The 6 Most Important Decisions You'll Ever Make: A Guide for Teens
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By the time you turn 20 and graduate from your teens, if you are free of addictions, you will have a huge advantage. You will be in control of your body and your life. You will have achieved a huge accomplishment and deserve a prize.
CONGRATULATIONS!
YOU ARE ADDICTION-FREE
COMING ATTRACTIONS
Do you own a Barbie doll? Keep reading and discover what Barbie would be like if she were real. Don’t stop now. You’ve only got one more decision to read about.
1. In the wheels below, write the names of the people who would be impacted if you picked up a serious addiction. If you already have one, write the names of those you’re impacting now.
2. Draw a picture, create a collage, or write down words describing how you’d like your future family to be. Don’t let any addictions get in the way of that dream.
3. Think about someone you know who is addicted to drugs. What kind of impact has it had on their life?
4. Go online and search for “How to avoid drugs” or “How to overcome an addiction.” There’s a ton of good information out there.
5. Using one of the 5 Nos, role-play how to say “no” to peer pressure in front of a mirror.
• Be Direct
• Use Humor
• Blame It on Your Parents
• Suggest an Alternative
• Get up and Go
6. Make a list of the things that give you a natural high.
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7. Post this reminder on your locker, mirror, planner, or journal:
“Does this fit with who I want to be?”
Ask yourself this question each time you face a tough decision.
8. Make a list of people and things that inspire you. Spend time with them. Feed the good wolf.
People that inspire me:
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Things that inspire me (books, movies, magazines, music, pictures):
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9. If you have an unhealthy addiction, get help now. Talk with a trusted adult, see a counselor, read up on the topic, or visit the Help Desk. Don’t wait one day longer.
10. List three good reasons for avoiding porn.
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To keep an online journal of your Baby Step progress, go to www.6decisions.com.
Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. lt is our light, not darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am l to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be?
—Marianne Williamson
Two sisters, only a year apart, were having fun on the swings at recess when a new girl joined them. After a few minutes playing together, the new girl pointed to the older sister and asked, “How come you’re so pretty,” and then to the younger sister, “and you’re so ugly?”
Though the third girl was a complete stranger, her words were devastating to the younger sister’s self-esteem, and caused conflict and comparisons between the two sisters for years to come.
Whoever said “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me” was a total idiot! Unkind words can crush you. So can a lot of other stuff, like flunking a test or surviving the divorce of your parents. Building healthy self-esteem is no walk in the park, that’s for sure.
Just what do I mean by self-esteem? Self-esteem is your opinion of yourself. It goes by other names, including self-image, self-confidence, or self-respect. I like the term self-worth best because I think it says something the other terms don’t. What is your self-worth? Get it?
And just how much are you worth? More than you can probably imagine. As the Yiddish saying goes, “All of us are crazy good in one way or another.”
What you do about your self-worth is the last of the most important decisions you’ll ever make as a teen. To take the high road, you need to catch sight of your best self, build your character and competence, and learn to like yourself, flaws and all. Of course, you’re always free to choose the low road by fixating on the opinions of others, doing nothing to improve yourself, and being hypercritical of your imperfections.
Having a healthy sense of self-worth doesn’t mean you’re full of yourself, it simply means you’ve got ample self-confidence and that you’re okay with who you are.
Healthy self-worth can help you:
• Withstand peer pressure
• Try new things and get to know new people
• Deal with disappointment, mistakes, and failure
• Feel loved and wanted
Then again, poor self-worth may lead you to:
• Cave in to peer pressure
• Avoid trying new things
• Fall apart during tough times
• Feel unloved and unwanted
Maxwell Maltz put it this way: “Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand brake on.” The good news is: no matter what you may think of yourself today, you can build your self-worth simply by thinking and acting a little differently. It’s not brain surgery.
SELF-WORTH CHECKUP
So, how’s it going now? Try this short checkup.
CIRCLE YOUR CHOICE
NO WAY
HECK YES!
1.
I generally like myself.
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I have confidence in myself.
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I’m okay with how I look.
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I can handle rude or mean comments.
