THOUGHTS FOR TROUBLED TEENS
THOUGHTS FOR TROUBLED TEENS
Straight talk. Unvarnished. (You might want to sit down.)
Here are a few thoughts, responding to these two quotes, that I recently read:
"No one there understands me, and that's why I don't like being around my classmates anymore. When I am there, and others start to get frustrated with me, I do start to care. I care alot. Why don't they ask me? Am I a little bit too different for their liking? Do I make them feel uncomfortable? No one has ever taken the time to sit down and have a heart-to-heart conversation with me. To know who I am. I know I don't feel comfortable around them. I don't think I could ever really trust them to understand me, or even try to understand me, when they already judged me as someone a bit weird." said a female Pisces.
and
"I just don't feel wanted . . . I look around sometimes and see people laughing with each other...people finding other people really attractive. . . I'm attractive physically but I don't seem to be personally. . . why won't they give me attention like others? I try to be entertaining...I can be funny...what is the key to attracting and impressing people?" asked a male Virgo.
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Hmmm. You seem to have a terrible problem here, and you are doing it to yourself.
Personally, I see other people having dandruff, but I dont automatically expect it for myself.
By looking around at others, and using your observations to set high standards of expectation for yourself, and your own life, you are setting yourself up to be disappointed, and feel inferior, and to withdraw even more as a result. It is, in effect, your own self-fulfilling prophecy.
Nobody really likes to be around anyone who is self-absorbed, despondent, and struggling with issues of inferiority and given to bouts of whining about being abused or treated unfairly. If you are going around with that big chip on your shoulder, people are going to naturally avoid you even more than they would otherwise.
Author Wayne Dyer said it this way: People who want the most approval, get the least, and people who need approval the least, get the most.
That's just how it is.
In short, If you dont lose the attitude, dont expect things to improve.
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The best way I know to lose this woe-is-me attitude, is to embrace your own individuality. Confident perky individuals do get plenty of attention. But not everyone is born a Sagittarius, or a Leo. Just because you are not the consummate social butterfly does not mean you are a person of no worth.
In fact, society has a sad history of often being massively wrong, and of doing it in large groups. For example, people used to believe that the world was flat, and that the sun revolved around the earth. There are miles of science books in the Louvre museum in France, that were once generally accepted, but are now defunct. Some of our most celebrated authors and thinkers died penniless, shunned, and alone. They were ahead of their time because their genius was never recognized or applauded while they were living. So, you have good company, if you are also not very popular. And, if they can slip though life totally misunderstood and unappreciated, so can you, or anyone.
Attention and approval is not a true mark of success or worth.
Quite the opposite. Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who negotiated a peace treaty with Hitler, was at one time the most popular and acclaimed politician in all of Europe. Now, however, he is reviled by most as a complete idiot and a fool.
On Wall Street, one theory of investing, called Contrarian Investing, advises that if you see a herd of people rushing in one direction, you should invest in the opposite direction, because time and study have shown that the opinion of the mass genral public is nearly always wrong. I refer you to the book: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, published in 1841 by the Scottish journalist Charles Mackay.
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Television, and its constant unnatural episodes of applause and excitement, tends to greatly increase our expectations of what our lives should be like. Just because people on television get applause, does not mean that you should be expecting it too. Real life is NOT what you see on television. That's why you watch it.
Stop trying so hard; stop expecting attention, and approval, and just use what you have.
You might not value what you have. You might sound like Moses arguing with God:
"But I cant speak well. . . Im no good with crowds. . . I cant. . . I dont. . . I, I, I ".
God asked the reluctant Moses what he had in his hand.
A humble shepherds staff.
God said, fine. We'll use that. It's ENOUGH for God.
Whatever you have,
it is sufficient for you to be used by God in great and mighty ways.
You just need to feel comfortable in your own skin.
Stop looking around with sad eyes at everyone else, and look at what you have in your very own hand, and if its just a humble shepherds staff to you. Well, okay fine. Its enough. Its yours. It works. Grip it. Use it. See the results. Embrace what you have and use that. Don't embrace what you don't have and make yourself feel sad.
Stop putting your focus on what you lack, and put your focus on what you have, and exploit that.
I tell you what, public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
"What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate." Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Perhaps it is just maturity and growing up, that only comes with time, to learn to just be who you are, and work on improving you, and not waste too much energy twisting and contorting yourself trying to conform.
Laughing with other people. . . people finding you attractive. . . and giving you attention, are NOT proper goals. Those are actually effects. They are the side effects of confident people out seeking other goals, but sharing some time together. Don't chase effects.
Chasing the effects, will only guarantee that you enjoy few of them, if ever. The irony is that you are likely to only find these things if you forget about them, and they begin to happen naturally as you pursue goals of more substance.
Life can be fine, and you can still be a success, without ever attracting and impressing anyone.
But I think you will begin to attract and impress people - when you have a worthy goal, and they see you making progress and living it.
