to perform well like your other friends in education, then no need to worry about it. It is their talent to study and perform well, it is the time to find out your talent. It may be hidden inside you and waiting for you to pay small attention.
I would like to write elaborately this time, so this post is supposed to be a big one. Try not to give up on this, because today is the day and now is the time I am going to help you in determining the right path and also assist you in overcoming all the stress that you are having right now. We will talk about everything and anything. Sit tight!
Ten things to do to become a responsible teenager:
- Have a plan, set goals that are time-bound.
- Learn how to handle the suggestions from teachers and elders and most importantly from parents.
- Attitude development.
- Stop comparing to others, if your parents do the same explain to them why the comparison is not going to work out in changing you.
- Anger management, stress management.
- Stop trying to impress others and stop doing things and accepting things to gain someone’s attention.
- Handle the peer pressure.
- Avoiding Distractions.
- Avoiding Addictions.
- Time Management.
Now, these ten points are going to assist you in having a focused life without any distractions. I have covered all the sections in it, if I missed anything here; do let me know in the comments section or by directly texting me from the home page. Let us see the ten principles clearly and apply them in our lives.
1. Have a plan, set time-bound goals:
Planning is in our brains since we learned what is wrong and what is not. Having a plan means having a backup, whether, in the personal life or educational life, a plan will make us survive during critical times.
As a teenager, your plan must include your daily tasks, punctuality in your works, and focusing on studies.
Goal setting is quite a big deal to the teenagers, they set goals, and then within a few days they are gone, hence, not just goals let us design a particular lifestyle.
Set the goals in such a way that will take you to accomplish it within the time. Let the goal itself drag you towards the task. For example, if you are good at art and you are willing to learn the skills in art. Set a goal with a time-bound and this activity of learning this skill must not impact your other set of works like your assignments etc.
Let us say, in 6 months I can draw on my with the skills I learned, be ready to write down your goal, and keep it in a place where you have good access all the day, the skill set which you are going to learn must include the sources and also the time you are about to spend on learning it on a daily routine. If you find it too difficult to design it on your own, seek assistance from a friend who is elder than you or anyone from your family. If you are a loner and going to do it all by yourself then that is fine, keep your mind clean and design and create a goal.
Always remember that an unwritten goal is only a wish, so write it somewhere and read it. Back to our example, in learning art, you need to find the sources which will offer you the best tactics to learn the skill, are you going to attend the classes offline/online then make a note of it. Be sure to maintain consistency, and then you will be not troubled to get to the goal and cross it as achieved.
Design the goals like short term, mid-term and long term, long term goals are like something with a bigger outcome, like you being an entrepreneur, etc. mid-term goals will include your education, and short term goals will focus on your habits and interpersonal development.
Make sure these all goals are associated with a time limit, a goal without a time-bound isn’t a goal at all.
2. Learn how to handle the suggestions from teachers and elders and most importantly from parents
Suggestions, advice, recommendations – these are going to burn your anger and feel uncomfortable and insecure all the time. As a teenager, you will feel like being monitored all the time and judged for doing something on your own.
That feeling when your proposal for doing something ended up in a rejection, it will make you feel insecure that your decisions are directly dependent on your parents or teachers.
This place where we are living is always an open season for advice, people give you more suggestions than helping you out. As a teenager, you are more exposed to such situations where people you meet will suggest you do that and to do this. They didn’t know your lifestyle, they didn’t know anything about you, but they keep on saying things, and definitely, that is enough to light up our anger.
To handle this kind of awkward situation, you need to have an ear opened for such things and close your brain. It must act as a filter, you need to develop good listening skills and then you need to filter all the junk and only send the valuable and most matter ones to your brain. Just like a filter does, think once, what if the natural functionality of the filter goes down. It will allow the bad particles to enter into the system and thereby damage to the entire system, let it be a water filter or air filter, the process is the same, to filter out the impurities.
Likewise, whenever you encounter a person who might be an elder to you or even younger to you and they are throwing all the ideas upon you, then you need to listen to everything they had to say and only take the good and useful part from it. To do this, you need to practice being patient, and learn more things while listening even to the useless speeches.
This will not only help you to be a successful person but also make you more responsible. When the suggestions are from teachers and parents, you need to make more time to think about them twice or thrice. Even they are not the persons who can just brainwash you, but they do things only with an attempt to make you a better person in society. Just be a good listener and be a good filter minded.
3. Attitude Development
Attitude is everything, this saying might be the oldest one, but it is always true, your attitude will decide the person you are going to be when you are grown up. Your decision-making skills, interpersonal skills, thoughts, and interests. All these will make you a complete personality.
