15 Valuable Life Lessons Every Teenager Should Know

Want some valuable life advice that will actually help you out in life? Here are 15 life lessons every teenager should know!

You can consider these as some of the best life advice that your father didn’t tell you. Or maybe you just need a little inspiration in high school and beyond.

Either way, you’ll learn something new from this and hopefully you’ll take a piece of it with you through life.

Let’s dive right in!

Treat Everyone With Respect

Not just women. Not just coworkers… Everybody!

Give decency to every person you meet and respect the people around you with kindness and generosity.

Especially when you’re young, it might not seem like common sense to respect everyone including classmates, friends, family, teachers, and elders.

Of course, not everyone deserves respect. However, upon first meeting someone new, you should always treat someone how you want to be treated.

Listen to Understand

Humans are naturally selfish. We love to talk about ourselves and feel like the main character of life.

Because of this, we often forget to listen to people for the simple purpose of… listening. This is one of the biggest life lessons every teenager should know:

Listen to understand. Don’t listen to respond.

Doing so will not only help you learn more about life and other people’s thoughts, but you’ll also be more empathetic towards others in conversation.

Becoming a good listener comes with way more benefits than someone who doesn’t.

Stop Blaming Others

Everybody makes mistakes… including yourself.

Stop blaming others, especially for your own mistakes. It doesn’t help anyone.

Instead, learn from everyone’s mistakes and see how you can better solve the problem. Whether you’re in class, playing sports, or at work, mistakes will always happen.

Own up to your own mistakes. It will only show strength and you’ll get out of the habit of blaming.

Blaming leads to complaining and complaining doesn’t lead anywhere but to negativity. Don’t be that person.

Related Post: 15 Things Teenagers Wish Their Parents Knew

You Are Who Your Friends Are

One of the truest quotes of all time… “you are who your friends are”.

Meaning: You will end up taking on the characteristics, sayings, and habits of the people you surround yourself with closest.

So choose wisely!

If your friends are toxic people, do drugs, don’t work hard, and speak in a bad manner, you will take on a few of those characteristics whether you like it or not.

Same goes if your friends are well mannered, hard working, and intelligent people.

Even the people that can’t get peer pressured to do anything will become similar to their friends. It’s just the simple nature of society.

Always Ask Why

Asking “why” is the key to understanding everything about the world.

Question the education system, your parents, teachers, friends, the government, history, science… EVERYTHING.

Keep in mind, these topics don’t have to be questioned in a negative way. Asking “why” to all of these topics is only to help you learn more about life and formulate your own opinion on things.

The more answers you get to the question “why”, the more knowledge you’ll accumulate over time.

Change What You Don’t Like

And don’t stress over what can’t be changed!

Some things in life are variable (meaning they can be changed and adjusted) while other things are fixed (meaning they can’t be changed).

For example, if you are unhappy with your body weight, you almost always have the ability to change that.

However, if you’re unhappy with the fact that you’re not taller, there’s not much to do about that. So don’t stress about it. It will only make you more unhappy.

The choice is yours to work on the things you don’t like and to stay away from the things you simply can’t change.

Related Post: 10 Best Blogs for Teenagers

Success Requires Sacrifice

No matter what success means in your mind, it always requires some sort of sacrifice.

If you want to be the next bill gates, you will have to work extremely hard towards that goal. On top of that, you will lose sleep, time with friends, family, and hobbies.

Not everything is so bright and sunny when it comes to success. Especially on the journey to success.

Should this change your future goals and how you want to succeed? Of course not.

Just don’t be naive to the fact that sacrifice is necessary in order to be completely satisfied with your outcome.

Always Be Grateful

You’ve probably heard it a million times. “There are kids starving in Africa” or “Some people don’t even have a roof over their head”.

As much as we hear it, it’s true! Many of us are blessed with things that a lot of people don’t have.

Being grateful for everything you have will help you appreciate that little things in life and not take things for granted.

You’ll always have it better than someone else. Keep that in mind the next time you’re upset about something that probably isn’t that big of a deal.

Strive to be More Self Aware

Deploying self awareness is one of the biggest life lessons every teenager should know before heading off into the real world.

When someone tells you something that they’ve noticed about yourself, keep it in mind.

Stop taking offense to criticism and learn from it instead. Fighting off your own truth is worse than knowing who you truly are (even if that truth is not what you want to hear).

You will develop tougher skin and understand what your desires are in life including relationships, passions, careers, and more!

Related Post: How to Be a Successful Teenager

Never Assume

Assuming anything will almost always result in disappointment.

People will know things that you don’t. They will do things that you don’t expect.

Assuming will make your imagination go crazy by thinking of all the outcomes in the near future.

This feeling can lead to anxiety and stress from always expecting something to happen.

For example, if you’re working on a group project and you have a clear idea of how you want to project to turn out, you might automatically assume that everyone in your group has the same idea. You’ll soon come to find that this is not true and you will only be upset that it’s not going your way.

This is a perfect example of how your brain naturally solves problems with assumptions that you didn’t even realize you made.

Ask to confirm. Never assume what someone else is thinking.

Don’t Compare Yourself to Others

Comparing yourself to others will only lead to disappointment and lack of confidence.

There will always be someone with more than you… more money, more friends, more style, more of anything.

Instead compare yourself to who you were yesterday. This is how you can measure your proper growth.

Moving forwards and going up is the most important thing. If you’re not going up, then you’re not working on yourself and that means it’s time for a change.

Compare yourself only to yourself and you’ll feel so much better about where you are in life.

Accept Every Opportunity That Comes Your Way

When you’re young, you have many options and paths for life.

You will be given opportunities along the way that may have made you the happiest person alive or at least have given you experience to grow.

When someone offers you to work somewhere, try something out, sit down for a talk, etc. try and accept all of those offers even if they scare you.

Get out of your comfort zone and take a chance on something that just might be the greatest decision of your life.

Keep in mind that some opportunities can clearly be bad for you. For example, getting asked to drink and do drugs at a party isn’t something you want to accept.

Related Post: Easy Full Body Workout for Teenagers

Treat Money As Your Friend

Money should have its own life lessons article by itself.

Treating money like an enemy and always hating on it for running the world is a bad mentality and will only keep you behind.

Here are a few life lessons every teenager should know about money:

• Learn to let money work for you
• Save your money
• Stay out of debt
• Don’t spend more than you make
• Spend responsibly

Following these basic rules about money will help any teenager be a better person financially as they get older.

Formulate Your Own Opinions

In a society where everything is run by social media and strong opinions, it can be easy to get caught up in all of that mess.

Take advice from people you trust and respect. With that information, form your own opinions and make your own decisions based on your situation.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing every single thing someone tells you and automatically making that your belief as well.

Also, understand that arguing about topics that you disagree on with someone is healthy for understanding everyone’s side. Don’t shy away from that or automatically disagree.

Life is Hard

The ultimate truth that everyone hates hearing.

Life comes with negative people, tough times, loss, sacrifice, broken relationships, and all the extra crap in between.

Does that mean life sucks? No, of course not. It’s just important to be aware of the situation and to understand it moving forward.

Life is hard, but that just means that it requires some effort to do the things that make you happy.

Treat every experience in life as a lesson, and you’ll become a better person because of it!

Hopefully these 15 life lessons every teenager should know have taught you something new.

By the way, props to you for caring enough about your future and personal growth to even take the time and read this! Pat yourself on the back… you deserve it!

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions leave them down below. Thanks for reading!