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I have good skills and talents.
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I finish what I start.
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I am happy for others when they succeed, even those closest to me.
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I regularly push myself to try new things and expand my comfort zone.
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I see myself as a winner.
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I have accomplished some important things in my life.
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TOTAL
You’re on the high road. Keep it up!
You’re straddling the high and low roads. Move to higher ground!
You’re on the low road. Pay special attention to this chapter.
The truth is all teens struggle with self-worth at some time and in some way, even those who seem supremely confident. This chapter has three sections. In The Social Mirror and the True Mirror we’ll discuss why it isn’t healthy to obsess about other people’s opinions of you. Character and Competence will show you a practical approach to building self-worth. Finally, Conquering Your El Guapo gets into how to handle the thorns of life that so easily afflict us.
The Social Mirror and the True Mirror
Have you ever been to an amusement park where they have those “crazy” mirrors? It’s hilarious to see yourself looking two feet tall, or your face and body all contorted or elongated. We laugh because we know it isn’t true. The question is: When it
comes to how you feel about yourself, which mirror are you looking at, the crazy one or the real one?
You see, there are two mirrors to choose from. One I call the social mirror, the other the true mirror. The social mirror is a reflection of how other people see you. The true mirror is a reflection of the real you.
The social mirror is based on how you stack up compared to others. It may lead you to think things like, I’m better looking than she is or He’s smarter than I am. In contrast, the true mirror is based on your potential and your personal best.
The social mirror is external—you look outside yourself for the definition of who you really are. The true mirror, on the contrary, is internal—you look inside for your self-definition.
Think about what happens if your self-image comes from the social mirror—the reflection of how others see you. You begin to think that your reflection is the real you. It becomes your label and you get comfortable with it. You forget that you’re even looking into a crazy mirror. Author Stan Herman wrote about the social mirror in this way:
Ed said
When men found the mirror
They began to lose their souls
The point, of course, is that
They began to concern themselves
With their images rather than
Their selves
Other men’s eyes are mirrors
But the most distorting kind
For if you look to them you
can only see
Reflections of your reflections
Your warping of their warpings
To figure out which mirror you’re looking at, try this experiment. In the social mirror, write down how others would describe you. By others, I mean society in general, friends, teachers, family, neighbors, and so on.
In the true mirror, write down how you would describe the real you. The real you represents your best self and your potential. Consider how someone who fully believes in you, like your mom, dad, or grandma, would answer this question.
A seventeen-year-old high school senior named Keli’i completed the experiment this way:
Give it a try by answering the questions below.
Now look at the two lists, and ask, In which mirror do I see myself—the social mirror or the true mirror? If you’re like most teens (and adults), your self-image comes more from the social mirror than the true mirror. In other words, your opinion of yourself is made up of the opinions of others.
In some cases, others may already see the best in you, and looking in the social mirror is basically the same as looking in the true mirror. If so, lucky you! But in most cases, our opinions of ourselves come far too much from how others see us and far too little from who we really are.
CRACKS IN THE SOCIAL MIRROR
Looking to the social mirror is bad news for several reasons:
The social mirror is unrealistic. Somehow the media has sold everyone the lie that looks are everything. And we’ve bought it! Our culture proclaims that if you are good-looking, skinny, or buff, you can have it all—popularity, boyfriends, girlfriends, success, and happiness. “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness,” said Russian author Leo Tolstoy. The problem is that the images of how we’re supposed to look come from movies and magazines that feature unrealistic models of perfection.
Writer Georgia Beaverson states:
Television and other media venues have put our teens between a rock and a hard place. What makes up the rock? Impossibly buffed men. Women whose looks are perfection. Athletes who never seem to lose. Clothes, money, success, and sex are the name of the game. And what is the hard place for teens? In a word, reality!
What’s seen as normal and desirable keeps getting thinner and thinner. Girls are surrounded by 12- and 13-year-old underweight models who are dressed up to look like women. Boys are bombarded with tan, incredibly ripped, and perfectly dressed men. It’s estimated that only about 5 percent of women have the ultra-long and skinny body types possessed by most models. And yet that’s the kind of body every girl wants and the only one that seems to be acceptable.
