7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens

by Education.com
Topics: Teen Years (13-19), High School, Character Development, more...

Teaching Your Child Financial Responsibility, Identity Across Childhood and Adolescence, Fostering High Self-Esteem in Children

For teens, life is not a playground, it's a jungle. And, being the parent of a teenager isn't any walk in the park, either. In his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, author Sean Covey attempts to provide "a compass to help teens and their parents navigate the problems they encounter daily."

How will they deal with peer pressure? Motivation? Success or lack thereof? The life of a teenager is full of tough issues and life-changing decisions. As a parent, you are responsible to help them learn the principles and ethics that will help them to reach their goals and live a successful life.

While it's all well and good to tell kids how to live their lives, "teens watch what you do more than they listen to what you say," Covey says. So practice what you preach. Your example can be very influential.

Covey himself has done well by following a parent's example. His dad, Stephen Covey, wrote the book The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, which sold over 15 million copies. Sean's a chip off the old block, and no slacker. His own book has rung in a more than respectable 2 million copies sold. Here are his seven habits, and some ideas for helping your teen understand and apply them:

Be Proactive

Being proactive is the key to unlocking the other habits. Help your teen take control and responsibility for her life. Proactive people understand that they are responsible for their own happiness or unhappiness. They don't blame others for their own actions or feelings.

Begin With the End in Mind

If teens aren't clear about where they want to end up in life, about their values, goals, and what they stand for, they will wander, waste time, and be tossed to and fro by the opinions of others. Help your teen create a personal mission statement which will act as a road map and direct and guide his decision-making process.

Put First Things First

This habit helps teens prioritize and manage their time so that they focus on and complete the most important things in their lives. Putting first things first also means learning to overcome fears and being strong during difficult times. It's living life according to what matters most.

Think Win-Win

Teens can learn to foster the belief that it is possible to create an atmosphere of win-win in every relationship. This habit encourages the idea that in any given discussion or situation both parties can arrive at a mutually beneficial solution. Your teen will learn to celebrate the accomplishments of others instead of being threatened by them.

Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood

Because most people don't listen very well, one of the great frustrations in life is that many don't feel understood. This habit will ensure your teen learns the most important communication skill there is: active listening.

Synergize

Synergy is achieved when two or more people work together to create something better than either could alone. Through this habit, teens learn it doesn't have to be "your way" or "my way" but rather a better way, a higher way. Synergy allows teens to value differences and better appreciate others.

Sharpen the Saw

Teens should never get too busy living to take time to renew themselves. When a teen "sharpens the saw" she is keeping her personal self sharp so that she can better deal with life. It means regularly renewing and strengthening the four key dimensions of life – body, brain, heart, and soul.

Patient Always Forever

I wrote several articles about education, life, and so forth. Blog walking after the fact, that a lot of ideas with me, even any posts are almost the same. But I wanted to write an article that's different from the others. Then 2 months and then I just delete the blog Imam-muhyidin.blogspot.com priest. But the reason I deleted that blog not only because some posts same with the others, but also frustrating because it does not successfully register ad-sense:)

AdSense registration does not work then it does not make me hanging myself:) all of that is just my stage for the more advanced. I try to create a blog with more caution, lest the failure recurred again. I also soon realized that even though different people, but surely there is one aspect of the same good ideas, or feelings too.

So I was not fooled by the posting of the same, because although we strive with something different definitely something will least the same. now just imagine the world of millions of people write things that are considered different from the others? I think the "IMPOSSIBLE"!

We want the differences can be advised, because we do not want to seen as plagiarism. Which can only copy-paste articles of others. We do not have too perfectionist, such as a word master Joko Susilo, it is important that we try as best possible in accordance with the scientific capacity and our capacity.

Learning With Your Brain

Learning is a Process of making Pathways in the Brain

From the foregoing description we see that the nervous system is a mechanism for the reception and transmission of incoming messages and their transformation into outgoing messages which produce movement. The brains is the center where such transformation are made, being a sort of central switchboard which permits the sense organs to come into communication with muscles. It is also the instrument by means of which the impression from the various senses can be fused and experience can be unified. The brain serves further as the medium whereby impressions once made can be retained. That is, it is the great organ of memory. Hence it is to this organ we must look for the performance of the activities necessary to learning. Everything that enters it produces some modification within it. Education consist in a process of undergoing a selected group of experiences of such a nature as to leave beneficial result in the brain. By means of the changes made there, the individual is able better to adjust himself to new situations.

