How Self-Sufficiency Affects the Teens’ Entrepreneurial Mindset
According to the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial mindset refers to the behaviors, skills, and attitudes that their students need to succeed. It is an important skill to acquire for this century. When one has the right success vision, that person will surely become what he or she wants to be.
What does success look like? Why is self-sufficiency one of the most important success criteria? Even though your teens may have several great success ideas in mind, those are useless without the right attitude.
Just like Ralph Waldo Emerson said, your friends, family, and loved ones can only help you to get to the place where you want to go. The journey of going there is already up to you. You only have yourself when the others leave you behind or disappoint you.
For this reason, while your children are young and you still have the strength. Teach them how to become self-sufficient.
How to Raise a Self-Sufficient Teen
1. Let Them Experience Some Independence
Teens want to feel independent. However, they have their own definition of self-sufficiency. They only want it when it favors their side, but they do not want to pay the price on what comes along with it.
On the positive side, being a teenager is a perfect time to prepare them for their future independence.
After all, you do not want to see your children embracing their success vision in a hard way.
The simplest thing that you can do is to let your children experience independence by teaching them to be responsible for themselves. Let them do the household chores that can benefit them. Teach them how to cook, drive, and the like.
If you think your children are capable of doing a particular task, let them do it by themselves. Do not be the one to do it first for them. For example, let your children do their best to wake-up on their own. Do not go into their room to be their personal alarm clock.
2. Talk to Them Beforehand and Ask About Their Plans
If you are planning to educate your teens for self-sufficiency to prepare their success path, let them be aware of the changes in the common routines that you used to do for them.
For example, if you are planning to stop waking your children up every morning, tell them about it first. Also, ask them about their plans on how they will wake themselves up. You can be their personal life success coach.
3. Let Them Taste the Product of Their Failures
Even though it is painful to see your children worrying and crying because of their failures, do not falter on your stance and let them learn some things on their own. Let them experience failure from time to time.
For example, if your children fail to wake-up on time, let them realize the consequences like missing the bus and having to walk to school for a long distance. Although it hurts to see them suffering from success, they need to man up and face their fear of pain, rejection, or failure. Yes, it is painful, they have to face the results of their actions.
4. Encourage and Do Not Criticize
If you criticize your children about their failures, you are not doing them anything good. It will only hurt their self-esteem. Your children already know how it feels to fail, and they know how bad it feels. Do not add up to their frustrations.
Instead, point out the good things that they have done so far. Besides, the road to success is always under construction.
5. Know When to Interfere
Teaching your children to become self-sufficient is important, but you should be aware that there are still some limits. For example, if your child generally wakes up on time every morning, but failed once this time, it is alright to go into his or her room to wake him or her up.
Saving your children once or twice from their failure and helping them to fulfill their responsibility will not affect their success vision, especially if they know the right things to do. Knowing the right time to save them will make them feel that you are a supportive parent that they can always count on.
What Are Some Characteristics of the Self-Sufficient Teens?
When you train your kids to become self-sufficient and goal-oriented, there are some actions which can help you tell if there is an improvement in their behavior. Knowing these can help you gauge whether they are starting to become self-reliant or not. The following are some characteristics you can observe:
- They are willing to accept a job, and they work hard to finish it.
- Your teen know how to get themselves to the place where they want to go.
- They set goals for themselves and persist in making them happen.
- They know how to deal with negative emotions.
- Your teen know how to deal with emergencies.
- They know how to do the basic household chores.
- They spend their money well.
Running a small business requires the right entrepreneurial mindset and success vision. This mindset includes self-sufficiency as one of the essential key success factors. Knowing this behavior early on can help your teen be successful in running a business in the future.