The media’s influence is so strong we begin to think we ought to look like a Barbie doll, but could anyone? Adiosbarbie.com talks about what this would mean:
If Barbie were a real person, she would be 5’9” tall, have a neck twice the length of a normal human’s neck, and weigh 110 pounds, only 76 percent of her healthy weight. Her measurements would be 38-18-32, and her feet would be too small to support her when she walks.
Similarly, young boys are supposed to have muscles popping out all over their bodies like the GI Joe Extreme action figure. If GI Joe were life-size, he would have a 55-inch chest and a 27-inch bicep. In other words, his bicep would be almost as big as his waist and bigger than most competitive body builders.
Ridiculous! No wonder we feel inadequate when we compare ourselves to the models in magazines or on TV. “Perfect looks, perfect hair, perfect plot, perfect ending. Are these Hollywood teens anywhere close to the real you?” asks writer Todd Hertz. I think not.
The social mirror is always changing. If your self-perception comes from how others see you, you’ll never feel stable, because opinions, fads, and fashion are always changing. It’s hard to keep up. You’ll start to feel like Alice in Wonderland.
“Who are you?” said the caterpillar. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I hardly know, Sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.”
The fashion magazines can never seem to make up their minds. They’ll include an article on why you should be happy with the body you were born with and then, on the opposite page, run an ad on improving your looks through plastic surgery. So, which is it?
As one girl told me, “Most teenagers are trying to keep up with the trends. You create a lot of stress because you want to be like this person, but you want to be yourself as well.”
The social mirror isn’t accurate. You are so much more than the opinions of others. You are so much more than how you look on the outside. You have beauty and potential that no one recognizes, not even you.
Beware of the social mirror.
MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WALL
Every day you choose to look at the social mirror or the true mirror. Every day you choose to focus on your flaws or your qualities. Let’s take a look at three common mirror moments.
THE GETTING READY MOMENT. Every time you look in the mirror to get ready for the day or that hot date you can:
THE FEELING INSECURE MOMENT. When you’re with a group of friends and you feel insecure (as we all do sometimes) you can:
THE COURAGE MOMENT. When you’re scared to death about trying something new, like trying out for a sports team, you can:
Getting your cues from the true mirror will give you power. Getting your cues from the social mirror will suck it out of you. The choice is yours. Remember what teen advisor Julia DeVillers said: “You can’t live your life worrying that the world is staring at you. When you let people’s opinions make you self-conscious you give away your power…The key to feeling confident is to always listen to your inner self—the real you.”
Character and Competence
Imagine. You’ve just been told you have a heart problem and you may need surgery. You have two doctors to choose from. The first, Dr. Good, has a great reputation for being an honest person, someone who cares deeply about his patients. The problem is he’s never performed heart surgery before.
Your second choice, Dr. Able, has a great reputation for being a skilled heart surgeon. The only problem is that he’s dishonest and is known to perform operations just for the money, even if his patient doesn’t need it.
So, who will it be? Dr. Good, a great guy with no skills, or Dr. Able, a skilled guy but a liar?
What you’d really want is a doctor who is both honest and skilled, a doctor with both character and competence.
The two ingredients that make a good doct
or, character and competence, just happen to be the primary ingredients that are essential to healthy self-worth. Let’s define them.
Character is who you are, the qualities you possess, qualities such as integrity, honesty, hard work, and friendliness.
Competence is what you’re good at, your talents, skills, and abilities. We admire people who are competent, who have know-how and expertise, whether it be fixing a car, playing the violin, hitting a golf ball, memorizing names, or solving a quadratic equation.
Study the diagram below to see in which box you’d place yourself.
THE CHARACTER AND COMPETENCE SQUARE
Squanderers (low character, high competence) are people with great talents but no backbone or moral fiber. I call them squanderers because they are wasting their talents. They’re in a position to do so much good but don’t because they think only of themselves. As an example, think of the many high-profile athletes who are bad examples to the kids who adore them.