There is one thing in this world, good and being good, whatever you do which is not accepted by your heart is called as bad. No one is bad in this world and there is nothing like the term bad exists at all. It all comes from our minds and heart.
Background image source
If your skills are harming others, if your intentions are hurting the feelings of others, then your heart will warn you if you are letting such things happen.
Our thoughts must be clean, even it is bullying in school or commenting someone based on their physical appearance, judging others because of their mental imbalance and inhumanity towards the voiceless animals will only turn you into anti-good.
You may not be aware that things which you do for a second will make you the violent one in the future. Let us consider an example here, there is a kid who throws a stone at a stray dog regularly, if there is no one to explain to him that his stone will hurt the dog the same it will hurt him when someone beat him, he will continue to hurt the dog and when he grows up he might harm other voiceless beings too as a part of his fun doing.
There is nothing bad in the person, the situations and surroundings will make the person turn into something and someone else. That is why my dearest suggestion is to build an attitude which will make you and the people surrounding you to feel safe in a pleasant environment.
4. Stop comparing to others, if your parents do the same explain to them why the comparison is not going to work out in changing you.
Comparison is an evil, if you are with any such evil thing, cast it away right away, the habit of comparing us to others is not going to end up good for any of us.
As a teenager, each of you is having some big dreams like riding a costly bike and driving a Lamborghini. If you start comparing your lives to multi-millionaire kids, you are letting the sadness ruin your peace and this thought will not let you have a happy life and enjoy the things that you own.
If you did the comparison in terms of study, dressing, lifestyle, etc. you must stop doing it. No one in this world is meant to be identical. And comparison will only let you go down and make you depressed.
Young minds are sharp minds, teenage is the only age you will be provided with tons of calories to burn and use them for good to learn new things and explore the vast knowledge.
Besides, the comparison will develop hatred inside, it will make the person hate the other who is compared to. You should let your parents know that there is no point in comparing you to the neighbor’s children or your classmates or relatives, everyone is different in this world and all of us are innovative in our ways.
5. a. Anger Management
Anger is an emotion of expressing our reluctance of doing things that we dislike. One who is easy to get angry is the person who will involve in more disputes. Teenagers will have more angriness than others because they are frustrated because of the confusion. They are confused about their life and they are confused about studies, family relationships, and personal issues.
A little bit of anger is good; we should manage it to maintain healthy relationships with real persons. Anger management has many possibilities to make our behavior friendlier. There are many tips to control the anger and here I am suggesting you to go through the following articles written by me during 2013, this will help you out too.
b. Stress Management.
Stress is everywhere, at schools and colleges, in families, and inside us. Handling stress is not as easy as said, stress will lead to depression and hopelessness.
If you are not doing with stress management so far, you need to realize that taking things easily will make you feel light. And this kind of attitude will help handle the stress. I can assist you by pointing out some stress relievers, but make sure to have your own choice in stress management.
- Reading books (self-improvement, biographies, and real stories) may help you to deal with the stress.
- Meditation and sticking to your most passionate hobby/interest will work in stress management.
- An outdoor walk during the calm hours will let your mind breathe in all the fresh air and this will work as a stress reliever naturally.
- Talking to your well-wishers and a healthy diet can also help you to overcome the stress.
6. Stop trying to impress others and stop doing things and accepting things to gain someone’s attention.
In teenagers, the common thing to deal with is about the challenges they throw at each other and they would like to go any far at any cost to prove themselves to the others that they are fearless and strong.
This is not a much necessary thing to do, as a teenager, you may have that urge and anxiety to show off in higher levels, but remember that in this process you are going to lose your identity.
This post will assist you more too
Some people try anything to attract the opposite gender and involve themselves into unnecessary troubles. See that, the likeness will emerge in the persons automatically and it must occur naturally without any external involvement. If you are living a life trying to impress someone then you are not leading your life, but someone else is/are manipulating you.
It is time to stop pretending like a hero and to live and accept the way you are. Do not concentrate on your physical appearance just good hygiene is enough to maintain fairness. You need to improvise the talents within you and impressing someone is not included in it. Do not accept the tasks which are not in your category, just say no and walk away, like I said before, have your own rules and keep your promises to yourself.
7. Handle the Peer Pressure
Friends are life, they assist us with many things and they are the key personalities in our lives. Choose your friends wisely, because they are going to have a huge impact on the person you are going to become in the future. Always trust your friends and don’t let them fail and never backstab them.
True friends are rare, do not leave the hand of a true friend who is always there in your darkest situation and who never let you go even in the bad times.
Friends are of two types, one type is those who will stay with you and agree with whatever you do and the other type is who stays with you and warn you for your wrong decisions and also don’t agree with you all the time.
The second category friends are true ones, they are willing to make you a better person by warning you not to do the things which are going to portray you as a bad person.
