Me at 16

It’s a long time since this picture was taken (a quarter of a century in fact), but if I close my eyes and think back I can still feel the hormones surging through my veins, hear my insecure outpourings whispered to friends on my parents’ landline, and experience once more the raw emotion and angst of those challenging years. I’ve written about it before, in this post entitled Smells Like Cheap Spirits.

Which is why, when invited by young entrepreneur and author Ella Stearn from The Lucky Truth to take part in Project Teen, an initiative designed to support teenage girls through the daily challenges they face, I jumped at the chance.

1. Don’t dumb yourself down to be cool


You go to a grammar school; you’re lucky. Make the most of it. You’re among the most intelligent kids in the country (yes, really!). So what’s so cool about acting dumb? Messing about in class; winding ‘Sir’ up to the point of throbbing veins in his temples; driving the poor teachers to drink. And for what? To attract the attention of some spotty-faced oik with an attitude who you’ll never see again after the next few years. Your intelligence is the most powerful thing you have; don’t play it down. You can’t go to the doctors for a quick IQ booster injection later on; there’s no miracle cure for stupid. Ignore the bullies; keep your head down. This is your chance to absorb knowledge like a sponge. Those popular, rebellious girls poking fun at the geeky, studious ones? Half of them will leave school with a few lame GCSEs and an imminent baby bump. It’s the geeks who’ll have the last laugh when they get the top jobs and travel the world.

2. The boy who breaks your heart won’t matter

Talking of oiks – that rakish bad boy, the dark-haired one with the curtain hairstyle flopping across his face and the sexy side-eyed glances? Forget him. He’ll draw you in, use you up and spit you out. It’ll hurt. Learn your lesson and move on. What’ll feel like the end of the world for a while will seem pathetic in a year’s time. Trust me on this. But don’t trust him.

3. Be proud of your USP

Don’t be ashamed of your USP. (That’s Unique Selling Point, kiddo). Yes, you do have one. Several, in fact. You’re a six foot natural blonde with brains, for Christ’s sake. Instead of hunching your shoulders and mooching about like Herman Munster, push your shoulders back, stand tall and be proud. When you get a bit older you’ll realise what an advantage being tall is. You’ll be able to reach stuff, buy alcohol before your mates and see everything at concerts. You’re onto a winner.

4. Dream big


Ok, now we’ve got that straight, let’s talk goals. Think of some. Write them down, stay focused and don’t let anyone stand in your way. Go to university (you won’t, but you should). Live boldly. Have adventures. Travel the world. You’ll learn far more by backpacking than you ever will in a musty classroom. School is just a small percentage of your lifespan; there’s a big world out there. Who cares if that boy doesn’t fancy you? Plenty of others will. Now stop expending energy on some little no-mark and get planning the big stuff. What seems important now will be like a grain of sand on a beach in the great scheme of things. The world is your oyster.

5. Be kind

Be kind. Be kind to everyone. Karma is real; it’s a thing. If you pull the legs off a crane fly for the fun of it, be prepared to come back in your next life as a crane fly. Be especially kind to your family. You may moan about your parents not letting you stay out all night and bitch about your little sister stealing your makeup, but they will be there for you no matter what. Until they’re not; don’t take them for granted.

6. Love yourself

On the subject of kindness, my final point is a big one (I’m almost 41, and it’s still a work in progress). You’ll probably never master it completely, but you have to keep at it. Ready? Be kind to yourself. That’s it. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Believe me, it’ll be the hardest one of all. If you can be kind to yourself – tell yourself you’re worthy; capable; beautiful – it’ll be the best thing you’ll ever do. Until you can learn to love yourself, you’ll struggle to love anyone else: negative emotions like insecurity and jealousy will tarnish relationships and cloud your judgement. Look after your health and your sanity; take care of your body. It’s the only one you’ll ever have. Surround yourself with good people. Believe in yourself: if you believe you can or believe you can’t – either way you’re right. When you finally work out how amazing you are, how precious life is and how little time you have to waste worrying about the small stuff (spoiler alert: it’s almost all small stuff), then, and only then, will you discover true happiness.

Good luck.

To support Project Teen and get Ella’s book Yeah Right! A Girl’s Guide To Surviving Teens to the girls that need it most, click here. Please share this post and the videos it contains to raise awareness of the campaign, the issues facing teenage girls and to let them know that we love them, we support them and we have their backs. 

Sam x


Fancy reading my back-story before you go any further? You can find my other blogs at:

www.costaricachica1.blogspot.com
www.samgoessolo.blogspot.com
www.mummymission.blogspot.com
www.worldwidewalsh.blogspot.com

Follow me:

Twitter: @SamanthaWalsh76 (Life:ABird’sEyeView)
Facebook: @lifeabirdseyeview
Instagram: @lifeabirdseyeview

The post Project Teen: Six Things I’d Say To My Teenage Self appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.

