Are You Too Negative?

May 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment
grumpy little girl

Image courtesy of Clare Bloomfield/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We all know people are just plain negative. They complain all the time, find fault in just about everything, and often focus on their problems and issues to the good things in life.

Let me tell you a couple things about negative people. First, they are very draining. If you’ve been around a lot of negative people you know that they can be a real pain. They’re simply not very fun.

The second thing is that negative people don’t end up having a lot of friends. This is mainly related to the first point. We typically want to enjoy life as much as we can or at least not find creative ways to be miserable. But, negative people make us feel worse about ourselves. So, what do we do? We avoid them.

Are you negative? Maybe you don’t think you are, but I’ll bet others around you know the answer (and you might not like it). It might help to ask yourself a few questions.

-Are you grateful for the good things in life?
-Do you complain a lot?
-Do you always see the worst things in life?
-Do you drain others and always seem needy?

If you answered yes to one or more of these then it’s possible that you’re too negative. And, if you are, it will eventually impact your popularity, at school and everywhere else.

If you’re too negative, then you’ll have to work on being less toxic and draining. While there’s no quick fix, the easiest way is to simply be more grateful about your life.

Try to focus on the good things in your life and not so much on the bad. Avoid sharing negative gossip and starting drama. Seek out friends with whom you can have fun and enjoy life rather than those you can complain with.

Are you too negative? Only you and your friends can answer that. But, if your negativity is high, then it’s probably time to make a change. Being more positive and less dramatic will probably make you more popular in the long run.

Filed Under: Popularity

How Parents Can Prevent Bullying

May 13, 2013 By Leave a Comment
bullied boy

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When I was a teacher, I saw a lot of frustrated parents who felt helpless in the face of a child who was being bullied. In most cases, the school tried to do the right thing. But, even the schools were unequipped to deal with bullying. Why? Because they believed a model of bullying that addressed the presenting problem, not the actual problem.

Let’s use this example. Your ceiling is leaking. So, you can repair the ceiling. But, you’d first better find the source of the leak. Otherwise, you’ll just be repairing the ceiling again and again and again. Bullying can be the same way. Schools and parents often speak in terms of stopping the bullying when the focus should really be empowering the victim.

So, if you’re a parent who has a child being bullied, then you’ll definitely want to take measures to protect your child from the bullies. However, if parents want to know how they can prevent bullying, they need to also focus on empowering their children to not be victims.

How does that work? It’s not always an easy process. But, the keys to anti-bullying and stopping children from being perpetual victims goes down to what makes a person bully proof in the adult world as well. Bullies don’t stop once they turn eighteen.

The traits that make people bully free in the adult world are confidence, detachment, and high self-esteem. Parents can help their child be free from bullying by instilling these traits within their children.

This means you should absolutely help your kids become more confident and raise their self-esteem. You do this in a few ways. The first way is to actually help your children have accomplishments. Self-esteem and confidence can be taught in some ways (like body language), but they mostly boil down to accomplishing things.

So, if you want to know how parents can prevent bullying, it can start with giving your children genuine accomplishments and building their confidence and self-esteem.

Certainly, these traits won’t make a teen totally bully proof. But, they will give your child the foundation to develop other characteristics to stop bullies, such as assertiveness, detachment, and other skills that even adults use to get bullies to back off.

So, we wish you the best in helping prevent others from bullying your child. The rest of our website should be helpful in that regard too. Have a look around!

Filed Under: Anti-Bullying, Parents

Yes You Can Be Attractive

May 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment
A girl leading a guy through a field

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Attraction isn’t a choice. I know it sounds odd, but it’s true. Look at it this way. You walk down the street and you see someone who is your definition of hot. Do you think “wow he/she is good looking?” or do you think “let me give this a little bit of thought?”

While it’s true that sometimes people can grow on us and become more attractive to us over time, the reality is that, in most cases, attraction is a quick, gut feeling that involves little rational thought.

The opposite is true as well. We often find people that we can look at or encounter and just think, “this person isn’t attractive.” If you don’t find a person attractive initially, can you be convinced? Possibly, but in many cases it’s hard.

Attraction is, in many ways a gut level feeling. Fortunately, there are things you can do to become more attractive based on the research and science of attraction.

Here are a few basic tricks to be attractive. And, yes, even you can be attractive. While these won’t solve all your popularity problems, they’re basic techniques to get you started.

For Guys

-Walk and act with confident body language
-Dress well
-Have a swagger about you
-Develop an edge
-Be caring, but take a “don’t care” type of attitude to drama and stress
-Don’t be aggressive, but err on the side of assertiveness

For Girls

-Be flirty with guys you like
-Have open body language and gestures
-Be fun
-Drop the attitude if you think you may like a guy
-Make yourself more feminine where possible

So, try out these tips and see what happens. You’ll probably find that even just giving a few of them a try, you’ll have more people show an interest in you. That’s because as humans we find certain traits attractive, just because it’s wired into your brains.

Can you be attractive? Absolutely!

