Alex Swenson’s YouTube video "How To Be An Inspired Teenager" is a short motivational talk offering ten practical life lessons aimed primarily at teenagers but applicable to anyone. Swenson emphasizes starting the day with a completed task, balancing reliance on others with self-reliance, cultivating self-discipline and passion ("the size of your heart"), accepting life’s unfairness, using failure to grow, daring to pursue big goals, standing up to bullies and wrongs, rising to your best self after setbacks, giving others hope, and never quitting on yourself. The tone is direct, personal, and encouraging, with actionable suggestions (e.g., make your bed, read pages, practice skills).
Chapters
Hey, guys. How you doing? Alex here. Hey, want to go over these 10 important lessons that's going to help you be an inspired teenager? And I'm not saying it's going to be easy. These things are tough things I'm still working on. And you don't have to be a teenager. This can be for anybody. And this could be lessons that you apply for the rest of your life and that you continue to look at and evaluate where you can improve and where you need to get better as you go. Okay, let's hop right into it. Hey, guys, a quick plug. I don't like doing this because I don't like asking for stuff, but if you do like this video, select like and subscribe. It helps me and inspires me to keep moving forward and to give good content for you guys, whether it's just self development or recruiting or whatever that may be. Look out for videos every week. All right, let's get to the video. Okay, so the first one. Start your day with a task complete. Okay? Starting your day with a task complete. Get your day rolling, right? You accomplish something. You ever know that feeling when you accomplish something, man, you got like some momentum behind you, right? This doesn't have to be big. This could be like, make your bed, okay, or read 2, 3, 4 pages of a book, okay? You wake up, you set a little bit of time, okay, five minutes, if that, to get something done that, hey, maybe you need to get done or that you like doing, right? Reading ten pages a book. Or maybe it's something that you don't necessarily like, but you know, you have to get done. And when you get done with it, you feel accomplished and, man, your day's off and running, okay? Number two, understand your success depends on others and you, okay, there's a dichotomy here. Okay? Others. Hey, you're not going to be able to get through all life if you're just worried about yourself and think it all depends on you, right? Other people can help you, allow other people to help you, but on the other side, you're going to need. There's going to be times during your life where it's just going to depend on you. Self discipline, self motivation. You're going to have to get through certain things, so you're going to find that balance. This is a hard thing. You got to find a balance of when, hey, you need to seek other people to help you and. And when there's time for it, hey, it's just on you. You're going to need to figure that out. All right, so always kind of. And talk to people about this. This is the others, like, how do they accomplish certain things? How do they get self discipline, self motivation? And this is a journey, guys, I'm still working on it, of being self disciplined, self motivated as we go. And I've learned quickly that motivation is very fleeting. It gets you started. But then self discipline is really what keeps you going, doing things even when you know or you don't want to do them. That is self discipline. That's huge, okay? The size of your heart matters, okay? Your will, your will to win. And will is big on these lessons here. But what you're trying to accomplish, don't be so focused on talent, right? Your heart is the biggest thing. How bad do you want it? Okay? That is so important. Find something that you are so passionate about that you can feel your heart just beat and get excited for. That's where you can get really successful. Because if your heart's not into it, hey, you're probably not going to go very far, okay? And there's going to be some times where you have down days, but you're going to need to push through that. That's where that self discipline comes through, okay? Understand? Life is not fair. It's not fair, guys. There's going to be times in your life where things do not go your way. And that's okay. That's going to happen as bad as it's going to hurt, okay? But it's not fair. You might have very well should have gotten a certain award or whatever and the other person gets it, okay? Hey, life's not fair. But is that going to keep you down? Right? Is that going to prevent you to keep going and moving forward? Right? That's that. One step back, two steps forward. Use that as motivation. But understand, not everything is going to go your way. 5. Failure can make you stronger. And can is a big word right here, can. Because it can definitely make you weaker if you allow it to. But if you use that failure as motivation to get through, it can make you stronger. Use failure as bad again, as bad as it hurts and as bad as it sucks, frankly, okay, it will make you stronger, but you have to keep pushing through. You have to keep pushing through, okay? You must dare greatly go after big goals. Go after big goals and don't be afraid of failure. And that's so easy to say because honestly, it's not the reality of it. We're all kind of afraid of failing, right? Of failing to do something, of failing to strike out or whatever. It May be, but go after it anyway. And know that you are going to fail, you are going to have setbacks, okay? But let it make you stronger, okay? And go after big goals. And if you don't accomplish it, okay, get back on the saddle, stand back up and go after them. Stand up to bullies. Eight. Big thing about this is eight. No. When you need to stand up against wrong. When things are wrong, stand up. Right? Well, maybe you could ask Alex. I don't know how to stand up the bullies. Well, you can prepare yourself, right? Prepare yourself. Whether it's getting and talking, learning how to talk to somebody of authority or bullies, whatnot, or learn Brazilian jiu jitsu so you can defend yourself, right? But stand up to bullies. And that doesn't have to just be about school, but really anything for that matter, what, where, hey, things aren't fair or things aren't necessarily right, you know that they're wrong. You need to stand up for that, okay? Stand up for that and practice that. Put yourself in your mind in situations. Talk to other people, how they handle that. But stand up to bullies. Rise to your best self. Okay? This is big. When things are not going well, when failure happens, you need to rise to your best self. So whether you're failing at a sport, you strike out, you don't do really good on your grades, you need to rise to yourself. What does that mean? So you failed that test, you got an athletic. You know what you did wrong, right? You either didn't prepare or whatever other circumstance it is, you need to rise to your best self, meaning you need to take accountability for that. And then you're going to need to adjust and make that better the next time it comes around or you strike out maybe three times in a game, okay? You're not going to go and slam your helmet and talk back to a coach or whatever it may be. You're going to rise to your best self and know that, hey, you're going to handle yourself in the right way, in the right manner. Doesn't mean that you don't get frustrated. But after the game, maybe you're getting extra reps in, you're preparing, you're talking to your coach. How do I get better? Rise to your best self. And when it really matters is when things are going bad, okay? It's really easy to rise to your best self when things are going good. Everybody can do that, okay? Give people hope. This is another thing. When things aren't going good, whether it's a team environment, give other people hope. Hey, build people up. Build people up. And it can be. It doesn't have to be even in a sports setting. It can give people compliments. Hey, if you like their shoes or you like their backpack, hey, let them know. Give people hope throughout the day and give yourself hope as well. And lastly, never ever quit, okay? There is a motto in the, the, the SEAL community, Navy seals, I'm sure you guys have heard of them. And they say, never ever ring the bell. The bell. Because when they ring the bell, that means they quit and they give up. Never, ever ring the bell. And the biggest thing I say, never quit on yourself. Never quit on yourself. Okay? You're going to go through challenges, you're going to go through failures. Never quit on yourself. Get up, stand up. You're going to get knocked down and get up and stand up and keep moving forward. Hope you guys like this video and I'll see you in the next one.
