7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens Habit 7 Part 2

7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens Habit 7

Part 2

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

1.     Heart: Always do what is right so your heart, your conscience, will feel peaceful. When you do wrong, your conscience will prick you and create regretful sensations within your heart. When you do what you honestly feel, you won’t have any regrets. Your heart is your internal compass—its gives you direction and discernment. Just like a magnetic compass gives you directions, even true north, your personal compass, your heart, will point you in the true north, the exact directions and paths you need to trod.

2.     Soul: Study scriptures and other sacred literature daily. In other words, feed your spirit because your spirit needs spiritual food just like your physical body needs temporal food to survive. Pondering, meditating, and reflecting are excellent Soul-sharpening activities. Try writing your thoughts, feelings, aspirations, concern, and decisions in a diary or journal. Writing helps you focus and make good decisions.

Get into the habit of daily improving your body (physical fitness), your mind, your heat, and your soul.

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7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens Habit 1 Part 1

7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens Habit 1

Part 1

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Teens should never get too busy living to take to renew themselves. When teens “sharpen the saw” they are keeping their personal self-sharp so that they can better deal with life. It means regularly renewing and strengthening the four key dimensions of life – body, mind, heart, and soul

1.     Body. Eat wholesome foods, fruits, vegetables, legumes. Avoid illegal drugs, smoking, alcohol, tobacco products, tattooing. Exercise regularly and effectively. Get plenty of rest at night. Get to bed early at night and get up early each morning. “Early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

2.     Mind. Think positively. Read. Study. Think. Analyze. Seek to read a good book each month. Then each week. Ask intelligent questions. Observe. Develop you mind through positive “self-talk.”

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7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens Habit 6

7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens Habit 6

Habit 6: Synergize

Synergize 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. Synergize is the reward, the delicious fruit you’ll taste as you get better at living the other habits, especially at thinking Win-Win and seeking first to understand. Learning to synergize is like learning to form V formations with others instead of trying to fly through life solo. You’ll be amazed at how much faster and farther you’ll go. Synergize doesn't just happen. It’s a process. You have to get there. And the foundation of getting there is this: Learn to celebrate differences.

A good band is a great example of synergy. It’s not just the drums or guitar, or the sax, or the vocalist, it’s all of them together that make up the “sound.” Each band member brings his or her strengths to the table to create something better than each could alone. No instrument is more than another, just different.

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7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens Habit 5

7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens Habit 5

5. Seek first to understand, and 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.

Why is this habit the key to communication? It’s because the deepest need of the human heart is to be understood. Everyone wants to be respected and valued for who they are- a unique, one-of-a-kind , never-to-be-cloned individual. People won’t expose their soft middles unless they feel genuine love and understanding. Once they feel it, however, they will tell you more than you may want to hear. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Listen with your eyes, heart, and ears. 7 percent of communication is contained I the words we use. The rest comes from body language (53 percent) and how we say words, or the tone and feeling reflected in our voice (40 percent).

Most people are eager to talk and had rather talk than listen. We have one mouth and two ears. This means we should listen twice as much as we talk. Listen to listen to learn.

Listen, really listen, for understanding.

Seek first to understand then to be understood—LISTEN.

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7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens Habit 2

7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens Habit 2

Habit 2: 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.

“Keep your eyes on the prize.” Determine your desired prize and don’t quit until you have realized the achievement of your prize. Then set another prize, another goal or desire that you would really like to achieve. Begin with the achievement of your prize and mind. Visualize and then realize. Start by having a target in mind; know where you are going.

One prize or goal you definitely need to establish for yourself is the prize of an honorable graduation from high school-that you will receive your diploma honestly and with integrity- that you earned it with perfect honesty.

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Successful Students 10

Successful Students 10

10. Successful students are good time managers. Successful students do not procrastinate. They have learned that time control is life control and have consciously chosen to be in control of their life.

An elemental truth: you will either control time or be controlled by it! It’s your choice: you can lead or be led, establish control or relinquish control, steer your own course or follow others. Failure to take control of their own time is probably the no. 1 study skill problem for college students. It ultimately causes many students to become non-students! Procrastinators are good excuse-makers. Don’t make academics harder on yourself than it has to be. Stop procrastinating. And don’t wait until tomorrow to do it!

The 10 items listed above are paraphrased from an article by Larry M Ludewig called Ten Commandments for Effective Study Skills which appeared in The Teaching Professor, December, 1992.

“Learning Technologies and Online Education”

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Successful Students 1-2

Successful Students 1-2

Successful students exhibit a combination of successful attitudes and behaviors as well as intellectual capacity. Successful students…

1.                Are responsible and active. Successful students get involved in their studies, accept responsibility for their own education, and are active participants in it! Responsibility means control. It’s the difference between leading and being led. Your own efforts control your grade, you earn the glory or deserve the blame you make the choice. Active classroom participation improves grades without increasing study time. You can sit there, act bored, daydream, or sleep. Or, you can actively listen, think, question, and take notes like someone in charge of their experience. Either option costs one class period. However, the former method will require a large degree of additional work outside of class to achieve the same degree of learning the latter provides at one sitting. The choice is yours.

2.                Have educational goals. Successful students have legitimate goals and are motivated by what they represent in terms of career aspirations and life’s desires.

Ask yourself these questions: What am I doing here? What have I chosen to be sitting here now? Is there some better place I could be? What does my presence here mean to me? Answer to these questions represent your “Hot Buttons” and are, without a doubt, the most important factors in your success as a college student. If your educational goals are truly yours, not someone else’s they will motivate a vital and positive academic attitude. It you are familiar with what these hot buttons represent and refer to them often, especially when you tire of being a student, nothing can stop you; if you aren't and don’t everything can and will!

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