3 Tips for Encouraging Youth in Difficult Times

One of the difficult times of a person is during adolescent period because it involves a certain change in a person’s role in society.

It is in this stage that an adolescent is going to face many challenges as they went from adolescent to young adulthood. The young adult time started to think independently for his own life without worrying what is life ahead. And if in this stage a youth are engaged in many things, difficult times are never unwelcome.

If you will encounter a youth in his difficult time, you have to encourage the person in a way that the person never loses an opportunity to continue his life. This is a bit hard because first and foremost, the youth should consult first their immediate family members who can help him in his problem.

Apparently, family members especially parents are not available when the youth is having a problem. In this case, the youth will consult his close friends and asked for some advice and if that happens to you. You can do three things to encourage your friend who has a problem.

First thing you should do is to find out what is it that bothers to him/her. Is it a family problem, peer pressure, or educational matters like failing grades.  These are just examples of what bothers to a youth, but I know that there are more.

How to find what bothers to a youth?

Talk to him/her and diagnose or find out the real cause of the problem. Get into his mind by sympathizing on his needs. And the best thing to do this is to listen attentively and do not comment on his words. Just listen!

This technique is giving a psychological air to the person and letting him open up all his worries thereby you can now find what bothers to him.

Avoid judging him, just listen and you can find his needs. This technique is told by Stephen Covey and I personally have applied this in my life and it gives me an advantage to encourage other people.

After giving him a psychological air, this is the time to encourage him with your own words. Tell the person that he/ she is not alone having the problem. And that problem is small compare to the blessings he received each day. 

Should we not be thankful enough for the air we breathe, or the food we eat. These are little blessings but should be counted as big, and you should make him realize that one. Because in life, difficult times always accompany the good times. How then can we recognize the bad things if there are no good things that happen to us. And remember that everything happens with a purpose.

Now that he is relieved let us say only a little, then do another encouraging technique that will help him to keep going with his life. Tell him that you were once you were like him before. Exactly, tell him that what he experience has happened to you before. In this way, he knows that he really is not alone having the problem and anything and everything in life can happen to anybody. The secret there is only to accept the circumstances that come to our lives. And the most important is to be resilient enough to combat our daily problems.

Lastly, acknowledge the person that sometimes we all do commit mistakes. And if that mistake is the reason that discouraged him, all you can do is to really frankly tell him that it is part of our life that we should sometimes fall down and stumble.

But this does not mean to stumble and not get up, our downfall can be our strength in time. Tell him the next time, that the mistake is a lesson for him not to do it again.

A youth, it might be your friend, son or daughter has different difficult times and to solve their problem you have to do the things above.