AZ India

F E E L A T H O M E www.azindiatimes.com PAGE - 25 Apr 2019 1-844-AZINDIA rishab.anumula1@gmail.com By Rishab Anumula, Sophomore at Mountain Ridge High School 11 Mighty Ways of Highly Effective Teens Just Push Pause One of my all-time favorite video games is “ Fallout 4 ”. The reason it was so al- luring to me was a feature in the game that lets you choose your own fate. The de- cisions you make at various points affect the course of the game and ultimately its ending. This also used to make me very anxious because of the analogy to my own life. Life is the most challenging game of all, with a constant stream of decisions, often coming at a rapid pace; the choices I make at every stage carry significant weight and determine consequences that will linger throughout my life. So, if you were faced with such a situation, how would you handle it? Just reach up and push the pause button to your life just as you would on your remote control. One key difference between a video game and your life is that you only have 15 seconds to decide in the game while in real life you can stop yourself from reacting instantly to everything out of sheer habit and take the time to delib- erate about your options. This will help you make smarter decisions. While your life is on pause, use the following power tools, which are unique to humans, to decide what to do: self-awareness, conscience, imagination , and willpower . Self-awareness is the ability to stand apart from yourself and view the situa- tion from a new perspective. This unique ability of humans enables us to find new and creative solutions to even complex problems. Use this tool to look through the eyes of someone else to understand the situation and determine the course of action. Conscience is an “ inner voice ” that will always teach us right from wrong. Each of us has a conscience, and it is tied to our personal values. Make sure that the important decisions you make in life are aligned with your conscience. Imagination allows us to escape our present circumstances and create new possi- bilities in our heads. You can imagine how a scenario will play out, visualize your choices and how they will affect you and those around you. Willpower is the power to act. It gives you the power to choose and overcome the impulsiveness driven by your habits and instincts, and instead be more thoughtful in finding better quality solutions. Putting It all Together Let’s play out a scene between two teens, Rishab and his younger brother Pranav. Rishab has finals the coming week, and his not-so-favorite subjects are already pushing the limits of his stress levels. In this setting, Pranav accidentally breaks Rishab’s precious coffee mug, which he has many fond memories of. Typically, this would have been the perfect trigger for Rishab to lash out at his brother and vent his frustration. However, armed with the tools above, Rishab hits pause on his life to make better choices. He uses self-awareness to assess that Pranav is remorseful about the incident and uses his conscience to figure out his options. Then, he runs the various scenarios through his head and uses his imagination to determine the best solution. Using his willpower , he decides not to get angry and instead laugh about the situation and clean up the mess himself. Like Rishab, each of us will face challenging situations in our life’s journey, and we can choose whether to rise to those or be conquered by them. So, will you be in the driver’s seat of your life or just be a passenger? The choice is yours! Mallik Reddy is the Founder and Chief Coach of Leader- ship GYM, a free leadership and personal development pro- gram for high school students. The series ’ 11 Mighty Ways of Highly Effective Teens ’, based on the book ‘ 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens ’ by Sean Covey, explores 11 ways for teens to incorporate mega habits and principles into their life to become their best version.