Do you feel like life isn’t really going your way as a teen? Here are 15 tips on how to take control of your life as a teenager in 2024!
As a teen, it’s easy to feel below many people which makes perfect sense. People like your parents, teachers, and elders still have more control over you naturally.
While complete control is difficult for a teen, there are a ton of things you can do to take more control of your life as a teen.
Take a look!
Define Control For Yourself
What is control?
By definition, control is “the power to influence or direct people’s behavior or the course of events”.
If you want more power to influence your life, then great! You’ve defined it for yourself.
However, you can go deeper than that. You can get specific.
Here are a few questions you can ask yourself about control:
- Do you want your parents to boss you around less?
- Do you want to be more financially responsible for yourself?
- Are you looking to get into shape?
- Do you want to stop getting pushed around in life?
By the way, not all of these scenarios will apply to you. Maybe you’re just looking to fix 1 or 2 things in your life.
As long as you define control for yourself before moving forward, you’ll be able to work on things more efficiently.
Understand What You Can’t Control
Quite simply, there are many things in life we can’t control.
For example, you can’t control your height, who your family is, problems that aren’t in your hands, the past, etc.
By being straight up with yourself and understanding this. You can let go of the emotional attachment you might have to uncontrollable situations.
One thing that’s hard for most people to get over is the fact that you can’t always control other people’s thoughts and feelings.
For many teens, this can be an obstacle considering most of them are looking to change someone’s mind.
Now that you’ve defined and understood what control is, let’s move onto the tips to gain more of it!
Set Goals
If you want to take control of your life as a teenager, you have to set goals for yourself.
Otherwise, you can’t even determine where you want to end up.
Here’s how you can set goals as a teenager:
- Write down the things you want to accomplish this year
- Divide those things up into smaller goals
- Create a monthly plan to tackle those goals
- Check off those tasks as you complete them
- Aim to finish all your goals by your due date
Now, your due date is simply the day, week, or month you plan on achieving these goals.
Writing these goals down will only take 10 minutes of your time, but can change the outcome of your life for years!
Related Post: How to Improve Your Life as a Teenager
Have a Schedule
Without an organized day, you can’t really get anything done efficiently.
Here’s an easy way to create a daily schedule:
- Write down your daily plans the night before
- Create at least 5 things to do
- Categories them by time and priority
- Check things off as you complete them
You want to include everything in your schedule for the day (class, assignments, studying, lunch, time with friends, etc).
It should only take you 5 minutes, so there’s no excuse not to do it. Some people prefer to do it with sticky notes while others use a piece of paper.
Use a Planner
If you’ve never used a planner before, it’s essentially a little journal that is already organized by date, time, and even subjects (depending on the planner).
This will help keep your daily schedule in check with ease.
Sometimes having control over your life has to do with how prepared you are to handle the day. A planner gives you that confidence to get through everything the way you want to.
Don’t try to make it look perfect!
Use it more as a tool to keep daily stresses out of your head and instead onto paper.
Manage Your Time Wisely
One of the most important things you can learn to control your life is time management.
Here are a few time management tips for teenagers:
- Prioritize your to-do list
- Minimize deadlines
- Utilize reminders and alarms
- Start with the harder stuff first
- Use the 2 minute rule
The 2 minute rule states, “if it takes 2 minutes or less, do it right now.”
Sticking to practical time management tools like these will help you organize your life in a way that feels amazing.
Fix Bad Habits
Habits are the destroyers of chaos.
So, when life feels a bit chaotic and out of control, it’s either because you have bad habits or don’t have any good ones.
Getting rid of bad habits is one of the first steps you should take when setting goals for yourself.
Here are a few examples of bad habits for teens:
- Poor diet
- Laziness
- No physical activity
- Procrastinating
- Too much social media consumption
- Drinking alcohol & doing drugs
- Poor sleep schedule
You have to be honest and ask yourself if you struggle with any of these habits. If you do, you’re in luck, because there are ways to fix them!
Related Post: 10 Valuable Pieces of Life Advice for Teenagers
Create Good Habits
Creating a new habit takes about 21 days. Meaning, you can change an important aspect of your life in only 3 weeks of consistency!
It is one of the best ways to take control of your life as a teenager in 2024.
