8th graders, Salisbury Steak, and Helen Keller

One day over a lunch of Salisbury Steak and mashed potatoes I was asked by an 8th grader what piece of advice would you give us? My mind immediately started flooded with thoughts of advice and life lessons the one I told him was to not worry about what other people think, there were many many more that came to mind but lunch time conversation isn’t well suited for lengthy conversations about life. It’s not near long enough and your always interrupted by those oh so important questions like who would win in a fight, Stephen Hawking or Helen Keller? Yes, that was actually asked by an 8th grader.

With that said though I would like talked about the many other pieces of advice I would like to give to our teens as they traverse the ever-changing space mountain ride of life.

Pick your friends wisely. A quote that comes to mind, “show me your friends and I’ll show you your future”. You may not see a connection now but those you surround yourself with can and will greatly determine the course your life leads. We are all susceptible to peer pressure, even more so and a young age. If you choose to hang out with a group of people that ends up in the principal’s office more than the honor roll, I’ll give you one guess where you’ll be. During our young lives every single one of us have dealt with the need and yearning to want to fit in, to belong to something. However, that makes us very susceptible to having our actions being influenced by other because we want to be “cool” and fit in. You’ll find when you get older that true friends won’t try to convince you to do something that’s going to get you into trouble, the best friends will try to keep you from messing up, not enticing you to mess up.

You will make mistakes, you are going to fail, you are going to let people down. Anyone that says otherwise hasn’t had life slap them in the face yet. No matter how much effort you give, or willpower you have, you are not going to succeed in everything you try in life. Regardless of how well intended you might be you will make mistakes. There will be times you let someone down in your life and all you can do is say that you’re sorry. Learn that its ok to fail, that if you never fail that means you never tried. Learn to own your mistakes and learn from them, not blame something/someone else. And most importantly learn to say you’re sorry to those you let down, and change your behavior to not do it again. You may forget an important date, or event. That you said you would do something and totally forgot. You may miss your child’s ball game or recital, hell you may even forget to pick your kid up from school, it happened to me as a teen. Learn to take responsibility for your actions, or lack of, apologize, and how to not let it happen. You can say you’re sorry all day long every day of the week, but unless you change the behavior the apology will mean less than a passing stranger saying excuse me on the street.

Open your mind to other views of the world. It’s easy, especially in our secluded area, to develop a very narrow and closed minded view of things. Make an effort to understand others and their opposing views, ideas and opinions. In your journey through life, at some point hopefully, you will leave our little chunk of paradise and venture out and be exposed to more views, ideologies, religions, personal beliefs culture and such than you could ever imagine. When you’re able to have a conversation with someone and truly understand their points of view, and why they think, feel, believe the way they do you will be vastly better prepared to deal with life and the conflicts I can promise you you will have with others as you learn and grow. This does not mean you have to agree with their point of view. It also doesn’t mean that you can’t be friends with them either. Some of the best people, and best friends I’ll probably have in life have drastically different views than I do, but at their core they are a good person and only want to put good back into the world.

Now that I’ve gotten through this short list it dawns on me that I want to go so much more in depth on these topics but don’t want a 20-page blog post. So, I’ll be adding blog post for each piece of advice and ideas to keep it more digestible for those actually reading this and you don’t end up checking out 5 minutes in. So, stay tuned for my future ADHD riddled post about this that and the other.