Hello, everyone, I’m Charan Deep Today I want to talk about the seven lessons I wish I knew as a teenager. I remember I have done a lot of mistakes there are some things that I could have done better and so I want to share that with you. This is going to be more like a personal story type of article in which I share some of my own things that happened with me my own experiences so that you can connect with it and you can learn from it.
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| Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash |
- Balance is a key
This is going to be the fact that balance is so important in life I remember when I was preparing for my college entrance exam. I would just beat myself up I would solely focus on solving as many questions as possible just sitting in one place and not moving much and just solving questions for hours and hours on end. When I was in my coaching institutes, I should have realized the importance of taking breaks for example eating something light in between or just shifting up my schedule a little bit so that I can try out something different. Balance is so important because of all of the exertion and pressure I put on myself when I was in 11th and 12th preparing for my exams my weight dropped by about 20 kg and it was just not a healthy place for me.
So, this is one piece of advice I would give to myself balance is really important, and trying to create that balance is key when you are a student, when you are trying to prepare for some exams when you are trying to do something really hard make sure that you create that balance for yourself everything is great but doing too much of one thing is just going to be detrimental. I should have realized the fact that working 14 hours or 15 hours every single day studying for that long will end up giving you diminishing returns and I wish I knew that when I was studying for my exams that’s number one
2. Exercise
Exercise is so much important you might not realize the impact of it when you are in your teenage years, I was certainly just sitting at one place and solving questions or playing some game or just randomly watching movies on the internet by lying down and this sedentary lifestyle is really not perfect for you. Of course, I will not see the effects of it right now when I’m 20 but I will surely see that in the later stages of my life. So, a big-big lesson I have learned right now is the importance of exercise these days I normally walk around 15 000 steps every single day and I’ve made sure that I get some sort of exercise that could be push-ups that could just going to the gym and getting a proper workout or just anything in between of whatever work I’m doing. So, this is a very important lesson that I wish I knew when I was in my teenage years not just exercise. I think I would have also focused a lot more on meditation on maybe yoga and I would have been much better if I would have spent some time learning about how this works and why my mental being is so much important
3. Self-Worth
Self-worth cannot be defined by your grades your percentages and the marks that you get when you are in school or you’re preparing for some college entrance exam this is the biggest lesson that I would tell myself I was the typical sharmaji-ka-ladka back in school and so every single grade I used to get used to being like I am happy because I got these grades, I am sad because I didn’t do so well in my exam, I used to create these narratives for myself. my self-perception would completely change based on my grades and how well I’m doing in particular subjects. once you start assigning yourself what to your grades it gets toxic very quickly there is a drastic shift at this point in my way of thinking right now I’m at a point at which even if I fail in any course I just don’t care because I have different metrics that determine my progress and how well I’m doing in life I used to be harsh on myself I used to beat myself up and I wasn’t doing too well in a particular subject and so I wish I knew this when I was at that point in life
4. Loner isn’t Cool
I wish I knew that being a loner isn’t cool I always had that image of being a lone wolf just doing everything on my own but at the end of the day we are all humans and we’ve all been hunter-gatherers for thousands of years and we work collaboratively much better than being alone and just working on my own
I wish I knew that I wish I had more friends that I could connect with I wish I had gone out of my comfort zone trying to just make some friends or just in general right just participate in more things so I wish I would have done that I was just hesitant or I was also just thinking that I’m just good with myself I don’t need anyone else and that is a big mistake you know there’s this quote I don’t know who said “ if you want to go fast walk alone but if you want to go far walk together ” and that is so true I wish I was aware of that back then.
5. Path of Success
I wish I knew the fact that there is no one path to success. There is no one set lane that you need to follow this is so important for everyone. I had a very simple clear image of what I wanted to do and it was very defined and that’s how I live my life. So, it was basically me doing really well in my college entrance exam getting into the top Colleges, working really well having a great cgpa, having a great life, and then I would get placed at top tech companies in a software engineer role. Now this is not the right thing to do at this age I feel because of the opportunities that are around you, you could just expose yourself to so many different things you can try out so many different hobbies try out so many different side hustles you might never know what you like doing.
Just recording a random video and editing it can lead me to become a Video Editor and start freelancing. I had no idea; I had no clue and so I wish I had told myself that there is no set lane that you need to follow for success and it’s just something that you define yourself. For some people, success is having a nice family and just raising children and just being content. For others it could be maybe changing the world, it could be being Elon Musk or whatever it is but you have to define it for yourself and not try to imitate or copy other people’s journeys. This is a quote that says “Don’t compare your day 6, with someone’s day 600 ” and so I wish I was aware of this one fact
6. Empathy & Patience
I wish I had more empathy and patience with all of my teachers if you would talk to them they will tell you that I was very much studious I was serious but I also had this ego or this arrogance I used to get angry quickly and I was just not having patience whenever a teacher told me “Don’t do this, do this” I would always backfire I would always back question I would say ok then why this is not like this. I wish I had more patience at that point. I wish I would have stopped and looked at this problem from the perspective of the person who was trying to tell me something trying to teach me some lesson. I wish I had the empathy to do that. So, this is very important and I think that’s also the reason I didn’t use like talk with a lot of people because I just had that thinking that “I am Right” That’s a very wrong thing I should have worked on that a little bit more and the last one
7. More Interaction
I wish I would have spoken up more I would have interacted with more people, I would have gone to more competitions, I would have done more speeches in my life at school and when preparing so this is important you know I was always that alone kind of a kid who would just be reading books learning about how the world works, watching some random lectures on MIT OCW when I was in 10th grade I would just be exploring everything but I would do it all by myself and I was always afraid, I would mess up but people would make fun of me and it would just not be the right thing for me to do at this point I was always think that I’m more like a research type of a person scientist like thing typical stereotype. I wish I would have changed that I wish I would have made more friends talked with more people being more open with how I am feeling with them. These are the seven lessons I wish I knew as a teenager. let me know if there’s something that you resonated with in the comment section as well and I would love to interact with you over there.