Over the years, I’ve grown to appreciate the real and significant stress that is a part of the day-to-day lives of teens. There’s the stress of exams, college applications, a big game, difficult teachers, difficult friends, and parents who don’t always get it…not to mention the dating and social scenes.
Stress like this tends to build over time—week after week—and takes a toll on teens’ mental health. And then add the pandemic, with the loss of in-person instruction and many of the activities that help teens manage their stress, like hanging out with friends, attending parties, and milestone celebrations like graduations and proms.
Yes, being a teen in the 21st century is stressful!
That’s why I wrote Stress Less. The book teaches teens concrete skills to manage their stress and anxiety. I organized the book into “stress domains,” such as family and friend stress, dating and school stress, and tech and media stress, to name a few.
Because stress doesn’t go away when teens hit adulthood, Stress Less will help them maintain their balance as they deal with the ups and downs of life in the months and years to come. Here’s a sneak peek of one of my favorite stress-busting skills:
~ Sneak Peek ~
Recover from Mistakes
One of the biggest stresses in a teen’s life is worrying about making mistakes.
Worrying about dropping a pass. Worrying about forgetting an assignment. Worrying about missing a question on a test. But here’s the thing. No matter how careful you are and how much you study and prepare, you’re going to make mistakes.
Even the smartest people and most skilled athletes in the world make mistakes. When it comes to excessive sport and test stress, the trick is to know how to bounce back when you make mistakes rather than trying to prevent them at all costs.
If you’re like many stressed teens, you put yourself down when you make a mistake. You might tell yourself that it’s all your fault. You might call yourself names: idiot, loser, lazy. You might tell yourself that you can’t do anything right.
However, beating yourself up in this way takes you away from your performance sweet spot: a body that is optimally tense and a mind that is optimally focused.
Not only that, putting yourself down when you make a mistake lowers your confidence too and this only increases the stress and anxiety you feel in your next performance.
Mistake Repeat Cycle
Mistake Recovery Cycle
However, you can choose another path and that’s the Mistake Recovery Cycle. You see your mistake as just that: a mistake. You don’t blame yourself but instead see it as an opportunity. A mistake means you’re still in the game. You’re still in the running for a win or a good grade. In this way, you remain confident, focused, and relaxed. Top-notch athletes and test-takers learn to recover from mistakes and do it quickly.
You’ve likely seen unhelpful mistake recovery plans. During a game, you’ve seen a teammate blow up and scream at the referee or coach.
During a test you’ve seen a student break a pencil and throw it across the room. And you’ve likely seen helpful mistake recovery plans in action too. That’s the teammate who misses a shot, shakes it off, and makes the next one.
To develop your mistake recovery plan, follow these steps:
- Use a physical signal to start mistake recovery. Physical signals anchor your mind and body. They’re a great way to start mistake recovery, particularly in sports where you’re focused on physical effort. In tennis, walk across the back baseline a few feet. In soccer, pull up your socks. In other sports, you might close your eyes for a few seconds or count three clouds in the sky. In a test, you might open and close your hands three times, or put your pencil down and pick it up again.
- Take three slow deep breaths to clear your head and re-center your body. If you’re running down the field, just take a deep breath and blow it out forcefully.
- Repeat a focus word or phrase to refocus on what’s important: the next question on the test or the ball that’s in play. If you’re focusing on a word or phrase you can’t focus on the mistake. For example, “Move on,” “Next shot,” “Next question” are great re-focus phrases.
