Motivational speaker Jim Rohn famously said that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. While it may sound like an exaggerated quote and lacks scientific validity, it helps to convey a very powerful idea that the people we surround ourselves with greatly influence our thoughts, behaviours, and ultimately shape who we become. Look at your closest friends and family who have made substantial contributions in shaping you. In some cases, you accomplished much more than you thought you were capable of because of their timely intervention. With a genuine desire that you shouldn’t fail in life, your closest friends and family didn’t allow you to follow your dream and they coerced you to follow easier goals. They do it out of love and concern for you and your dreams, aspirations and ambitions would never be accomplished because you were not allowed to pursue it for fear of failure.

As you begin this wonderful academic year, you may want to do some introspection and identify those people who have influence on you. Do they uplift and inspire you or do they bring you down? Have they limited you in some way? Or have they kept you in your comfort zone? When you look back you will know how strong was their influence on you and how your life has been shaped by their influence. Maybe it is a good time to make a resolution to associate more with people who will uplift and help you reach your fullest potential and make you the best version of you. And when you give more time to such people in your life, you’ll find that the negative people will have no more influence on you. Your decisions to say ‘No’ to gossiping, bunking classes, getting into infatuations, fights, quarrels, drugs and overuse of social media will distance you from such negative people. If you associate yourself with such friends, it’s likely that you will inherit such habits.

Subscribe to The Teenager Today print / digital editions to read the full article.

The post Surround Yourself with Positive People appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Most of us are adept at using smiley emojis or emoticons on social media. Smileys are popular; we use them to convey emotions of happiness. Dentists nowadays publicize their profession in terms of ‘smile works’ by highlighting smile makeovers, artificial braces, teeth whitening, etc., and some business ventures are named Smiley. Gifts galore appear on sale with a smiling face as an expression of love and happiness. Remember the old jingles for toothpaste which used a smile to sell their products? Do smiley pictographs always bring a smile to the one receiving them? It all depends on the state of mind or environment of the receiver. The sender cannot be sure about the reaction of the receiver. In reality, smileys on digital media can never truly express feelings and emotions.

Could it be that, engrossed in the world of smileys and glued to our gadgets and computers, we have forgotten to smile at one another? A smile is a conscious or subconscious movement of facial muscles conveying mirth or pleasure. Smiling enlivens us as we look up from our gadgets and look at the ones around us with a welcoming smile, a kind smile, a confident smile, or a caring smile. Your actual smile can make a huge difference. Poets have been inspired to write beautiful lines on the effects of a smile. Let’s see where a smile wins over a smiley.

Subscribe to The Teenager Today print / digital editions to read the full article.

The post Do you have a Sunshine Smile? appeared first on The Teenager Today.

By nature, humans are friendly, pleasure-seeking, compassionate, kind, giving and forgiving creatures. Our “nature” or personality really comprises of unique inclinations that we cultivate in our thinking, feeling, and behaving to serve ourselves as well as connect with the larger world around us. Yet, from infancy and childhood, as we advance into teenage and adulthood, seeds of negativism begin to sprout. And some of them blossom into large spanning trees that colour our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours negatively. This unconstructive thinking clouds rational judgement and interferes with personal, academic, and interpersonal advancement.

You don’t feel good when you’re angry, sad, frustrated, upset, jealous or aggressive, right? By repeatedly feeling these negative emotions you could develop a thinking error that is commonly called a negativity bias. Like an anchor that locks the ship at sea, this makes you focus on that one bad thing even if there is a mountain of good things right in front of you. Think about the following situations:

• When your teacher (who always loves your work) told you once that your assignment wasn’t good enough, you can’t stop thinking about how bad you are.
• When your best friend’s invitation to a party does not reach you due to a technical glitch, you think that your friendship has ended.
• When you were asked to speak in front of the class, and your mind went blank, and you could not think of what to say, you felt like you were stupid.
• You said something about a friend in front of everyone that embarrassed him, and now you feel you cannot face your friends anymore, ever again.
• Your parents did not acknowledge your dance performance and you thought that nobody ever appreciates you or notices that you’re good at what you do.

All of them may have made you feel like you are not good enough or others are insufficient and that the world is an unfair place. You could become cynical and passive-aggressive too. You might change your outlook towards yourself and others and become pessimistic or negative. However, with deliberate effort and practice, you can learn to let go of negative thoughts and create a more optimistic outlook towards your life, irrespective of the bad that happens to or around you.

Subscribe to The Teenager Today print / digital editions to read the full article.

The post 5 Hacks for Positivity appeared first on The Teenager Today.

