Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Tough Stuff: Stories of Tough Times and Lessons Learned

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Despite the pain I felt that day, it was a gift they had given me. They opened my eyes. The things that they said about me were true. I was just following, trying desperately to fit in. In our teenage years, we had to deal with several pressures – peer and society, family, school, career, relationships – and the greatest challenge posed before us is to triumph against temptations, i.e. to cross the adolescence bridge successfully. The Authors feel that this book is meant for us. To help us through our trials. It is a book you can relate to, a book that can give you a cheering up or advice on how to solve our problems. The Authors use this book to help others express their pain and happiness, it is meant only to help us and it is easy to tell that the Authors saw great meaning in this book. They really put a lot of work into making this a special book, and really making it have a true purpose.

Also, many of them are unrealistic; they seem to go on and on about how everything has a happy ending. But that's just not the case... In my opinion, it's giving teenagers the wrong idea about success. The following story about learning to be yourself was one of the inspirational stories from the book. The original story, found in the book, was written by Brianne Monett. I have taken bits & pieces of it to share with you. Enjoy! “If you don’t control your mind, someone else will.”– John AllstonI suspect that some of these stories are fictional. The series (apparently) only accepts real, firsthand stories...but a lot of these seem inauthentic. Lena needs her friends to help her get through her parent's divorce, but they left her. In turn, Lena needs her parent's support over losing her friends, but they are getting a divorce. Lena feels alone. The introduction of the book explains that the books can be read straight through or can be used as a guide book, depending on what issue the reader is going through. My favourite quote from the story “Run with it” is “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are” This motivational quote was my favourite because it told me that I can make a change, and I can make it now. Not tomorrow, not next week, now. We don’t need to wait for the perfect opportunity, we need to find the perfect opportunity. I have been given enough in life and I have the ability to use my resources as a way to make change or help another. What I have is simply enough and I don’t need to wait for the right moment, because the right moment is now. Finally one day my wife looked at me and asked, “Why is it that you never look at me when I say that you’re handsome?” I decided to tell her about the yearbook and my conclusions. “You can’t believe that! It’s wrong! Somebody who didn’t even know you in grade seven can’t be taken that seriously! I know you, I love you and I chose to marry you. I think you’re handsome and I think I’ve proved that.” So was I going to believe my wife... or that old graffiti?

Brianne Monett’s story is just one of the inspirational stories in the book. There are so many stories filled with positive thinking from teenagers. The stories range from stories of hope to stories of finding ways of stopping the stressed, sleep-deprived behavior and focusing on the positive side of things. Canfield is the founder of "Self Esteem Seminars" in Santa Barbara, and "The Foundation for Self Esteem" in Culver City, California. The stated mission of Self Esteem Seminars is to train entrepreneurs, educators, corporate leaders and employees to achieve their personal and professional goals. The focus of The Foundation for Self Esteem is to train social workers, welfare recipients and human resource professionals. The teenage years are when kids discover who they really are and define how the world sees them. It’s the time when they start to feel empowered, recognize their strengths, and become more mature about relationships with family and friends, learning how to be compassionate, forgiving, and open-minded. This is the time when they plan for their futures, try out working, and become more independent. This is also the time that they recognize that tough stuff happens, too, to themselves and the people they care about. It is like passing through the eye of a needle, as others may say. And requires responsibility and accountability on the part of family and society. It didn’t bother me exactly, but I know that there are people who would definitely not cope with certain of these stories and they wouldn’t be warned up front.

Interesting:I liked how even though i havent been abused or done drugs i know all the consequences that could follow and i could feel their pain. I thought about that question for a long time and about how God doesn’t make junk. Who was I going to believe? I chose to believe my wife and God. (p. 315) This book provides many incites into teenagers lives due to the fact that the stories in this book are written by teens all over America. This book is an inspiration and a great way to help with ordinary teenage problems. She was all the things I thought I wanted to be,”Brianne had thought. “I looked up to Ashley, idolized her even.”

Brianne Monett considered herself to be awkward as she made her way through her freshman year of high school. She had no close friends, didn’t play sports, wasn’t fashionable, and mostly kept to herself. As a result, her classmates were unkind to her.

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Then her mother gave her advice… so simple, but so effective. She had heard it a million times before, but suddenly it sounded profound: I began listening to the music she listened to, wearing the clothes she wore. I quit reading and started watching TV programs Ashley watched. I even tailored my sophomore year schedule to her interests. But the stories were all so narrow in range; they seemed to take a very conservative, closed viewpoint in that there was never any mention of drug abuse, ex-prisoners, people who had dropped out of school and had been successful, or homosexuality. Considering the modern day and age, I found this disheartening to say the least. Almost all the stories were based around students (not surprising considering the target audience) which rather narrowed down the variety. When we started school again, Ashley introduced me to her group of friends, the “cool girls.” She was the leader of their group; I would hang out with them on lunch breaks and take classes they were in. I would tag along to football games, and I joined the art club after school so I could hang out with them even more. i really like ready the short stories & different experiences as a teenager things i can relate to .i love it so far

Another thing that really got to me was that the title suggests that these stories are meant to be soothing- but they just made me feel depressed; it's normally only the last two lines that are happy. During teenage growing process is like a flower. It grows very little when the weather is giving it hard time. It grows dramatically when weather is well fit for the plant. Every teenager circled whole global has happy, sad, quiet, ect moment. Moreover, teenage can be counted as one of hard time people go across because of becoming mature. Ashley learned something that year… through her heartbreak, she discovered the person she was going to be. To her surprise, the summer before her sophomore year of high school, she became friends with Ashley, her classmate from summer school. Ashley was popular, outspoken, fashionable, and artistic.This is a book you will read and reread, sharing your favorite stories with one another over and over again. This book is a text to world book. I say this becasue this book is from teenagers/adults (who remeber storys or there teenage years) and anybody can relate to the storys. Some people in this book have storys that may have happened to the person thats reading the book or it might make a person learn a lesson or improve there life. This storys will make anyone have any kind of feeling and make them care and be happy for all the opertunitys they have and love life more. I liked about three or five of the (tens of) contributions in this book, at least one of which was by an adult. I think that part of the problem in my not liking this book is the part where I'm no longer a teenager. I'm sure that the themes and writing in the book might be more appealing to a teenager than to an adult, because by virtue of being written by a peer they are valued? But honestly I think highly enough of teenagers' capacity to read and write that I can't imagine most of them liking this book either. I had brought this anthology many years ago and I have never got around to finishing it, so I decided to finish it. This anthology had also been recommended to me by my pervious teachers and it was been such an inspirational and delightful anthology to read. As time went on I made friends with lots of different people, some from “the popular crowd” and some not. My standards were different though. The people I sought out for friends were the nice ones—period. (p. 311-313)