PEER-PRESSURE DURING TEENAGE YEARS, HOW TO OVERCOME?

Warmest greetings to all,

Welcome to the Home of Truly Inspired!

I am so grateful and delighted to meet you all here today, and it is great to know that you are seeking motivation or someone to share with you the stress and peer-pressures you, as a teenager, have to confront currently.

At this very moment, are you having to deal with any struggles or conflicts from within your heart? Or, did anything happen today between you and your friends in class?

Hm, let me have a guess:

• A classmate of yours has just been praised for having the best academic performance in class, whilst you are only a runner-up or not even named among the top-ranking list?
• There is always that person who receives all the love and admiration thanks to their attractive appearance and angel-like personality, and there is you who feels like nobody even bothers to care or befriend you?
• There is that classmate who comes from a crazily wealthy family, and they had just recently paid for a vacation trip for the whole class to one of their family’s own hotels?

• Or just simply, you have just got back from a day out with your friends, and you are already “attacked” by your parents with their non-stop nagging and comparison between you and their favourite role-model image of “somebody else’s kid”? They said that the kid is very well-behaved and knows how to do everything in life? They said that the kid is super intelligent, sophisticated, hardworking and skilful in everything, including house works and chores? They said that the kid has just achieved a honourable scholarship from their dream school?

Oh, heaps of scenarios to even talk about! Do you feel like you belong to any of those? Let Truly Inspired know more about you and your story!

But then, my dear friend, are you still okay?

Are you feeling resentful or frustrated? Or are you feeling hurt because you do not feel that you are good enough for people to compare you to your friends?

You always experience loneliness, and sometimes even isolation. You always notice your own insecurities and your lack of a trusted person for you to share your burdens. You always have to deal with comparison and even criticism from others even though you have strived to do your best. And as time goes by, you start to feel as if the world around you is trying to defeat you and unravel your vulnerability, and you have no one to protect you or understand you.

Oh, my dear little friend!

Please lean on my shoulders and let me spread the warmth from my heart to you right now. I can sense that dreadfulness within you because I also have a daughter who is also in her teenage years, just like you!

I can see the pressures and sufferings that leave unerasable scars in your heart as the day goes by. But I can also see the glimpses of affection, sweetness and a bit of adorable mischievousness within you too.

Uhm, let me tell you something.

“Peer-pressure” comes with plentiful feelings and emotions such as jealousy, appreciation, desire, distress and discouragement, and they appear in not just teenagers like you – the kids who are still learning to wholly become an adult, but also among the already grown-up ones. They also have their own pressures and burdens at their ages.

They also have their teenage years with exceptional classmates that trigger their own embarrassment and unconfidence, just like you.

Perhaps, you only see how your parents constantly impose their “authority” as an adult to yell at you and inhibit the growth of your self-esteem. But, if you take a moment to think more broadly, you may notice that whilst you are busy thinking about the pressure from having to achieve high marks, or busy thinking about the feelings of someone you like or your classmates, then your parents are dealing with the threats of being fired due to the decline in sale outcomes comparing to their coworkers.

Your parents are also coping with exhaustion and weariness on a daily basis because they always have to do their best to have enough money for the whole family. They are afraid that even the slightest moment of carelessness can cause their child to be left behind by their friends.

If one day, you suddenly feel that you just want to wander to a random, isolated corner of the city or to gather at a friend’s house all night long instead of heading home, then please remember that there is also a high chance that your parents also do not want to go home either. But not because they do not want to see the other family members, like you; their reason for that is because they do not want you to see the failure that they are, see how dreadful and negative their emotions are inside their mind.

My dear friend, the truth is, we are always like that!

We – all the living humans on this planet – will eventually experience moments in life that we feel extremely disappointed about the person we are, and we just wish that we can become a different person with gifted talents and fortunes like what our friends have been receiving.

But just keep in mind that those people that you have always been looking up to also have to work remarkably harder and sacrifice more than the others in order to achieve their early “accomplishments” in life.

Each of us has different starting points, personalities and behaviour, hence the achievements and accomplishments in our life will also be very different.

Always remember that every unfortunate thing that happens at school today will never affect who you are as a person in the future.

If you are to compare the challenges you are facing with the pressures your parents have to bear so that they can bring back enough money to feed and provide you (and also your siblings, if you have) with good education, you would probably feel that you have just lifted a weighty stone off your shoulders.

There you are, do you see what I mean?

Just by a small comparison, we are already able to notice that there are still so many things for us to empathise and understand for our mom and dad, because in a way, the adults around are also having to get rid of the ginormous stone of pressures being put onto their shoulders.

And even right now, they are also looking for some sweet energy from their lovely little “superhero” who is capable of soothing the aches inside their hearts, the same as how you are looking for embrace and caring from your parents, am I right?

So, at this very moment, I would like to invite you to calm down and take a minute to understand and love those unsettling pressures and feelings from inside you and your parents. It is common sense for us to have to face a “test” from the Universe every now and then, isn’t it?

And like how I always say, whenever you are looking for solutions to your own problems and dilemmas, Truly Inspired is always here to help.

Please, my little friend, regard me as a dear friend of yours who can accompany you on your journey seeking for love, comfort and healing for the pain inside you!

With so much love, 

Truly Inspired