In the fast-paced world we inhabit, it is easy to forget the power of a simple act of wishing good things to happen in the lives of others. Imagine a world where we pause and imagine happiness and well-being for everyone in our thoughts and express these in words and actions. This good habit would uplift and transform us and those around us. We will experience immense happiness and boundless freedom flowing into our own life. So the art of blessing is reciprocal — a cycle of positive energy that returns to enrich our own existence.

Make it a habit in your life in the days to come. Start with a simple practice: consciously wish all the people you encounter in your daily life to have a happy and successful day. Be grateful to those who have shown you kindness and love. Similarly, wish good things for those who may not have treated you well in the past. Understand that everyone is on their journey, and your good feelings and wishes would serve as source of power and positive energy in them. You, too, will experience abundant inner peace and joy.

Expand this habit to those who accompany you in your daily life — wish maximum good for the driver, the commuters, and the conductors. Extend this towards those who work tirelessly to ensure the smooth functioning of our society — the policeman, the postman, the watchman, washerman, milkman, and the cleaners. Bless your school, college, hospital, your town, your governing bodies, and the business centres. Recognize the interconnectedness of all lives, and let your blessings create ripples of positive energy and goodness around you in this New Year!

As you step into the New Year, carry the awareness that you are a source of divine blessings. Let your thoughts, words, and feelings be imbued with the spirit of goodwill towards all creation. We have dedicated this issue of the TTT with articles to help you on this positive path that you can choose. Wish you all a year filled with abundant blessings and the transformative power of goodwill.

The post Be a Channel of Blessings! appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Mornings are the most special time of the day. For me, mornings are about a lot of diverse sounds that merge together to liven us up. The sound of a steaming cup of tea/coffee, pages of a newspaper being turned (for the ones who are still old school), chirping of birds, alarm clocks ringing endlessly on snooze, school buses honking at the gate, children and adults rushing to their destinations and many more.

How you wake up every morning sets the tone for the entire day ahead. So it is very important that you do it the best way you can. There is no one way or right way of waking up. However, I have experimented with a few things that have worked for me and I would love to share the same with you. For the longest time I thought that I wasn’t a “morning person”. Yet, over the years, I have realized that there is no such thing as being a “morning person” (or not). It is all about setting the tone and changing a few habits that in turn change our lives positively.

1. Make Your Bed

“If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” These simple words were shared by retired U.S. Admiral William H. McRaven while addressing a class of graduating students at the University of Texas. When you first read it, you might wonder how this small act can really help you change the world. But as you take up this simple task every morning, you will see the difference. You will feel like you accomplished a task at the very beginning of the day and also feel a small sense of pride for completing something. This will build a positive mindset for the rest of the day as you take on more complex tasks on your calendar.

Subscribe to The Teenager Today print / digital editions to read the full article.

The post A Cup of Happy appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Religious scriptures speak about happiness sought after by everybody. Jesus, in his sermon on the mount, spoke about the different ways one can be happy: Being detached from material things, and selflessly working for peace, justice, serving the poor and the suffering, being some of them. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar says, “If you are only a taker of happiness you get misery. If you are a giver of happiness, you get joy and love.” The irony about happiness is that the person who wants nothing will possess everything and vice versa. So the cause of unhappiness in our life lies in the craving in one’s heart for things outside of oneself because happiness is an inside job.

Most people chase happiness just like a puppy trying to catch its own tail, believing that happiness lies in catching it. You do not realize that happiness is not found somewhere up in the sky but it is to be sought and found in your heart. It fills your heart drop by drop when you engage yourself in your duties with a sincere and selfless heart, seeking peace among other people and working for their welfare. People like Mother Teresa, Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi and scores of others have traced for us the way to true happiness which nobody can take away from you unless you banish it from your life with your selfishness, anxieties and worries.

“There is no path to happiness: happiness is the path,” aptly quipped Shri Buddha. The goal of every spirituality is to help you attain such happiness which nobody can take away from you. Therefore, in the quest for happiness, discover it within yourself through self-awareness and meditation. Be happy now whatever the circumstance may be and resolve to remain happy. So every day, make a resolution: “Today, I am just going to be happy, come what may. I will not let anything selfish disturb my inner peace and happiness. I am going to be contented, happy.”

The post Seeking happiness within! appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Drawing comfort from the beautiful verses that Lord Tennyson wrote over a hundred and seventy years ago, it is once again the perfect time to ‘ring out the old, ring in the new’. We welcome another year with gratitude to simply be alive and well, reeling from what has been a true test of the human superpower of resilience.

We arrived into 2021 fervently hoping to escape from the grasp of a global health crisis that the United Nations described as quite unlike any other in the history of its 75 years.

