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Health & Fitness

Perspective is Key

Helping teens become more self aware through changing their perspective.

“I have a problem with my (fill in the subject here) teacher; she/he is so (fill in an adjective here).”  The adjectives could be anything from mean and strict to lazy and rude. Statements like this one can be heard through the hall of Any High School, USA on any given day.  Teenagers struggle to see the bigger picture by putting themselves in someone else’s shoes to see how a situation may be affecting those around them.  As the adults in their lives we need to help them see the other side of the story but still let them know we support their feelings and opinions.  This is where learning to take on a new perspective is the key to changing their actions and feelings.  

Think about a time that you had a disagreement with your boss or your spouse.  After hearing their side of the story, understanding their perspective often changes yours.   Teens are no different.  Recently, I was working with a student who told me that his teacher was lazy.  I asked him to reverse his belief to the opposite, he came up with, “He is doing the best he can.”  When we went further with that idea the student was able to see that if he believed that the teacher was doing the best that he could then the student’s behavior was certainly easy to change. He felt that if he worked on believing this he would be more engaged in class and less sarcastic.  Imagine your teen taking this view with you? How would these tools change your teen’s view of you? How might taking a new perspective on your teen change your actions with them?  Once a student sees the power of their own perspectives they are likely to work toward changing their perspective in other relationships and being able to use this tool will be very powerful throughout their adult lives.

We start teaching kids at a very young age to try to put themselves in someone else’s shoes after a disagreement; however we don’t teach them that they have the power to change a relationship just by changing their perspective.  This is the truth, teenagers, given the correct tools, have the power to change the relationships with all of the people around them. Imagine the world around us if all of our teens were so empowered to improve their own relationships?  I look forward to it.

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