Chetan Bhagat’s 11 Rules For Life is a compelling guide that offers practical advice on how to navigate life’s challenges and achieve personal growth.

Through a blend of personal anecdotes, insightful observations, and actionable tips, Bhagat presents a roadmap for readers to level up in various aspects of their lives. Whether it’s setting goals, cultivating positive habits, or fostering meaningful relationships, this book provides valuable insights that can help readers lead a more fulfilling life.

Bhagat’s conversational writing style makes the book easy to read and relatable, making it a must-read for teenagers looking to make positive changes in their life.

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• Sacrificing less productive activities and distractions to make effective use of time.
• Sacrificing your unhealthy habits to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
• Sacrificing your shyness and discomfort to make new friends and actively participate in various activities.
• Sacrificing extra-curricular activities and leisure time to prepare during examination time.
• Sacrificing your comforts and insecurities to embrace challenges and develop new skills and habits.
• Sacrificing non-eco-friendly habits to sustain and protect the environment.
• Sacrificing social media and screen time to spend quality time with family.
• Sacrificing your personal convenience and needs to help someone who may need it more than you.

These sacrifices align with our daily lives and can help us achieve academic success and lead to our personal development. So, dear friends, I wish you luck as you embark on the journey of making sacrifices to unveil a better version of yourself.

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Tiny Leaps, Big Changes focuses on habits you can develop in your everyday life to lead to a bigger change. This personal development podcast focuses on exploring the day-to-day behaviours we all engage in that determine the results we gain. It covers topics such as learning new skills, consistent improvement, eating healthier, managing anxiety, overcoming perfectionism, beating procrastination, etc. Hosted by Gregg Clunis, the show shares simple strategies you can implement to start moving towards your goals.

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Life is not going to last forever. You must learn to live and appreciate life with passion. In life, all you can do is do your best. Life is not about counting the years, but making the years count. Life may not move as you thought or planned, but as long as you are doing your best, the rest will be fine. Trust the power in you instead of worrying about circumstances. Do your best, trust the rest to God, and hope for splendid things to come. Make the time you have count right now. God created you to make an impact here on earth.

You will never make your life count until you make your day count. You will never make your day count until you make every hour count. You will never make every hour count until you make every moment count. You will never make every moment count until you make your actions count. You will never make your actions count until you make your words count. You will never make your words count until you make your thoughts count.

The roads to success and failure are never mistake-free. Your choice matters. Work towards realising your dreams. Here are some actions you can implement every day to get the desired outcome:

Live and Let Live

Diversity is there in all elements and it adjoins the beauty of nature. Live your own way and let others live their own; this is the rule of respectable living. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” said Jesus. You can lead a level-headed and undisturbed life if you “live and let live”. This is what great men like the Buddha and Guru Nanak taught us.

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The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is the “extra”. It’s what changes the world. Yet many stick around being ordinary because they’re unaware of how much “extra” is needed and how capable they are of offering it. If only you knew what you were capable of and deployed your capacities to be the best version of who you were meant to be.

Have you experienced being in a zone or spot that felt like you were standing at the end of the road? There was nothing ahead of you (at least this is what you thought at that time)? No ideas, no path, no answers. Just a lurking question mark mocking you, “What are you going to do now? Give up?”

What did you do then?

Kaizen (Japanese for “good change”), thrives on the core philosophy that adversities are, in fact, moments of opportunity, to change what has ceased to work and ring in what will. Keeping the faith in hope, conviction and action. All Kaizen asks for is change. This amendment can be momentary or ongoing; massive or small. Kaizen contends that if you don’t change the status quo from time to time, you may not survive.

Why so much focus on change?

Newton’s Law of Inertia insists that if an object is in a state of motion or rest, it will continue to stay in that state of motion or rest unless it is acted upon by an external force that changes its status quo by accelerating or decelerating it. But look around and at yourself. Can you stay in the same state forever? Aren’t there too many changes taking place around you?

Circumstances, friendships, relationships, career, family, education and more… It’s impossible to maintain your status quo when external forces trying to modify you are so powerful. Technologies, trends, politics, and above all people, are ever transforming. It is increasingly important to integrate with the ebbs and flows, to experience delight, adventure and growth in life. Nothing is possible without embracing change.

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I am sure you would agree that even though personal growth and self-development is a journey we all want to make, more often than not, we don’t even know where to begin. In fact, the mere thought of personal growth is enough to make many of us feel discouraged because it is hard to make meaningful changes. But if you want to make a real difference in the world, or even just your own life, you’ll have to learn to get comfortable with trying out new things.

Now you can stimulate your personal growth and attain a new level of success with these simple strategies:

1. Meet new people.

When you spend most of your time with the same group of people, you miss out on being exposed to new thoughts, ideas, and/or conversations. Hence, you must continuously put yourself in new environments and groups to a get a fresh perspective on things, people and situations in life and open your mind to new possibilities.

2. Read at least 10 pages of a good non-fiction book every day.

Reading is a great way to understand and learn about the mindsets of successful people from across the world. It allows you to even connect with people whom you may never ever get a chance to meet in this lifetime! There’s more information available than you’re likely to ever need. Why reinvent the wheel when someone else has probably already walked the path that interests you? Investigate what’s available to you and learn from those who have already been successful.

3. Act on your ideas.

Ever had the experience of being excited for a moment about a new idea, only to talk yourself out of it within the first 15 minutes? The key is to take action before you give yourself a chance to think about it. Act on your ideas and learn from your experiences. Remember! No experience in life ever goes waste if you are willing to learn from it and grow!

4. Learn to embrace discomfort.

One of the characteristics of successful people is that they don’t allow discomfort to derail their efforts. On the other hand, underachievers are easily discouraged by discomfort. If you really want to change your life for the better you will need to learn how to get comfortable with the journey between where you are today and where you actually want to be. You will have to be at peace with the uncertainty of what the future may hold for you. You will have to get comfortable with the idea of continuously being outside of your comfort zone.