The novel coronavirus was and is not limited to a health crisis; it has wreaked havoc on social, economic and psychological levels. It claimed lives and livelihoods, hitting marginalized pockets of the world hard and affecting almost every industry. Children today have spent entire academic years indoors and have yet to fully grasp what our ‘normal’ used to be.

As vaccines were deployed successfully, we rose to the challenge and attempted to achieve a semblance of the pre-Covid era. Schools, colleges and offices reopened carefully. Entertainment and social gatherings became possible gradually. The world got back into its hustle and bustle.

Subscribe to The Teenager Today print / digital editions to read the full article.

The post A Brave New World: Usher in the New Year with explosive positivity! appeared first on The Teenager Today.

The post Just be you appeared first on The Teenager Today.

“Thank you” isn’t just a protocol-driven verbal response to something someone says or does for you. It’s an emotion-laden gesture that recognizes somebody’s effort or thought or intent or action that is directed for your benefit. When you thank someone, you acknowledge the person as a whole respectable and admirable entity. According to the theory of transactional analysis, reaching out to somebody through a verbal or physical medium is known as a ‘stroke’. As community-oriented human beings it is our critical responsibility to stroke each other. Thank you is one such positive verbal stroke.

Facts about saying “thank you”

• It’s short.
• It’s simple.
• Doesn’t cost much.
• Shows that you care.
• Reveals interpersonal respect.
• Makes the other person feel good.

And yet we don’t say it! Why?

• We’re vain.
• We’re inattentive.
• We’re uncomfortable.
• We have social anxiety.
• We take people for granted.
• We’re cynical and unhappy people.

‘Thank you’ does appear to have become one of the most underappreciated and under-used phrases in the English language. Here are some situations that might resonate with our everyday lives. And as much as we usually tend to overlook these, we need to work on practising gratitude. Not just feeling it, but also saying it aloud.

When someone says, “Oh, you look lovely!”

Recall how often you might have heard this and how seldom you valued it by replying, “Thank you for saying that, you made my day. You look great, too!” We usually deflect the praise by saying, “Oh, I’m surprised you said that; I’ve actually gained so much weight” or “I’ve got such bad skin I used to look much better earlier; you should’ve seen me then!” When we fail to acknowledge the positive stroke these people are sending our way, we not only disregard their polite emotion-laden gesture, but we also disrespect their opinion; as if they have no prudence over what they are saying about us. By acknowledging someone’s praise with gratitude, we feel empowered, happy and fulfilled, and we spread this sense of accomplishment to the other person as well. Who doesn’t like compliments? Accept them gracefully and don’t ruin the experience for both the giver and you.

Read the full article by subscribing to the print magazine or the digital edition.

The post “Thank You” is more than just 2 spoken words! appeared first on The Teenager Today.

The quality of our thoughts determines the quality of our life! Positive and empowering thoughts, emotions, and feelings create energy in our body that makes us happy and joyous. They create a spring in our steps and stimulate us to move in a positive direction. Negative and disempowering thoughts, on the other hand, create inertia and force us to stay stuck.

Our thoughts manifest in physical reality through the actions we take. Which means that if we wish to change our physical reality, we must begin by changing how we think. The good news is that our minds are fully equipped and willing to adopt any changes that we may bring about in our thinking patterns. A simple change in perspective can make a world of difference.

You don’t need to force yourself to make deep inner changes. You can choose to change your thoughts, beliefs and perspective to something more useful that empowers you.

Here’s how you can give a positive direction to your life:

1. Examine your current beliefs. Are your current beliefs holding you back? Are you certain that the things that you believe are true? Are you aggressively and enthusiastically pursuing your goals each day? Everyone has limiting beliefs. What are yours?

Remember! Your beliefs are like your software. If your software is faulty, you aren’t operating efficiently. Examine each belief you have and determine if it is serving you or holding you back. Look at your behaviour for clues regarding your internal thought processes. What must you believe to be behaving the way you do?

2. Choose beliefs that help you create the results you desire. When you change your thoughts and beliefs, your habits will change, too. When the things you do each day are altered, your results are bound to be altered.

For example, if you believe that you are an average student, you will take actions based on your imagined potential and create the results to match that. Poor results will further fuel your belief that you are an average student. And the cycle will repeat itself.

On the other hand, if you believe that you are a bright student, your actions will reflect your beliefs and you will create the results to match that belief. And your results will continue to move you in a positive direction.

Read the full article by subscribing to the print magazine or the digital edition.

The post Change your thoughts, change your life appeared first on The Teenager Today.