Teenage is a transformative age in our lifetime. You either get trapped or you escape the trap and thrive. The years 0-12, are safer. You are under the maximum care of your parents. And you listen to their guidance. This is a great time to understand the world around you. One would say that for most people, these years are safe. You are walking on safe ground.
However, once you clock 13 years, you become a teenager.
In these years, there are so many traps. You must be steadfast and focused to navigate successfully.
During the teenage years, your body is undergoing several transformations and you are trying to question everything you have been told about the world. You want to experiment with it. And that is what makes is one of the challenges life cycle. It is like a deep valley that must be crossed by balancing on a thin bridge.
To get across to the 20th birthday intact, you must focus. The best area to focus on is on the pencil – academics. You must use this time for intellectual firepower so that you have less net loss due to the challenges this period brings. Some of the traps during your teenage are:
- Unwanted pregnancies
- Kidnaps and or disappearing from your family
- Too much television, entertainment and drinking leading to bad manners and self-esteem issues
- Bad friends or influence
- Bad eating habits which risk weakening your immune system in future
- Loss of time to focus on a career or life skills whereby the teenager is unable to find their true north and focus
- Lack of focus and concentration leading to poor grades
- And many more traps that make young people land on a rough road in their early 20s and probably beyond.
To avoid the trap, successful teenagers focus on their future by concentrating on academics and self-studies. Winner’s channel all their effort, interests, skills into self-drive to be the best academically in everything they do, sports and life skills.
One red flag or the tell-tale sign of a teenager being trapped is laziness during such an age. Teens who try to avoid responsibilities, always wanting to play instead of working, risk missing key skills. If such teens are eating, they must have a place to channel that energy. They must be active sportsmen or women, self-motivated to study or do business and house chores and to focus on a productive interest like learning the piano, guitar or other instruments to define their productive use of such an age. And such teens must be working hard academically to remove lots of diversions caused by the traps in such an age.
Is your teenage being trapped or not?
Now they need a lot of your guidance. Become their friends. And tell them how great they are. Give them resources, mentor them and try to give them exposure. Those are the people to define our country in 10 to 20 years, make sure they are not trapped whereby someone grows old, but remains thinking like a teenager because they never left the age group due to lack of focus.
Copyright Mustapha B Mugisa, Mr Strategy 2021. All rights reserved.
