Ben Bernstein - Stressed Out! for Teens: How to Be Calm, Confident & Focused

For every teenager who seeks to live a meaningful life.

This book is dedicated to you and your journey.

Acknowledgments

My beloved teacher, Viola Spolin, once said, We learn through experience and experiencing and no one teaches anyone anything. She meant that the only way we truly learn is by doing . A teacher doesnt teach as much as create an environment for each person to be actively involved, and through that action, to learn. Spolin showed me that the possibilities for learning are infinite and ever-present when we open ourselves up to them. In my work, each day, I encounter people of different ages and backgrounds, and through every interaction I learnabout them, about myself, and about being human.

In addition to Spolin, I am ever grateful to my teachers whose gifts continue to bear fruit: Catherine Shainberg, Colette Aboulker-Muscat, Wendla Kernig, and David E. Hunt, and to my spiritual guides whose teachings I practice daily on my path.

I am thankful to all the teenagers and families I have worked with and what theyve shown me about the daily struggles we all face when we want to live a healthy, fulfilling life. I am grateful to a number of individuals who have contributed specifically to the creation of this book: Candace Lazarou, Andrea I. Jepson, Bonnie Buckner, Judy Rosenfeld, Sharon Goldinger, Fritz Streiff, Jeff Louie; to Maggie Wickes and to all the teens in Huntsville, Utah who gave of their time and energy to look at their common challenges. Thanks to Kurt Wahlner for the cover and book design. Great appreciateion for Sam McConkie for his copy editing. I am particularly thankful to Christopher and Michele Robbins, the publishers of this book, for their extraordinary dedication and their obvious love for what they are doing, the people they work with, and their beautiful family.

I drafted the manuscript for this book during an extended stay at vaidyagrama, an Ayurvedic healing village in Tamil Nadu, India. The love, care, and compassion of the doctors and staff and the environment they create gave me the space and opportunity to be grounded and contemplative as I dove into this material. I thank them deeply for what they give. I hope their mission and message reach many people around the world.

Every morning when I wake up I say a prayer of thanks for my family, for my friends, for the gifts I have been given, for my spiritual teachers who guide me on this path, and for my wife, Suk Wah, as we move, side-by-side, into the place of more and more light. Her support is my greatest blessing.

My life is a daily lesson in how to be more calm, confident, and focused. I am grateful to you, the reader, for considering with me how rich our possibilities are.

This Book is Yours

As I complete this book, my wife and I are in southern India. We are staying in a quiet place, far from the tumult of the cities. The sun is rising and brightly colored birds are chirping loudly. I am looking out on a wide expanse of banana trees. Their big, bright green leaves are soaking up the warm penetrating rays of the sun.

I am remembering a conversation I had at home, in California, with a friend of mine, a nurse at a local high school. A lot of students come into my office, she said, just to talk about life. When I ask them, What makes a good life, a happy life? they often start out saying, A big house. Lots of money. But then I ask them, So what if youve got all that. Then what? Or what if you dont have all that? Can you still have a good life?

When we peel away the usual, commercial ideas of whats good and successful, they all want the same thing: they want to be useful, they want to serve, to fall in love, to have a family, to be creative. They basically believe in a deep core of goodness. Even though theyre often insecure and question everything, they know theyre good. They want a fulfilling life, a satisfying life.

I wish that you, dear reader, could walk out onto this veranda and sit with me, and we could talk about your life. As our conversation deepens, the sun will continue to climb, and the heat will grow more intense. And then, as it grows later, the air will cool and the shadows will lengthen. As you get up to leave Ill hand you this book and say, This is for you. Use it well.

Outside Coimbatore, south India.

February 2013

Chapter 1

Becoming Yourself

You Have a Lot Going On

Lots of homework, your friends are texting you, your parents are on your case, you have to go to practice (piano, football, ballet, you name it), your Facebook page is out of date, you wish you could go on a date, you dont have enough friends, your SAT scores are too low, your college applications are late, no one wants to go to the prom with you, your parents wont let you use the car, your teachers dont have a clue of how much work you have to do, you feel bad about the kid who is being bullied, your face is breaking out, and youre totally sleep deprived. All of these and more cause a lot of stress.

How can you manage it all? How can you possibly succeed?

Calm, Confident, and Focused

In this book Im going to give you the three keys of turning stress into success. You already know them from the books subtitle, so my cards are on the table. When you learnreally learnto be calm, confident, and focused, youll be amazed at how much you can handle, and not just handle but do really well . Youll be able to succeed in all kinds of ways: in school, on tests, in sports, on stage, with your friends, with your parents, with your siblings, and in a part-time job (if you have one). Being calm, remaining confident, and staying focused are the three keys to success in any endeavor of life .

Along with these keys to success must be the ability to reduce stress. To be successful, there must be a certain amount of stress. There is a known, scientific relationship between stress and success; too much or too little stress causes performance to suffer. Each individual must find his or her optimal stress level to stimulate optimal performance.

How do I know this? Ive been a psychologist for thirty-five years and my area of specialization is success and how people reduce that stress to become successful. To figure this out Ive studied, observed, and coached people in many fieldssports, business, teaching, healthcare, the performing arts, to name a fewand over and over again Ive seen that there is a foundation that every successful person has built. That foundation is having the optimal amount of stress. Reducing stress to that level leads to improved performance. Laying this foundation doesnt depend on peoples circumstanceswhether they have lived a less-than-privileged life or if they were given a better lot at birth. It doesnt matter if people have talent or not. It doesnt even matter if they have failed many times. What matters is this: that they have learned how to be calm, confident, and focused.

Heres an example of what Im talking about:

Shauna and Dave are both high school juniors and are in the same math class. Today is the day of their mid-term exam. Shauna had a study schedule and stuck with it. She asked her teacher questions and sought out friends who understood parts of the material better. She got a good nights sleep and had breakfast. Dave, however, was up until 3:00 am cramming and he gulped down a big cup of coffee on his way to school. He didnt study much, preferring to hang out with his friends. Now Shauna and Dave are sitting down at their desks to take the test. Dave is a bundle of nerves. His legs are bobbing up and down as he anxiously waits while the teacher hands out the exam. Shauna closes her eyes briefly to take a deep breath and center herself. The first problem stumps Dave. His heart starts pounding and his mind spins out, Ive never seen this before! Its all downhill from there. He struggles through but when he has another tough question he gives up, thinking, Im not going to pass. Shauna methodically works through each problem. When she has one thats unfamiliar she slows herself down and reminds herself, I can figure this out, and goes step-by-step with what she does know until she solves the problem. Dave is so distracted by the thoughts that he is going to fail that he doesnt finish the test. Shauna stays focusedon trackand has a few minutes to review a couple of uncertain answers.