I’m no religious nut, but indulge me in a moment’s imaginative thinking here, if you will. When God/Allah/Will o’ the Wisp/<insert name of your chosen deity here> was sitting on a cloud, idly coming up with his “commandments” during a quiet moment when he wasn’t inventing a flesh-eating spider or unfairly distributing the world’s drinking water, he left out the most important one of all : Thou Shalt Not Take Shit.

photo credit

Now I’m not advocating nutting anyone who happens to step on your toe on the 7.56 cattle-class commuter train to Charing Cross, or dreaming up new and novel ways to execute that colleague who doesn’t share your ‘alternative’ world view….nah, we’ll leave that stuff to ISIS. What I’m referring to is having a finely-tuned BS detector, a Wrong’un Radar if you will, and not, under any circumstances, letting anyone take advantage of your agreeable nature.

For me, it’s a no-brainer. It has simply always been thus. As the eldest child, you have to assert yourself from an early age. Show the younger sibs who’s boss. If you don’t lay down the law of the land the minute your mum spawns the second child, there’s gonna be a mutiny. You can’t have the third in line to the throne getting above their station. That way trouble lies. They’ll have their clammy little mitts in your Play Doh mixing up all the pretty bright colours into a mulched murky mass of camoflaged green before you can say “Doh….n’t you dare!”

I reckon birth order definitely plays a part when it comes to no-nonsense attitudes.

And birth signs? Possibly.

I’m not one for sitting cross-legged gazing into a crystal ball with a chunk of rose quartz in my bra to balance my heart chakra, chanting “Ommmm” with a joint dangling from my lips, but there may be some truth behind birth sign behavioural traits.

I, for example, am the very definition of an Aries, the first sign of the Zodiac as symbolised by the ram, and rams do not take any shit. Forceful, decisive, spontaneous; a fracas with me is likely to involve me dipping my head and charging full-throttle, horns first. About as subtle as a brick through a window, my mouth engages long before the brain has a chance to question the wisdom of my latest outpouring. It’s like I have no control over what comes out of my mouth – I’m genuinely as surprised by what tumbles out as the person I’m chatting to. I have no filters.

Having spent a lifetime surrounded by those from different zodiacal zones, I can vouch for air and water signs displaying much more laid-back qualities. Being married to a super-chilled Aquarius certainly made for some interesting scenes. In his words, I was a human pestle-and-mortar; my headstrong nature eventually “ground him into a paste.” Meanwhile, his meandering lackadaisical attitude bordering on total inertia drove me to near-demonic distraction.

As I get older, it’s getting harder to suffer fools. In my younger days, my direct nature was countered somewhat by the awareness of my inequality in terms of life experience; I respected my elders.

Now I AM an elder, it’s harder to bite my lip when someone digs me out. One bonus of having under-eyes wrinklier than an elephant’s scrotum is that people know they can’t talk down to you anymore. Even if you work in retail. Especially if you work in retail. Comments that may once have sent me bawling hysterically to the stockroom to sob are now just water off a duck’s back.

Come at me with some derogatory remark and it’ll simply deflect from my hardened shell. I’m tougher than a stag beetle’s back these days. My wings are like a shield of steel. No wait….that’s Batfink. But you catch my drift.

Put simply, I ain’t taking no crap from nobody.

So is it nature, nurture, or a gradually-developed skill?  Perhaps a combination of all three.

We all know people who are perpetual victims. The human doormats who question why, time and again, people wipe their big muddy Doc Martens all over them. It’s painful to watch as they get repeatedly taken advantage of, as those clumsy clodhoppers gradually wear out their “Welcome.” If you don’t want to be a doormat, get off the damn floor.

Being mates with a doormat is like watching an old flickering black-and-white movie where the vulnerable woman is screaming as she’s tied to the railtrack, the steamtrain chugging furiously towards her. You watch the unfolding scene through your fingers as you know she’s about to get hit. Only this real-life victim has willingly laid down on the tracks, her arms outstretched as she lamely allows herself to be tied down with rope. In the life of a true victim that steam train doesn’t stop at the last second. It doesn’t stop at all.

People only treat you as you allow yourself to be treated. You have to stand up for yourself. Of course, I don’t advocate violence, and anyway it’s not necessary. If you assert yourself early on, people know not to cross you. You teach people how to treat you.

When I was leaving primary school, all the children were given a dictionary, which our teachers wrote good luck wishes in. My form teacher, Mr Redman, wrote a message which did not make much sense to my eleven year old self:

“You are a child of the universe,
No less than the trees and the stars”

 

photo credit

That was one of the most valuable lessons you gave me, Mr Redman. The poem is inspiring in so many ways, with so much accurate advice. But the part that you were highlighting was the part that my insecure, vulnerable younger self needed to hear. I finally understood what you were telling me with that message all those years earlier:

“Know your value….and don’t take any shit.”

me sitting next to Mr Redman

Sam x


Fancy reading my back-story before you go any further? You can find my other blogs at:

www.costaricachica1.blogspot.com
www.samgoessolo.blogspot.com
www.mummymission.blogspot.com
www.worldwidewalsh.blogspot.com

Follow me:

Twitter: @SamanthaWalsh76 (Life:ABird’sEyeView)
Facebook: @lifeabirdseyeview
Instagram: @lifeabirdseyeview

The post Thou Shalt Not Take Shit appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.