7 Things I'd Tell My Teenage Self... From Matthew Hussey & Get The Guy

There have been so many young people watching our videos and always calling out for us to make a video for teenagers. And it's hard to know what's the right one. And I can't do them every week because there's just so little time. But this is a video for teenagers. In fact, it's a video aimed at one teenager in particular, and that's myself, my teenage, awkward, insecure, spotty self. What would you tell yourself? You could go back. I know it's the beginning of a new school year. It's a fresh start. And as I was thinking about this, I started thinking about what I would want to know as a teenager going into a new year. These are the seven things I tell my teenage self. Take risks, try new things. I think one of the things that happens to us when we're at school is we tend to carry on the way we start school. You know, very quickly we start school and an identity is created for us, not even necessarily by ourselves, but by the way other people see us. And gradually, over time, we end up reinforcing that identity instead of doing some of the new things we actually want to do. As we get older, we realize we're always going to be able to talk about the things we did, but we're never going to be able to talk about the things we didn't do. I can't tell you right now about the play that I did at school. I can't tell you that story because it doesn't exist. Now, let's say when I was at school, I did the school play and I fell off the stage and it was a horrible, embarrassing moment. Guess what? Right now, in my life as an adult, I could tell you that story. What's my story? Well, I didn't do the play, and therefore no one made fun of me. That's not a good story. 2. Be careful who you're trying to impress right now. Whether you're 13 or whether you're 19, there are people right now that consciously or unconsciously you're trying to impress. Be very careful about that. If I were able to extrapolate each one of those people in your life right now, in your age group, and say, here's where they're going to be in 10 years time. If I could show you that future, I guarantee you you would reevaluate who you're trying to impress right now. I'm not saying you should be trying to impress anybody, but I know that subconsciously we walk around and there are people that we wish would like Us, do not worry about it. We worry about what you're doing right now. 3. Trying to get yourself invited to the party doesn't get you invited to the party. I remember at school, one of the big insecurities I had was, there's a party going on on Friday. Am I going to be invited? You spend your entire week trying to get in good with the person who's throwing the party so that they'll invite you to the party. But that doesn't work. Being invited to parties is just a byproduct of being the type of person that other people want to spend time with. So don't focus on the parties and the gatherings and the friendship groups. Focus on being that person that other people love spending time with. 4. Ignore people's first reactions to the things you do. One of the biggest fears at school is when we try something different, other people are going to look at us strange. It's like when you go in with a new haircut. The horrible moment is where you walk in and everyone looks at you, oh, look who got a haircut. That's weird. Why did you do that? The people that usually fail and. And always end up staying how they are are the people that take that on board and then change their hair back to the way it was the next day. People that actually get people's acceptance are the ones that don't need everyone else's acceptance. They say, you know what? This haircut, this way I'm looking, might be something that does look stupid a year from now. Or it might be something I do look back on with complete embarrassment, but I'm gonna do it anyway. If it's something I wanna do, I'm gonna do it right now and change it when I feel I wanna change it. Do not because of the reactions of other people. And when you ignore their reactions, what you'll find is you get over that initiation period and you get to a point where people accept how you are. 5. School can suck. A lot of school is doing things you don't want to do, studying things you don't want to study, hanging around with people you don't want to hang around with, listening to teachers you don't want to be around. The myth is that that all changes. The big lie is when I start doing the thing that I really love, I'll get to stop doing things I don't love. Doesn't work like that. I found in my life that even though today I do the thing I love more than anything else in the world, there are plenty of things I have to do that aren't things I love. I love doing seminars, I love public speaking. But guess what? The moments where I'm sitting at home late at night on my own, trying to figure out the right way to say a sentence in a seminar, trying to drafting, redrafting, redrafting, redrafting. Typing up that version, scrapping it, learning it. All that stuff happens before I even step out on stage. And it is monotonous and boring and it can be so trivial it will make you go crazy. I don't love that stuff. That means that the real art is in finding a way to enjoy whatever you're doing. Now you're at school, so I give you a great challenge right now. When you're doing the things you don't want to do, can you figure out your own ways of enjoying doing those things? Because if you can do that, you're going to be happy for the rest of your life. 6. See everything as a stepping stone As I just said, school can suck. You do many things you don't want to do, but when you're thinking about the one thing that you want to do, sometimes when we dream as kids, we have these pie in the sky ideas of either how quickly we're going to get there or how easy the transition is going to be there. It can get kind of depressing. Therefore, when we find that there are tons of steps in the middle. Many people really resent jobs. They do because they feel like, well, this isn't getting me closer to where I want to be. I'm in the wrong area. And the most successful people I've met have done many different jobs that had nothing to do with where they ended up. But here's the difference. Rather than seeing things as a waste of time, they saw everything as a stepping stone. The wrong job before the job you're passionate about can be the right job at the time. So don't fret that right now you're going into something that isn't exactly where you want to be. The wrong job can be a blessing when it teaches you more about what you want and about where you want to go. Alright, number seven. Enjoy being young, but think like an adult. When you're a teenager, people are trying to put all sorts of rules on you. Very often people try and scare you in areas like sex or drugs or drinking. This is just an effort to keep you safe, to make sure you don't make bad decisions. But adults have a way of making kids scared so that they never do something. And by doing that, they lose the credibility in their argument because they make something too bad. But just because an adult is treating you like a kid, it doesn't mean you have to rebel like a kid. You can still make the smart choice, and it doesn't involve always agreeing with your parents, but it does involve doing what's best for you. In other words, if you're a young girl and your parents don't like your boyfriend, they may have a reason that's valid for not liking your boyfriend, but they may communicate that to you in a really negative, overly harsh way that doesn't show any understanding of you. That doesn't mean that the smart thing to do is rebel and run away with your boyfriend in a car somewhere where no one knows where you are. That's not the smart thing to do. It might not be that you want to agree with everything your parents say, but do the best thing for you in the scenario. Don't rebel just because you want to get back at someone. That's dumb, it's stupid, and it leads teenagers to doing things that they only end up regretting later in life. I'm not preaching to you. Trust me. I made my own mistakes. I went through my own learning curve. You need to go and mess up. You need to go and make mistakes. Just make mistakes you can recover from. Make mistakes that aren't going to kill you. Make mistakes that allow you to build your future in spite of those mistakes. Make mistakes that allow you to grow and where you can take a little learning from some people who have been there and see if you can apply. It ain't always easy, but this video and others like it are at least a little shot at that. Thanks for watching. I appreciate you're even the type of teenager that would want to grow through this stuff, and I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. If you're an adult watching this, leave a comment Saying what you would tell yourself as a teenager. What one thing would you like to tell yourself as a teenager that you know would have made life better? Take care my friends. I'll see you real soon.