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Your growth will depend on your willingness and ability to move on from your failures and negativity to a motivated, zealous and committed living. It is an act of celebrating your uniqueness with great enthusiasm and conviction without hesitation and boundaries.

Being positive is the first trait in the process of growing. It builds up your self-confidence and boosts your dynamism. Positive thinking will help you overcome the toughest challenges and grab the productive opportunities that come your way. The second important element for growth is handling your emotions with care. Do not let your emotions take control of your situations but learn to get a grip on them. This will help you stay focused and calm during challenging situations. The next essential quality to be developed is your communication skills. You communicate both through your words and through expressing your feelings. Maintain clarity in your communication and you’ll see people respond to you better, and often favourably. Yet another vital ingredient for growth is to be very passionate about your dreams. The best way to get any work done is by being passionate about it. Let your passion drive your efforts and you’ll be able to achieve excellence in life.

In this issue, Sanchari Banerjee writes about Malala Yousafzai, an inspiring model who daringly spoke and campaigned for girls’ right to education and women’s overall development. “Even if I am a girl, even if people think I can’t do it, I should not lose hope”, says Malala. She proved by her life that though the Taliban may take away her pens and books, they can’t stop her mind from thinking. Today she is a model who champions the cause of girls’ education and their growth.

When you dare to grow your courage will become stronger than your fear and help you develop a stress-free and healthier life, better decision-making ability, enhanced confidence level and make your life worthwhile. As Malala exhorts, “Let us make our future now, and let us make our dreams tomorrow’s reality.”

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Transforming the teenage mind is a great challenge of our times. How to understand the modern teenager? How to communicate with them effectively? How to help teenagers utilize their opportunities and potentials? How to reduce the conflict between teenagers and institutions like family, community, organization and the society at large? How to enhance their spirit of creativity and independence even while they learn to set reasonable limits to their freedom? How to help them discover/re-construct their personal values? How to help them be committed to human dignity, justice, equality and ecological sensitivity and develop qualities like empathy and tolerance? These are some of the challenges of our modern, globalized society.

In a way, these are also the problems faced by most and teachers and governmental and community organizations. Old problems of the youth continue to exist while new problems are added every day. Old solutions continue to fail and new solutions fail to emerge.

It is in this context that a transformational/personal growth programme like Dr George Kaliaden’s Teenager Dynamic stand out as highly relevant and unique. Founded in 1994, Teenager Dynamic is now preparing for its 150th training camp for teenagers to be held in Dubai and Cochin. It is a moment of great fulfilment for Dr Kaliaden who has been practising as a consultant psychologist for more than two decades.

In an exclusive interview with THE TEENAGER TODAY, Dr Kaliaden outlined his vision and narrated the challenges he faced in developing the programme. Brief therapy approach was the key concept around which the programme was designed. The question is whether we can bring about a transformational change in a matter of 3 or 4 days. Can we improve the teenage student’s motivation, skill levels, attitudes and behaviour by a structured intervention programme over a weekend? Can such a short but intense training format yield significant changes in terms of enhanced level of functioning and improved academic performance? The idea might sound rather unreal to most practitioners.” This is where Teenager Dynamic came up with a proven solution.

Dr Kaliaden shared his personal experience that led to the creation of the programme: “It was in 1994 that I began my practice in Dubai. In the first few months I happened to treat many cases of disturbed and maladapted teenagers. I remember a case of an Indian family from Mumbai who sought my help in dealing with their rebellious teenage daughter. The girl had walked out of home in anger and disappeared for several days. The parents were desperately trying to find the girl. Finally with the help of the police the girl was found on the roof terrace of a nearby building under the care of her friends. She was then brought to me for counselling/therapy. The change that we could bring about in her amazed the parents.

Less dramatic, but equally serious cases of teenagers came to me almost every day. Cases like students suspended from school for self-injurious behaviour; senior students who refused to go to school; high school students who attempted suicide or got arrested for criminal behaviour; students who manifested tension headache, somatic complaints or hysteric seizures under stressful situations like exams; teenagers who turned out to be a threat to their own parents and began to break household stuff and beat up people around; youngsters who wandered with unruly gangs of friends and engaged in anti-social activities. The list was long and truly disturbing.

One of the most dramatic cases, a divorced, single mother of a teenage student called me for help as her only son was in a Dubai jail for some suspicious activity. The mother was fed up with the boy’s unruly, aggressive and reckless behaviour and was not sure whether to bail him out or let him stay in prison. In another case, a teenage girl said she hated herself as she was so depressed confused, angry and frustrated. She wrote to her father: “I feel useless, guilty and an absolute failure. I feel there is no point in living at all… I feel like a loser; I feel like I am born to fail in every aspect of my life… I am having difficulty in concentrating. I sleep too much — at least 14 hours a day. Some days I don’t eat and some other days I keep eating too much…  My mind is pre-occupied with death…. At times I start hitting myself for not doing anything good in life….I can feel myself changing into a different person — at which I am scared. I want to scream and shout and ask this different person to go away. But it does not leave me. … Very rare thoughts of self-abuse and suicide come into my head…Tears are rolling out when I am writing this.” This very vivid description of the goings-on in a depressed teenager’s mind will give us an idea on the extent and severity of teenage problems.

While treating these cases of depressed maladapted, rebellious and socially withdrawn teenagers, I believed that prevention is better than cure. Waiting for problems to get worse was not a good idea. Preventing psychological and behavioural problems made better sense.  The solution was to make psychological techniques available to teenagers at this critical stage of development. This made me think differently.  I sat and designed a programme that addressed all major issues of teenage life.

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