Short messages on Positive change from Respect Yourself, the guidance site for young people to help make good decisions in life.
If you don’t want to do something that your friends want you to do, you can choose not to do it. You shouldn’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do. If they are really your friends they should respect you and not make you do things that make you uncomfortable.
How can you battle the urge to put things off? Start with trying to recognise that a little voice lives inside every one of us. It tells us it would be more fun to play a game or watch TV when we know better. Don’t fall for it!
When you put things off a lot, you end up putting things off until it’s too late from time to time. When you procrastinate, you take the chance that nothing will go wrong at the last minute – but in the real world, things do go wrong.
Pride has two meanings: (negative) an inflated sense of one’s own personal status or accomplishments; (positive) a feeling of pleasure from one’s own achievements.
Worrying is wasted time. Use the same energy for doing something about whatever worries you.
If you do a job lazily, you will need to do it a second or more times to get it done properly. So being lazy about it makes more work for you than there was initially.
If you spend a lot of time thinking about your problems, they will grow bigger and stronger. Try spending only 20% of the time thinking about the problem, and 80% on the solution.
Be respectful of others’ opinions. If they differ from yours, find out what different information they are based on, as this new information may change yours.
Don’t confuse opinion with fact – opinions are the result of emotion or interpretation of facts and can change given new information. Knowing the truth may require proof and confirmation.
An opinion is a personal view, attitude, or appraisal; a belief or judgment that is not based on what is absolutely certain.