"We spend so much of our time telling young people how they could do this differently, exploring why doing that isn’t such a good idea and looking at the practical steps of how positive change can be achieved.
The problem is that our words, however well-meaning will just go in one ear and out the other if they don’t believe that they can change. If they believe they are deficient in some way- lacking the character, the support, the willpower or the ability to stick with a change- then change becomes impossible in their minds. No matter how much desire they might have to make a change, with this sense of lack, they will be unlikely to get started and even less likely to meet their goal.
Those kids who have never believed in themselves, who may never have had someone cheering them on from the sidelines, bolstering their self-belief, have often been mentally over-run by a sense of their own deficiencies, where the negative voice inside their heads hasn’t been reduced to size by the positive encouraging voices of others.
Some kids have had someone cheering them on, but just because of their brains going through a chemical storm thanks to teenage hormones or because they are going through a difficult time in their lives, they stop believing any positive messages they hear from you or from significant others in their lives. The negative voice in their heads is front and centre of their thoughts. A sense of lack dominates.
When a mantra of lack dominates, young people (and the rest of us too), become like rabbits caught in headlights- they freeze. They want to get out of the way of the car, but they suddenly forget how their legs work, how to move forwards and their eyes become wide with fear. “I can’t do this”, they say.
So no matter how large the sense of desire is to change a situation, they feel that they just can’t because they don’t have the ability to. They are not enough to fix this. They are stuck.
But they are enough. And if we are to really help them, then they need to know that they are enough. This needs to be front and centre of everything we say and do. Every word we say, every piece of advice or guidance we give needs to be infused with the message “You are enough”. It can take many forms, it can be “You can do this”, “You’ve got this”, “You have more ability than you can possibly realise right now”, or “You have so much unrealised potential”."
