Adolescence and Values

Young people are moved by the novelty, the search for sensations and the risk. These behaviors may be associated with impulsive and poorly adaptive behaviors. However, it is in these experiences that they find out how they want to relate to the world and what matters to them, their values.

Values are like a compass, guide the way one wants to move towards what matters, even when life seems difficult or confusing. Teenagers can spend periods attached to negative ideas about themselves, such as 'I do nothing right', 'must have something wrong with me', 'I'm not good for that' and get away from experimenting and living their values. P>

Sometimes we, as adults, encourage them to spend hours of their day in activities that prepare them for the future, generating an increasing disconnection with the present moment and the identification of what matters to them. So they may be losing many hours in activities that make no sense to your life, becoming adults who live preparing for the future.

It is important that the values are freely chosen and not based on social or family expectations. Feeling persuaded to live in accordance with values determined by the other can generate inflexible patterns, with rules about themselves and the world that do not correspond to the experience of the present moment.

Values are being discovered by adolescents as experiences with the world occur. Availability to live experiences allows the expansion of behavioral repertoire through exploitation, allowing them to learn and grow.

Adolescents can identify that it matters for them to have fun, to be with others, develop some physical or intellectual skills, play sports. Values may be present where emotions are more intense, both positive and negative emotions.

Thus, it becomes essential not to minimize the willingness to experiment with young people but to guide it to live a life with meaning. Increasing the willingness to the present and the feeling of vitality, fundamental to healthy and prosperous development.