If you don’t find out who are your true friends, don’t panic and take foolish moves in accepting every acquaintance as your friend, time is the only solution for this, wait for the right time for the friend to enter into your life.
Now some friends will encourage you to break your laws and go off the road. They will pressure you in doing the wrong things like smoking, consumption of alcohol, and other activities that are not important to you. They are bad for you as a teenager you are in nowhere to understand them and control them. They will start consuming your will power and make you weak day by day.
Peer pressure is to be handled and only by saying NO you will be able to prevent your life turning into a wild one.
8. Avoiding Distractions
Distractions for teenagers are in many forms, social media, sexual thoughts, fear of failure, fear of rejection, gaming addiction, etc.
To address every distraction, it will take a book to write, so here, I am going to be brief and assist you with the major tips to avoid those distractions which are mentioned above.
The social media (Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp Messenger, and many more) these social media applications are used globally and every one of us is quite familiar with the usage of these all. These applications are good in providing us all the latest happenings in the world and they are providing us entertainment and even replaced the old friendly meetings outside, television, and other extracurricular activities. But, we are going to prevent them from replacing ourselves.
Long usage of these applications will make us get addicted, it is recommended to monitor the usage of these apps and prevent ourselves by engaging in other innovative activities. The content in these applications and their features updated every week are impressive, but we must only use them as the source to gain more knowledge for our life, but not to rely on them for everything. The emerging video content is popular these days and videos are a good way to convey the message, but if you are addicted to the video content that much it will make you lack interest in reading and you will be behind in learning new things by readings.
Like I told you, use these applications as a medium to gain more stuff for your development, and don’t let these applications be your distractions.
The increase in your age will increase the hormone levels and the big challenge for you now is the sexual thoughts and sexual attractions towards the opposite gender. Teenagers take wrong paths to suppress these naturally occurring sexual thoughts by various methods recommended by their friends or religious groups. They also suffer a lot to deal with the attraction and take wrong decisions and let the other person ruin their lives in the name of love. Love is a feeling that is not related to sex, it is a caring form of a mother and protecting the form of a father. There is someone out there who will love you but cannot engage in any kind of physical attachment with you. It’s true love. And having pleasures in the wrong way isn’t the solution to get rid of sexual thoughts.
These are common in teenagers and you do not need to worry or concentrate on these things. Just go on with your important tasks and you will find a real solution realistically. Don’t let some people just enter your life and ruin it. If you made any such decision, don’t worry, accept the mistake you have made and forgive yourself and take the next step. Your life doesn’t stop here.
Gaming addiction is similar to that of social media addiction, well gaming is a recreation and it will give you only one positive thing and that is high response and high repulsive nature. Your hand and mind coordination will get better with gaming and non-stop gaming is going to damage your health.
Shift your focus from gaming once you played it for hours and then concentrate on achieving more. And the fear of failure and rejection will be easily overcome with strong decision-making skills. Work on it. You are a future hero. Check the below two posts which are similar.
9. Avoid Addictions
Addictions are going to live with us, not only in teenagers, addictions are huge issues in adults too. To avoid addiction to anything is to realize that we are addicted and we are suffering from it. One if we self check ourselves and our activities are affected by the addiction then it is time to work on it to avoid it.
There are effective ways to prevent any habit of turning into an addiction. You should probably follow them by analyzing the addiction. If it is a gaming addiction you can prevent more hours by focusing on other things than gaming, if it is alcohol addiction then you should first try it yourself to break it, and if nothing helps you can seek a piece of professional advice.
10. Time Management
Stop thinking that you have more time, learn time management skills, and hope for a better outcome. Your time is precious and nothing and no one can bring back the previous minute for us. We have to keep in mind that every second we are spending on something much makes us more productive for our lives as well as for the society in which we are living in.
Time management will help you to work with more love and also make you a professional in a niche that is interested in you. Time management can only be learned with discipline and doing works without any procrastination. Your punctuality is the best guide for you to become a master of time.
Conclusion:
This post is intended for all the teenagers who are struggling with addictions and are in huge confusion on how to be a responsible person. To be a responsible person you need to focus on your attitude and your way of life is a path that will lead you through the greatest responsibilities.
In these COVID-19 Novel Coronavirus times, we are staying home and this is more than just holidays, your school or college assignments are at your fingertips. You are on a vacation of learning many things with more time in your hand. Use this time as a valuable gift and nurture your skills apart from education. Your responsibilities will appear to you the time when you see, you can learn from your parents or just you can watch them how do they handle the things with calmness. Always remember one thing, do not take decisions in a rush, stay calm and think before you commit anything, because it will not only be going to impact your life, your entire legacy will be on.
