Why Teenagers Should Do Personal Development

[Rob]

Hi 

My name is Rob and I'm currently 15 years old. Little back story: i got into personal development because something happened which made me realised that how much of a stimulous response animal i was, so that led me into personal development. One of the main challenges of getting into personal development in such a young age is that all my friends has no idea what this 'self-help' thing is and most of them think I'm crazy and weird. Most people in my school plays video games and eat junk food, so as soon as you detach yourself from those nasty stuff, people will label you as: weird. This is the NO. 1 obstacle to jump over if you wanna self actualise when you're a teenager, but you know what? its worth it. You'll  feel so much better about yourself and realising your goals. Now i spend my lunch time reading self help books in the library for at least 40 mins which gave me some massive gains on my personal development, also I'm dragging more people into this field which is awesome! You might come up with objections such as: well, I'm only going to live once as a teen, why not just relax and do all the teens stuff when I'm at my age? Well, do you see all the people that has a screwed up life, maybe someone on the street, maybe that guy from the grocery store, or even your parents. If you're currently doing all the crazy stuff that your friends does, do you see whats going to happen 20 years down the road? Can you imagine how miserable your life will become?? Visualise it, feel into it. The other thing is when you're young, your mind isn't in a fixed state. So bad habits are still pretty easy to get rid of and good habits are still easy to install. Imagine you got everything handled before your mind becomes rock solid. Man, god knows what results you can generate. My advice is: If you're a teenager, watch leo's video:  

One last point: put down your bloody phone! You brain is now probably booked to it like a drug. I'll write a separate article on why should you give it up. So one simple challenge for you: don't touch your phone after you wake up for 1 hour. Invest that time into reading book, exercising, whatever. Just don't touch your phone. 

Rob

[Boss]

I do agree teenagers should do personal development. When I was a teenager I just went with the flow. 

[Arman]

That's cool man. You're lucky to be exposed young. I got into Eckhart Tolle when I was 16 and it helped a lot. I also remember being really fanatic about it and thinking it was the answer to everyone's problems if they would only just 'get it'. I think I probably annoyed a lot of people. Just be aware that 99% of the time words are useless so just lead by example and eventually people will open up to you and you'll become attuned to when to share and when not to. 

[bazera]

You are just 15 years old, and you realize what video games or even scrolling Facebook with your smartphone every morning does to you, awesome man  Pretty awesome.. I wish I realized that when I was your age, even though I am not that old yet (20 years), but those 5 years would be a life changing to me. I would be living with a completely different life now, if I thought about the ideas you are talking about in your post. So keep it up, and don't change your orientation

Edited February 7, 2016 by bazera

[Driven]

I am 19, do not spend too much time on personal development because then it would just become a phase, just be consistent. if you detach yourself from your friends your social skills will decrease and you will be too much in your head, just by hanging out with your friends and understanding their perceptive is also personal development.

 

To conclude do not disregard your friends, if they all play video games play with them (but not a lot). In life anything of too much is bad (including personal development)

"you're currently doing all the crazy stuff that your friends does, do you see whats going to happen 20 years down the road", your overthinking, if you stress so much at a young age and preach this to friends around you, you will push them away,  but its fine to think this in you head once in a while only. 

 

[Alex]

Man its fucking awesome you discovered personal development so early in your life its unimaginable what potenial you will have once you are an adult. I wish you the best for you journey and hope you never go of track. However i disagree on the fact that the brain is set once you are an adult, recent discoveries in neurosience showed that the brain stays plastic throughout the whole life, so no mather what age you are still able do make some huge changes in your mindset. 

[Davo124]

I'm 15 too, let's change the world

Edited February 7, 2016 by Davo124

[Moritz221]

I am also  a teenager who does personal development. It is great to hear that I am not the only one....

[Dangirdas]

I'm so glad to see that there are people like this out there. I started my own journey when i was 14, and it has paid off greatly. The only issue with starting this early, is that you will automatically feel detached from the people around you who don't understand self development. And trying to make them understand it, will only make them think you're some weird ass. So you should balance it, because teenage years are a lot of fun, but most of the fun isn't really self development.