Here are a few examples of good habits you can work on today:
- Healthy diet
- Good hygiene
- Daily exercise
- Quality sleep
- Morning and night routines
- Limiting screen time
- Sticking to a schedule
These are just a handful of new good habits you can implement as soon as today!
The same way you create new habits is the same way you achieve new goals (aka with a written plan and schedule).
Make Your Own Money
For many teenagers, control has something to do with money.
After all, you’re probably used to your parents supporting you financially for most of your life. That support can often give parents a sense of control over you.
Of course, this is understandable considering they keep you alive and healthy.
However, if you want to reduce some of that control your parents have over you, start making your own money.
There are many ways to make money as a teenager that aren’t a traditional part-time job. However, a part-time job is still a safe and consistent option if you’re not into side hustles.
The more things you can pay for yourself, the more control you’ll have as a teenager.
Have a Talk with Your Parents
Having a sit-down talk with your parents might be the single hardest thing for you to do as a teen.
However, if you have the guts to do it, you might thank yourself for years to come.
You might feel the most controlled by your parents, which is why conversations like these are important.
Here are a few things to discuss with your parents:
- “I don’t feel like I have much control over my life”
- “Is there a way we can compromise on …”
- Go over the rules and regulations in the house and talk about them
- Make specific requests (ex: please knock before coming into my room)
- Ask for more trust (lack of trust oftentimes keeps parents on top of you)
- Be grateful and polite
Even if the conversation manages to change one small aspect of your life, it’s worth having that discussion.
Stay Disciplined
Discipline is commonly seen as something that’s just given to us naturally, but there is a way to grow and develop it.
Here are a few ways to build discipline:
- Remind yourself why you started
- Start small
- Remove temptations
- Reward yourself when done right
- Keep your daily schedule and goals in check
The biggest key is to start small. Whatever is manageable for you in the current moment is what you should aim to do everyday.
After that, you can increase as you go to further strengthen that discipline.
Workout and Eat Healthy
Working out and eating healthy is easily the best way to take control of your life as a teenager.
Take a look at all the benefits of exercise and proper diet:
- Reduces stress and anxiety
- Improves mood
- Gets you in shape
- Boosts your immune system
- Improves sleep
- Increases blood circulation
- Helps keep your mind off negativity
- Builds a ton of confidence
- Helps fight diseases and cancer
- Teaches you discipline
- Improves skin and hair health
The list goes on forever, which is why daily exercise and diet is a must for having control over your mind and body.
It’s insane how much you can fix with these 2 simple tips!
A simple full body workout for teenagers can help you start small and build your way up into a gym later on.
Avoid sugars, fried foods, and anything that’s considered junk food.
Build Confidence
Building confidence in yourself is easier said than done. However, confidence requires action.
Here’s how you can build confidence as a teenager:
- Take care of yourself (Groom your body, do your hair, wash your face, dress with style, proper hygiene, etc.)
- Fake it ’till you make it (stand up tall, puff your chest out a bit, chin slightly up, walk like you got somewhere to be)
- Keep a positive mindset (positive people are more likely to be seen as confident)
- Stop caring what others think (people don’t analyze you the way you analyze yourself)
- Surround yourself with good friends (“you are who your friends are”)
- Utilize confident body language (face towards people, take up space in a room, keep some eye contact, keep arms open)
- Practice gratitude (appreciate what you’re working with because other people have it worse)
Once you feel better about yourself, your confidence will naturally follow!
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Practice Independence
Many teenagers define control in life as independence
If this is the case for you, then listen to these few tips to practice independence:
- Find more work
- Find new hobbies
- Make your own money
- Start doing homework outside of the house
- Figure out what’s holding you back
- Start taking charge of things by yourself (setting up your own appointments, schedule, etc.)
- Save every dime you can to move out
If you implement these tips, you can truly take control of your life as a teenager in 2024!
Stay True to Yourself
Being true to yourself stops everyone in your path from telling you who you should be.
This ties in really well with “stop caring what others think“.
If you believe you can’t gain control of your life, then you won’t. You have to believe it’s possible before taking action.
Learn more about yourself everyday by spending time alone, checking in with yourself every week, and doing more things that interest you.
Only then, you’ll be able to understand what control feels like to you and learn how to gain more of it as you get older.
Hopefully these 15 tips help you take control of your life as a teenager. Remember that it’s not easy, but it’s 100% achievable!
If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions leave them down below. Thanks for reading!