When the individual enters the world, he is not prepared to meet many situations; only a few of the neural connections are made, permitting the performance of a meager number of simple acts, such as breathing, crying, digestion. The pathways for complex acts, such as writing and speaking English or French, must be built up within the lifetime of individual. It is the process of building them up that we call eduction. This process is a physical feat involving the production of changes in physical material in the brain.

Learning involves the overcoming of resistance in the nervous system. That is why it is so difficult. In your early schooldays, when you set about laboriously learning the multiplication table, your unwilling protests were wrung because you were being compelled to force the nervous current through new pathways, and to overcome the inertia of physical matter. Today, when you begin a train of reasoning, the task is difficult because you are opening hitherto untraveled pathways. There is a comforting thought, however, which is derived from the factor of mutability, in that with each repetition the task becomes easier, because the path becomes worn and the nervous current seeks it of its own accord; in other words, each act, each thought, tends to become habituals. earning is, then, a process of forming habits; the specific nature of which was described my article at yesterday.

Change Your Attitude

Change your results 
 
Our inner image of ourselvesand what we want to accomplish in life makes us become what we were meant to be. We have each created the lives we are living now through our beliefs we have 
established within ourselves. Belief systems based on lack and limitation reproduce themselves physically into our lives.  

  Think of unlimited prosperity – the true reality – and you’ll experience unlimited prosperity – ultimately and inevitably, though not instantaneously. 
 
Think of lack and limitation and you’ll experience lack and limitation. 
 
Limits are things we impose on ourselves, or allow to be imposed upon us. The bottom line is that our success or failure begins and ends with 
our attitudes about ourselves and success. What we believe determines our results What we concentrate on comes back to us – multiplied 100 times. 

Our beliefs in the possibility or impossibility of any situation determine the outcome of that situation. If we don’t believe in the possibility of success, it’s not possible. Access vast success with self-chosen new processes 
 
How do we replace our entire negative belief systems with a new, prosperity-focused belief 
system? It’s just like anything else – start at the beginning. 

1. Write down you’re your beliefs are. 

2. Then begin by asking yourself questions like: Do I deserve success and prosperity? 
What would happen if I achieved success? 
Am I good enough for the man/woman in my life/that I want in my life? 

Would my success take success away from those around me, or would it increase everyone else’s?

Do I deserve to be happy? 

Are the people I surround myself with positive 
or negative influences in my life? 
Why do I associate with people who bring me down? 

3. The answers to these questions will create other questions. For example, if you surround yourself with negative people in your life…why do you do this? 
Is it because you feel that you’re not worthy of positive people in your life? 
If so, that is a limiting belief that needs to be replaced with a prosperous belief. You don’t have room for negative people anymore. 
 
 One-by-one, eliminate each and every negative belief. They are like weeds that need to be plucked out and discarded. Replace each with a new, positive belief. Working off of the example above, instead of concentrating on your belief that you’re not worthy of positive people in your life, replace that old belief with “ I am worthy of abundance and prosperity, and only attract positive, encourageing, helpful, supportive people.” 

You’ll be surprised at how quickly those “can’t do” people will change their negative tunes or 
drop out of your life completely. Do this with all of your old beliefs and watch as prosperity 

manifests itself into your life. It takes 21 days to totally eliminate a bad habit and incorporate a positive habit as a new belief.  

But what’s 21 days when the result will be having everything you’ve ever wanted? 

 
Think big and prosperous and you’ll get big, prosperous results. Think small and lacking and you’ll achieve just that. The choice is yours. 
 

Make School Your First Job

Many students work part time while going to college.
Some even hold down full-time jobs. These students often report that they appreciate their education more because they worked to pay for it.  
Working does have to interfere with getting good grades, but it does mean you have to manage your time carefully. Don’t work too much your freshman year—10 or 15 hours a week is probably plenty.  

Another tip: Schedule your study time like you schedule work. 

Remember, school is your most important job right now. A college education will give you the biggest payoff down the road, so don’t let anything else interfere with it.  

Go to class, participate in discussions, get to know your professors, and make sure you get out of every class what you need to know. After all, you’re paying for it! 

If you can find a job on campus, it will probably be easier to fit your work around your class schedule. And, you won’t have to pay for transportation to get to a job somewhere else.  
Visit your school’s student employment office to find out about job openings on campus. Your professors also may know about jobs in their departments. If you can find a job that’s related to your major, that’s even better. Relevant work experience will look good on your resume when you start hunting for a permanent position after graduation. 

Money- Making Endeavor 
Turn a hobby or skill into a on don’t have to work for someone else to make a few bucks. For example, are you a whiz on the computer or in a particular subject? Offer to tutor students who need help. Do you like children? Advertise to the families of professors and campus personnel that you are available to baby-sit. Put your talents to work and become a young entrepreneur.