Sometime in March, I picked a book titled ‘THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE TEENS’ by Sean Covey. I enjoyed every line I perused in this book as it came in handy for the last month. The theme for this month is Live Beyond, and there is no exaggeration about living beyond.
You might live an extravagant life, yet your life is not beyond the norm of the society, the mediocrity of mankind or the challenges several teens face out there. Truth be told, living beyond is quite difficult but it is worth it.
To live beyond, you need to understand that extravagant attitude and lousy mouth can not take you anywhere. You need to be deliberate with your efforts about getting a better life and adulthood. To be deliberate, you need to throw bad habits into the trash and express the good habits.
So what are habits?
Habits are actions performed repeatedly and automatically usually without awareness.
I have a habit of washing my hands several times: I do this pratically after any action that involves my hands. Sometimes I wash my hands after writing for long.
I wash my hands not because it is dirty, but because it is a habit I have cultivated since my admission into the university.
According to the author of 7 habits of highly effective teens, every teenager should have a personal bank account.
“But I have a bank account?” Nah… That is not what he meant. He likened a teenage life to a bank account where you make deposits and withdrawals.
For example, I have an account with First bank of Nigeria. I use this bank only for work, I do not make any form of deposits in it because that is not my official account, but I make withdrawals from it.
There are two different things going on with the account. It never gets debited rather gets credited and at the end of the month it is on zero naira account balance.
Let’s imagine if my life is currently like my First bank account, where I only withdraw rather than save. Do you think I will be better?
I don’t think I will, simply because I am not imputing anything into my life, rather the things I do are getting me drained.
Just like a bank account, we have low bank account and high bank account.
So let’s see signs of a low bank account.
- You can’t do without your friends, because you crave for their presence so much. In a nutshell, you have issues with saying no to peer pressure.
I used to be a very timid girl during secondary school, I was a victim of both cyber-bullying and school bullying. I was always depressed, because I felt I was different from the other girls in my class. It really weighed me down, I would not want to do the right thing because my friends were not interested in doing the right thing and I didn’t want to look too serious.
- You have inferiority complex
- You are worried about others: “what will my mun say?” “what if Lucy laughs at me in this dress?”
- You are proud
- You are involved in dangerous actions like killing, domestic violence rape and drugs
Having known the bad personal bank account, there are good personal accounts too, some of which include:
- You are confident
- You are not too keen on popularity
- You see life generally positive
- You are goals driven
- You are excited about the success of others.
I have listed above the signs of both low and high personal bank account.
To live beyond, you need to have a high bank personal account.
The first sign in the high personal bank account says ‘you are confident’.
You can’t have low self esteem and have a high bank account. It is never done, you need to be confident about who you are.
Living beyond is a pratical thing, which is why the more you learn to love yourself and increase your interpersonal relationship with people, the better it is for you.
Do you desire to enjoy your adulthood?
Do you want to avoid mistakes your older siblings made?
Do you want to see life as a good place rather than a pit fillled with disappointment and regrets?
- To do all of these, you need to:
- Love and respect your self and decision
- Learn to make yourself happy always
- Be proud of who you are and becoming
- See to help your friends become better
- See to improve your weakness
- Improve your interpersonal relationships with the opposite sex
- Talk to people about their future
- Rather than blame others for your life, appreciate them for the good things they have done to you
- Love God and develop your relationship with him
- Pray always
- Live in the word of God
I hope you got something from this? Do leave a comment below and don’t forget to subscribe to this blog to not miss a post.
Teens Meet Outreach 