[Vincent Musanti]

I'm really glad to see that there are other teenagers who have been in this conundrum. From what I found after struggling and opening my mouth too much is that you can still have fun and do certain activities in high school while also pursuing personal development. Because personal development is about optimizing your life to run more efficiently, personal development is about optimizing your psyche to perform the activities and fun things in life.

What I realized is that neurotic tendencies like neediness and attachment to your cell phone is developed out of fear. Leo has a great video on how society is designed to distract you from looking inward. By observing the way the school environment behaves, you can understand how these 'bad habits' you have are set up to avoid doing inner work. Another thing you might realize is that certain activities like addiction to the internet or TV or your phone actually are not too fun after a while. In my life, bad habits have emotionally drained me. I do not know other people but I feel like after a while bad habits and addictions do the same to them.

We see everyone from the outside having fun and enjoying playing on the phone. We think of TV as an enjoyable task. Those tasks are supposed to de stress you. That is from the outside. But it is hard to detect the inner world of those people and sometimes yourself. What usually is going on is that you are avoiding your higher self. The higher self is the part of you that wants to pursue personal development. It motivates you to do greater things. The higher self does not go away. You can distract it with more and more obligations and such. But realize what happens when all of the noise goes away. This may be late at night when you are alone. There are these 'nagging' thoughts that arise. What is causing these? The calls of the higher self. By suppressing the higher self, ordinary tasks will start to feel like chores. Life will seem to start going down hill. Its imperative that you answer the calls and listen to your 'gut feeling'. My realization is that everyone has the higher self in them but some have more distractions that cover it up to evade inner contemplation. Maybe this is why some of the happiest people have the least material wealth. Maybe this is why money can not buy happiness. Moreover, the quote really means that "material wealth will not make you happy if you can not be happy without it". If the higher self never disappears and only gets suppressed, if you have awareness to follow the higher self always, your life runs smoothly because you will never be in an internal conflict. However, it is definitely a challenge to maintain awareness and focus onto an insight or vision in a school-like environment.

By pursuing personal development, what you can do is sprinkle a little bit of insight into your everyday life. By making insights more relevant, they can sneak their way into your language and strike people emotionally and move them in subtle ways. 

Edited February 7, 2016 by Vincent Musanti

[Rob]

8 hours ago, Driven said:

I am 19, do not spend too much time on personal development because then it would just become a phase, just be consistent. if you detach yourself from your friends your social skills will decrease and you will be too much in your head, just by hanging out with your friends and understanding their perceptive is also personal development.

 

To conclude do not disregard your friends, if they all play video games play with them (but not a lot). In life anything of too much is bad (including personal development)

"you're currently doing all the crazy stuff that your friends does, do you see whats going to happen 20 years down the road", your overthinking, if you stress so much at a young age and preach this to friends around you, you will push them away,  but its fine to think this in you head once in a while only. 

 

 

8 hours ago, Driven said:

I am 19, do not spend too much time on personal development because then it would just become a phase, just be consistent. if you detach yourself from your friends your social skills will decrease and you will be too much in your head, just by hanging out with your friends and understanding their perceptive is also personal development.

 

To conclude do not disregard your friends, if they all play video games play with them (but not a lot). In life anything of too much is bad (including personal development)

"you're currently doing all the crazy stuff that your friends does, do you see whats going to happen 20 years down the road", your overthinking, if you stress so much at a young age and preach this to friends around you, you will push them away,  but its fine to think this in you head once in a while only. 

 

That makes a lot of sense man! So I'm actually not disregarding my friends. We go shopping and watch movies on the weekends. So I keep most of these stuff in my mind, therefore I can gain perspective when it comes to fronds dragging you down into negative stuff. But anyways thank you for the tip, man! 

[Rob]

6 hours ago, Dangirdas said:

I'm so glad to see that there are people like this out there. I started my own journey when i was 14, and it has paid off greatly. The only issue with starting this early, is that you will automatically feel detached from the people around you who don't understand self development. And trying to make them understand it, will only make them think you're some weird ass. So you should balance it, because teenage years are a lot of fun, but most of the fun isn't really self development.

True

[immortal]

i'm 18 and I got into serious self development this year and have had exponential growth. Be mindful that you cannot change other people they can only change themselves you can only share what has helped you along your journey. Good luck with all of your self development man .

