Self-care and Staying in a Positive Nurturing Environment

Teens and Dealing with Rejection Part 3

Rejection comes in various kinds of shapes and sizes for teens, and it is something they will experience, it is only a matter of time. From your first crush not crushing back at you, to friends not showing up at your birthday party, losing out on the school sports team and more. All this as we previously stated, will trigger a negative energy -in-motion on our inside. This is why it is important we know ahead of time how best to manage rejection as teens bearing in mind, we are still trying to figure out who we are and how best to manage our energy -in-motion.

Last week we started by recommending that we first acknowledge the rejection and call it what it is, no need to give it another name. Name it to tame it!

This week, we look at another recommendation which is.

2. Do not allow the rejection to define you, rather grow from the experience.

So, let us say you participated for the audition of your school's drama team and after the audition, you were not selected meaning you were rejected.

In the words of Shaheensha Hafeez Khan, "It's easy to let external factors define us, especially the unfavorable ones, but only if we let them. Keep fighting & the unfavorable will become favorable".

John Maxwell puts it this way, no matter the setback, you must first see value in yourself before you can add value to yourself.

Thomas Edison said, " I never failed once at making a light bulb, I just found out 99 ways not to make one".

Acknowledge you did not get the role, but the reason is not because you are terrible at acting. No, if you look deeply into the reason it may just be, you were not at your best during the audition, maybe you were a bit sick, or it was an audition for stage play which is going to be in front of a live audience, and your acting skills are more proficient in screen acting which is Infront of a camera.

So like Thomas Edison, you are an actor who has just discovered how different both are, and you are going to use this new knowledge to grow from the experience as you continue the journey of discovering your own light bulb in sharpening your acting skills.

Self-definition speaks of your entire being, consisting of all your characteristics, attributes, conscious, and unconscious, mental, and physical. Missing a lead role as painful as it may feel, should not define you as a failure, what about all the other aspects of you that you excelled in?

It would be good to have a journal where you have defined yourself, stating all your attributes, you can run it by your mum or dad just to be sure you are not over flattering yourself. And the next time you go through any form of rejection, you pick up your journal and remind yourself who you are.

This is all for today, thank you for listening 🎧.

Regards

Uncle Kris ✌️🇳🇬

Rejection if not properly managed can generate strong negative emotions that can lead to other issues amongst teens.

As teenagers, how should we manage rejection which can come in various forms such as losing out of the school's sports team, being kicked out of your BFF crew( Best friend for life crew), relocation, parent's bitter divorce...etc.

During our recent mid-term mentoring workshops for pre-teens and teenagers, one of our major areas of focus was “Active Listening”.

I asked the participants at the workshop to define what active listening was and for them to differentiate it from listening and hearing, as it relates to conversations with their parents.

Their responses were very insightful which has inspired today's episode to help teens and parents to work at improving their “Active Listening” skills.

Hearing

In the simplest of definition, hearing is the process, function, or power of perceiving sounds. To perceive, means to be aware of the sound, not necessary the message the sound is trying to convey. We hear with our ears, the sound coming from what someone is saying, music playing, teacher’s instructions and what our parents are saying.

Listening

Listening on the other hand is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process. When listening, a person not only hears what others are saying but tries to understand what it means.

Active listening

Active Listening is a communication skill that involves going beyond simply hearing the words that another person speaks but also seeking to understand the meaning and intent behind what is said, accurately. It requires being an active participant in the communication process.

We hear with our ear; we listen with our 5 senses, plus our heart.

How Can We Be Active in Our Listening?

1.Pay attention: Most times teens find it very difficult to look at their parents during conversations. Some say they do this out of respect as some culture frowns at teens making eye contact with parents or elders during a conversation. But for a teenager to actively listen to their parents during a conversation, one must pay attention to their parent which in most times includes making eye contact. Research shows that looking at the speaker during a conversation, activates the prefrontal cortex of our brain, the area responsible for decision-making, attention, and other complex cognitive behaviors. As much as 65% of a person's communication is unspoken, and not paying attention would mean missing out on 65% of the message passed.