Filed Under: Popularity

Three Reasons High School Doesn’t Mirror Real Life

May 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment

A dim school hallway with light coming through the end of the hallHigh school, for teens, seems like it’s the only reality out there. It’s probably because it takes up so much of their time and day. And, with the internet, the drama and other aspects of high school often make it seem overwhelming too. Sometimes the high school life is so crazy that teens think it represents real life.

But, it doesn’t. And, this is both good and bad. Here are three reasons why high school doesn’t mirror real life.

First, high school is a self-contained unit like no other. Everyday, students are bused in (or drive in) and are pretty much forced to be with others like them in many other ways. Sure, the people are very different in personalities. But, they’re all the same age, etc.

Nowhere else in life is this the case. At my job, there are only about thirty people, they range from ages 21 through almost 70 and they’re not forced to be here.

Actually, being forced to be in one place with people just like you can be a good thing. At no other time in your life will you be in such a situation to meet others just like you. For the socially inclined, high school is a great opportunity to meet a lot of people.

Second, the high school experience is intense. For kids who play sports or do activities, they could literally have a twelve hour day with the school and spend more time on weekends. So, for a teen who doesn’t like that experience, high school can be utterly miserable.

In the real world, however, there is more variety. Most jobs are around forty hours a week. Sure, you don’t get summers off, but there are vacation days. And, jobs don’t typically have extracurricular activities.

Finally, high school is very regimented. You have to do things at certain times and must follow a bunch of rules. While real life is moving more in that direction, sadly, in most cases you have a lot more freedom.

You can drink at your desk at work, chew gum, get up to use the bathroom when you need it, etc. The burdensome rules of school that treat eighteen year olds like ten year olds are gone.

On the other hand, without the regimentation, you’d better have a degree of maturity or “real life” isn’t going to work out too well.

So, whether good or bad, high school doesn’t mirror real life. That can either be a relief or a disappointment. But, it’s true.

Filed Under: School

Why Having Friends Who Are Girls Is A Good Thing

April 29, 2013 By Leave a Comment
mixed group of friends

Image courtesy of stockimages/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It sucks for guys when they’re stuck in the friend zone with a girl they really like. But, it’s actually good for a teen guy to have female friends in his life. So, while you want to stay out of the friend zone with the girls you really like, there are several reasons why you want to work on friendships with the ladies too.

The first thing is that girls can be fun. While you probably may have more in common with your guy friends and find hanging out with them more fun (this is normal), there may be times when you actually want to hang with girls.

This doesn’t mean you have to shop or do makeup. But, there are some events where girls may be more fun than your guy friends, like concerts or other events where a girl may be more interested in the theme than any guy you know.

Second, girls are great because you can be attracted to them while still being their friend. This is normal and makes the relationship flirty and interesting, even if you have no plans to date each other anytime soon.

Having a friend who you feel attracted to can be fun, as long as both parties are OK with the situation. If one person wants more than this can be frustrating. So, be careful.

Finally, having friends who are girls can actually help you with dating other females. It makes you look safe and normal if you have friends who are girls. Other girls see that and know that you are, at the very least, not a weird creeper.

Girls tend to stay away from creepy guys. Most creepers only have guy friends. So, when you have those lady friends around you, it tells other girls that you’re cool. And, if a girl likes you and sees all your friends who are girls, she might even get jealous of the attention you are getting.

So, don’t discount those friends who are girls in your life. They can be great for companionship and even help you get a date in the long run.

Filed Under: Guys

Why Lecturing Is Ineffective

April 24, 2013 By Leave a Comment
woman with hand stopping

Image courtesy of Ohmega1982 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Almost every child has the experience of being lectured in some capacity, whether it’s by a teacher, parent or random adult. And, in nearly every case, the child absolutely hated being lectured. It did absolutely no good.

My brother and I even have a story from childhood we constantly tell about a woman who gave us a big lecture after a friend made a rude comment to another person. Honestly, we didn’t make the comment and didn’t agree with it. Yet, we heard a ten minute lecture about how only Jesus was perfect and we weren’t.

Now we look back and laugh about it and we even laughed about it at the time. However, the story illustrates an important point about parenting: kids hate being lectured. Heck, adults hate being lectured. I’ve been in many work environments when I was lectured (mostly for the offenses of others). It didn’t improve anything about me or my co-workers.

The problem with lectures is twofold. First, you’re being talked at, not involved in a real conversation. Even when someone has done something wrong, they need to be engaged in a conversation. It doesn’t have to be a friendly one, but a conversation is needed to actually engage the other person and get him or her thinking.

Second, people tend to tune out lectures because they go on and on and on. I can be talked to for about a minute and after that I lose interest. It happens in every lecture type environment, especially schools. And, most kids won’t try to pay attention if they’re feeling attacked.

This doesn’t mean you can’t spell things out for your kids or teach them lessons. But, it’s important to do so in a way that is interactive and engaging. As the best teachers know, it’s always important to engage young people and make them responsible for their learning. The same is true of parenting.

So, next time you get the urge to lecture your son or daughter realize that lecturing is ineffective in the long run (and even the short run). You hated it and likely still do when it’s a boss or spouse. Cut it out with the kids.

Filed Under: Parents
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