[Rob]

9 hours ago, bazera said:

You are just 15 years old, and you realize what video games or even scrolling Facebook with your smartphone every morning does to you, awesome man  Pretty awesome.. I wish I realized that when I was your age, even though I am not that old yet (20 years), but those 5 years would be a life changing to me. I would be living with a completely different life now, if I thought about the ideas you are talking about in your post. So keep it up, and don't change your orientation

20? Not late at all! Keep going after your goals! 

Rob

[Rob]

5 hours ago, Vincent Musanti said:

I'm really glad to see that there are other teenagers who have been in this conundrum. From what I found after struggling and opening my mouth too much is that you can still have fun and do certain activities in high school while also pursuing personal development. Because personal development is about optimizing your life to run more efficiently, personal development is about optimizing your psyche to perform the activities and fun things in life.

What I realized is that neurotic tendencies like neediness and attachment to your cell phone is developed out of fear. Leo has a great video on how society is designed to distract you from looking inward. By observing the way the school environment behaves, you can understand how these 'bad habits' you have are set up to avoid doing inner work. Another thing you might realize is that certain activities like addiction to the internet or TV or your phone actually are not too fun after a while. In my life, bad habits have emotionally drained me. I do not know other people but I feel like after a while bad habits and addictions do the same to them.

We see everyone from the outside having fun and enjoying playing on the phone. We think of TV as an enjoyable task. Those tasks are supposed to de stress you. That is from the outside. But it is hard to detect the inner world of those people and sometimes yourself. What usually is going on is that you are avoiding your higher self. The higher self is the part of you that wants to pursue personal development. It motivates you to do greater things. The higher self does not go away. You can distract it with more and more obligations and such. But realize what happens when all of the noise goes away. This may be late at night when you are alone. There are these 'nagging' thoughts that arise. What is causing these? The calls of the higher self. By suppressing the higher self, ordinary tasks will start to feel like chores. Life will seem to start going down hill. Its imperative that you answer the calls and listen to your 'gut feeling'. My realization is that everyone has the higher self in them but some have more distractions that cover it up to evade inner contemplation. Maybe this is why some of the happiest people have the least material wealth. Maybe this is why money can not buy happiness. Moreover, the quote really means that "material wealth will not make you happy if you can not be happy without it". If the higher self never disappears and only gets suppressed, if you have awareness to follow the higher self always, your life runs smoothly because you will never be in an internal conflict. However, it is definitely a challenge to maintain awareness and focus onto an insight or vision in a school-like environment.

By pursuing personal development, what you can do is sprinkle a little bit of insight into your everyday life. By making insights more relevant, they can sneak their way into your language and strike people emotionally and move them in subtle ways. 

Awesome words man! Keep chasing after your goals! Let's see what will we become on year later! 

[Rob]

39 minutes ago, immortal said:

i'm 18 and I got into serious self development this year and have had exponential growth. Be mindful that you cannot change other people they can only change themselves you can only share what has helped you along your journey. Good luck with all of your self development man .

That'd true, only wise and open minded people will start their journey! 

Rob

[Rob]

24 minutes ago, RisingLane said:

I am 16 and I started with Personal Development a year ago. I realize what happens to other teenagers around me who don't do any Personal Development. And whenever I see it I'm so glad that I read the book "The Happiness Advantage" a year ago because it was the book which brought me into this field and changed my life. I would be like all the other teenagers around me if I hadn't read this one book and started this journey. That's why I agree with you that teenagers should do personal development. You are never to old to start with Personal Development but also never too young!

Awesome! Let's self actualize together! See you on the other end! 

Rob

[Matt]

Ayy, I found someone my age who does personal development haha good luck brotha.

Edited February 8, 2016 by Matt

[Black Flag]

18 hours ago, Davo124 said:

I'm 15 too, let's change the world

22 hours ago, Rob said:

...

You guys have a great head start on most of the general psyche. Good luck changing the world, its a big place to change

[Rob]

3 hours ago, Matt said:

Ayy, I found someone my age who does personal development haha good luck brotha.

Lets work together towards self actualizing, man!