2. Body Language: Unlike hearing which we do with our ears, active listening involves our 5 senses plus our heart. With proper eye contact from paying attention, we consciously and unconsciously listen to the speaker with our body language and positioning. Most of the teens at the workshop admitted that most times when their parents are talking to them and they are not ready to listen, they reflect this to their parents through their body language, even when they say “Yes, mum/dad, I’m listening", their body language give them away and this always offends their parents. Any teenager that wants to be good at active listening must also practice listening with their body language. You demonstrate to the person talking that not only are you paying attention, but you mirror their body language, capturing the emotions behind their message. You allow them finish without interrupting them. Not an easy thing to do in today's world where everyone is in a hurry right? (smiling).

3. Be non-judgmental and ask questions to be sure you understand: active listening is more about the person talking that they are fully understood, than the person who they are talking to. The truth is, we all want to be heard. It feels very good when you know you’ve been heard and understood by an active listener. Most of the teens at the workshop kept saying “Uncle Kris, our parents just don’t get it”, “they don’t listen to us”. While I agreed with them, we were also able to demonstrate that they also don’t get it and may also have not been listening to their parents actively. In active listening, you won’t form an opinion, not until you’ve fully understood what the speaker is saying, with questions asked to clarify your understanding that it aligns with theirs.

Guilt and Shame

MAKE ROOM FOR THE NEW

“You will have such a surplus of crops that you will need to clear out the old grain to make room for the new harvest” Leviticus 26:10.

In the book of Leviticus in the Bible, God said to the Israelites who had for the past four hundred years experienced slavery, with no clue of what freedom is, what to do with it, or what it looks like, to start making room for the new. God was telling them that they should be prepared for what is coming. The preparation should be so detailed that they would need to not only clear out the old but also make room for the ‘new’ that freedom brings over the slavery mentality.

Hiroo Onoda and World War II

Hiroo Onoda was a Japanese soldier who, during World War II, was saddled with the responsibility of securing Lubang Island in the Philippines. He was ordered to do all he could to hamper enemy attacks on the island, including destroying the airstrip and the pier at the harbour. Onoda's orders also stated that under no circumstances was he to surrender. He was to take his own life instead, an assignment he took to heart and executed excellently well.

Social media has come to stay as one of the major means of socializing and the current generation of young adults are at the frontline of anything social media-related, from money-making, to stardom, endorsements, learning, entertainment, you name it. But then for most of these young adults whose brains, according to research, are yet to be fully developed, finding social solace on social media can spell doom if not properly checked. According to Idiom.thefreedictionary.com, a person can be described as a blank canvas if they project themselves as having nothing of substance or permanence within or imprinted upon them, such that they can be easily filled with entirely new things. It refers to a painter’s canvas that has yet to be painted on. I am not debating for or against social media. A lot of research has highlighted its advantages (Brown and Michinov, 2019; Tefertiller et al., 2020, Twenge and Campbell, 2019) and disadvantages (Dhir et al., 2018;  Tonacci et al., 2019). What I am really saying is for every time you want to visit social media for validation, don’t ‘blank’ your canvas. Rather, show up with your canvas already painted with a clear definition of who you are, what you stand for and your intention to grow on that path even though you are keeping an open mind to things. Remember that most of what you see on social media has been refined to look that way, which may be far from reality. If you want to be real and authentic, don’t ‘blank’ your canvas because you want validation, it can lead to another kind of problem for you in the long run.  As the world celebrates this year’s International Youth Day and tries to bring more attention to the youth and their peculiar needs, I want to join in this celebration and at the same time challenge every youth out there to understand that the world needs their peculiar brand of originality, their special uniqueness. As you go about chasing your dreams, don’t ‘blank’ your canvas.

In this 4th episode on the topic ' teens and their inner voices', we take a look at meditation as a soft skill that can help us better manage our inner voices.