Nine steps for teen to take to achieve a successful life

Teens: I feel it’s important to pass along encouraging words and information about a variety of topics from time to time. Today’s column will focus on ideas for success in life. Everyone, especially today’s teenagers, aims to succeed and accomplish goals in life, but few have a roadmap ready to help them accomplish this.

Over the years, I’ve gathered information on a variety of topics, and today’s archives yield a set of nine specific tips on how to best be organized and prepared to achieve important goals in life:

1. Act with self-confidence whenever and wherever possible,

even if you don’t feel so confident at times. Remember what you project is more important than what you are feeling at any given moment in time. Your levels of confidence may rise and fall, but what you consciously project, within reason, does not need to.

2. Dare to be bold when it comes to your plans for future accomplishments.

Set your goals realistically high on purpose. Set your dreams high, but within realistic reach, if you are able to work hard and catch a few breaks along the way. From there, break down your overall plan into a few dozen much smaller action steps and achievable benchmarks, then get to work checking some of the “low-hanging fruit” off your list. You’ll be amazed how energizing it is to accomplish a series of small, achievable goals that can serve as a steppingstone to your larger future desires. Use the concept of steadily making “incremental progress” regularly as time goes by.

3. Dare yourself to be brave.

Realize that you likely can’t succeed in a big way if you don’t have the backbone to take some risks along the way. Don’t sit back and make excuses on why something can’t happen for you. Instead, commit to trying to accomplish things that are hard to do and give them your best shot. Proactively, steadily and resoundingly beats reactivity over the long run. Not proactively trying to succeed at a hard task is worse than gently failing in a passive way.

4. Don’t take your setbacks personally.

When things don’t work out, do an analysis after the fact to see what you can learn about the experience — and potentially benefit from via informed course corrections in the future. Getting up after you’ve fallen down is of paramount importance to longterm success. Resist the temptation to feel sorry for yourself; realize that you are wiser and better for the valuable experience you’ve garnered.

5. Don’t quit or give up easily.

Remember that achieving a major goal is worth the time, within reason, that it takes. Don’t expect immediate success and instant gratification. Do expect to work long and hard, but make meaningful incremental progress that will empower and refresh your drive as you go forward. Stay the course and stay committed when progress is evident, even if it is taking longer than you would prefer. Your spirit and ability to pursue goals relentlessly are your best tools, so feed them and guard them continually via achieving a series of small, achievable goals along your journey.

6. Surround yourself as much as possible with others who have goals they take seriously as well.

You can bounce ideas off of one another, encourage one another and celebrate small and large steps of progress together in your respective journeys. It’s much easier to stay positive around other driven, positive people than it is to overcome those who may discourage you or not share the confidence you have in yourself.

7. Believe in yourself!

Take regular moments in time to look back at how far you’ve come and what you’ve accomplished to date. Recognize and celebrate your incremental successes. This is the best way to sustain the belief that bigger successes are reachable and eminent.

If you believe you can accomplish something you’ve worked hard at and succeeded at to a decent level, you likely can and will take the next steps forward successfully as well. Small early successes feed and build essential self-esteem, which is a crucial ingredient to success.

8. Realize that achieving dreams and goals takes hard work and sacrifice.

Success does not come easily, and successful individuals are willing to work hard and make sacrifices to achieve their goals. Start by taking inventory of where your daily time is going and what you can omit (sacrifice) in the future to add time needed to work consistently hard in the direction of achieving your goals.

9. Reward yourself along the way.

It’s important to build in small amounts of time within your schedule to take a break that will refresh and rejuvenate your drive toward your goals. A good time to do this is immediately after achieving a significant incremental benchmark goal you had previously set. Nothing catapults you forward better than taking a well-deserved break after a significant accomplishment. You’ll soon crave getting back toward pursuing your next set of incremental goals. Finally, allow yourself to have a sense of humor as you move forward! Your journey will have its ups and downs. The ability to laugh at yourself and your surroundings occasionally is great to reduce stress and keep you moving ahead. This is a valuable reward in its own right, and will also serve to both recharge and refresh your drive going forward.