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| Sunday, 28 July 2002 |
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You may also be asking yourself the same questions. You may find that you are sitting around one day minding your own business when the question, "What am I going to do with my life?" flits through your brain. And that is a good thing. You are in a position of incredible power when you ask yourself questions like, "Who am I?" and "Who do I want to become?" You are the only person who can answer these questions. You, and only you, get to choose exactly who you will become in the future. Think about that for a minute. The power of these questions lies in the fact that you can choose to become anything you want! Imagine becoming anything. Think about the freedom that gives you. The great thing about being a teenager is that you are a blank slate. You can pick almost any answer to the question, "Who do I want to become?" at this point in your life, and you are in a unique position to make it happen. You can, to a large extent, design your life completely from scratch. You get to make thousands of choices that will determine exactly who you will become as an adult. Choices like these: * What will I choose for my career? As you can see, the answers to all of these questions are wide open for any teenager. You could decide today, "By age 25 I will be an architect, and I will drive a red Corvette." And you could make that happen. There is absolutely nothing to stop you. You could decide on just about any course and make it happen in just the same way. At no other point in your life do you have the absolute freedom of choice that you have as a teenager. That is not to say that you cannot change your mind later. You can completely redesign your life from scratch at age 30 or 40 if you find that to be appropriate. It simply is a fact that as a teenager all of these questions are wide open and you get to select the initial answers for all of them from an infinite pool. That is a lot of freedom. The average teenager often faces three significant problems in making all of these choices: * Most teenagers never realise that they have total control of their lives. The questions "Who am I?" and "Who do I want to become?" never quite make it up into the average teenager's conscious mind, so life just sort of bumbles along letting things happen randomly. These teenagers miss a great opportunity because they miss the possibility of becoming anything they want. Your range of options is wide open as a teenager. * Most teenagers do not understand the realities of the world into
which they are about to enter. Today's society is an exciting but tough
environment. It requires quite a bit of knowledge to become successful in
this environment. As a teenager you are fairly na As a teenager you can explore a whole set of options to learn more
about yourself and the world around you. You can pick something you really
want to do well and you can go do it right now. You don't have to
amorphously think, "Acting might be fun..." Instead say, "I
am going to be an actor!" and then pursue it. You can audition for
acting parts. You can find some friends and do plays together. You can
write and film your own movies.
One of the great things about being a teenager is that you can pursue
many things at once. You can also afford to fail, and you don't have to
worry about it if you do. Head in a direction and see what you find there.
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| Produced by Lake House |
How
many times have you heard the question, "What do you want to be when
you grow up?" As a teenager you tend to hear this question a lot, but
you have probably heard it since you were five years old. It is often
connected to questions like, "Do you what to go to university?"
and "What will be your major?" and "What are you good
at?"
