A Roadmap for teenagers

By Andrew Gilbert

It's never too late to decide to be a success.But you have to make that decision and that decicison should be made right now!

Look around your classroom and see, already, who has made the 'D' to be a loser. Checkout those in your class who have already made the Decision to be a checkout operator for the rest of their life. Maybe it's a shelf stacker or maybe it's a service station attendant.

If you want to be a success story you need to decide about it right now and do something about it!

Read the Book and and take away some hard truths about life before it becomes too late and you fall foul of the 'F... up factors.

Remember, it's never too late to decide to be a success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Gilbert
• Release date: Apr 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224553624

Andrew Gilbert

Andy has been writing for the last twenty years and has written a number of books over a wide variety of genre. His first book Sold over 5000 copies and he continues to write on whatever the mood takes him. Currently he  is finishing Books on the crime scene in Rotorua, New Zealand. As always his books are not meant to be taken seriously. If you haven't laughed today, read one of Andy's books!

Book preview

1. Introduction

CC2DAY

I’ll explain later about the title of the intro. CC2DAY, what the heck is that! It’s not that difficult to work out when it’s written down as a number plate. If it doesn’t leap out at you now, it will be imprinted on your brain by the time you finish the book. Let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

Being a teenager today can be pretty scary stuff. There is so much more to get to grips with than your parents had to handle when they were your age. Your parents never had the internet and weird chat rooms, text messaging, Face book, twitter, sexting, Ecstasy, ‘P’, Aids, high unemployment rates, more jobs wanting good qualifications. The list goes on and on. Yeah, it’s tough being a teenager today. Does that give you an excuse for copping out or dropping out? Let’s get back to that question later in the book, okay?

Take a look around you. How are you doing? Got a few dollars in the bank? Got a nice motor parked outside? How’s the school scene going? Are you doing ok with your schoolwork? How do you get on with your folks?

Are you seriously happy with all your answers so far? If you answered yes to all the questions you are either the class dweeb or trying to kid yourself. No, please don’t think you can kid me; I’ll never meet you because I’m way too busy doing my own things. You are only kidding yourself.

Take another look around. Look at your home. Look at your parents. What kind of home have you got? A flash place in a great suburb where everyone has their own bedroom? Do you have a TV and computer in your room? How about your parents? Do they have decent jobs, a car that’s less than five years old? Do they support you in your activities? Do you get the picture of what we’re talking about? Are your parents happy with what they have in life after maybe 25 years in the workforce? Would you be happy living their lifestyle when you get to their age?  Maybe, secretly, you feel you’d like to be doing a little better when you get to their age. Here’s the hard reality. If you want to set your life and lifestyle up for when you get to your parents age, you’re going to have to start making decisions and taking action, today!

This book is going to ask you to make a few decisions about where you want to be in a year’s time, or ten years time, or even twenty years time. Some of the decisions will be easy. Some of the decisions will be tough calls. You may feel like saying you shouldn’t have to make these decisions at your tender age. Look around you. The decisions you will be asked to consider will affect the quality and ease of the rest of your life.

Those decisions will also take away all your excuses for failure.

Why am I writing this book? I am seriously, seriously concerned about your generation. In twenty years’ time you’ll be running the country. Maybe you’ll be looking after my investments. Maybe you’ll be tidying up my retirement benefit. Good grief, some of you may even be in politics!

You see, in the last couple of weeks the news has featured a total of twelve teenagers being hauled up in court for five quite separate murder offences. The youngest of them, a twelve-year-old kid got seven and a half years in the pokey for being an accessory to murder and robbery. Six of them killed a pizza delivery guy for two pizzas and thirty bucks of change. Maybe there was a bottle of Pepsi included, it doesn’t really matter. Total value, maybe seventy bucks. Divide that between six of them and a combined total of 49 years in jail. That’s like twenty cents per person per year of jail time. Does that sound like a smart career move? The oldest accused in another case, a seventeen year, old got life with a minimum of eighteen years before he is eligible for his first parole hearing. In another case, three girls killed a guy and stole his Ute. These three airheads then even drove past the local cop shop tooting their horn while they were driving the stolen vehicle. Does that sound like a great advertisement for the teenage generation of today? And it doesn’t just happen somewhere else. It is happening in your town and your classroom, and it is happening today! Have you heard any whispers about what the class loser got up to last weekend? And how many of your classmates were involved? Please don’t tell me you were one of the loser’s associates. You don’t need to tell me. I’ll probably see your face on the six o’clock news before too long.

Now if you are sitting at home reading this book can you imagine what it would be like getting put inside Mt Eden correctional facility until you are thirty-five? Think about it for a second. No, I mean really think about it!  No relationships or wedding or kids etc. No freedom, no PlayStation, no car, no footy, no Saturday night partying. In the nick you’ll spend the next ten or twenty years fighting off your new playmates. Don’t bother thinking too much about the details. It’s not a hot prospect, is it? One common thing most of the accused put forward in their defence was an attack on the ‘system’. They all blamed the social welfare, or the education system, or even their parental upbringing. There is only one person they can blame, and they will all look at that person every time they look in the mirror to shave or put on makeup. Yes, they still put on makeup in the women’s correctional facilities. Only it’s not for their boyfriends! Whoops, we weren’t going into details, were we?

Am I getting a little scary with this line of thinking? Think of this. The day before they committed their offences, the ‘accused’ were all sitting at home or crashing at a mate’s pad. Maybe watching a few videos or working the play station. Pretty much the same things as you are doing today. Tomorrow just turned a little ugly on them. They didn’t plan it to be ugly. It just sort of happened.

Here’s the rub, it happened because they let it happen. Take the case of the six teenagers who decided to rob the pizza guy. Did all six of these idiots decide at exactly the same time to rob the pizza guy? That’s not how it happened, is it? One of the gang decided they could rob the pizza guy and get away with it. The others all went along with the idea. So because the others hadn’t the brains or guts to walk away from the plan they will all spend the next seven to twelve years behind bars. Were they brainless? Gutless? Or just plain stupid?

So, what have you got planned for tomorrow? Is something going to just happen to you or are you more in control of your own destiny?

Maybe you should keep reading this book for a while longer. We’ll take a look at a few of the more common traps you can fall into. Then we’ll take a look at some ways you can avoid the traps and maybe give yourself a decent, even successful, life.

Before you go any further, you’ll need a small notebook that you can write in and then tuck away privately. I don’t encourage you to write in this book as someone else may pick it up and read it. You don’t need other people knowing your goals and dreams. That’s not how it works. Your future is your business and only for your eyes.  I quite like that last line, let’s look at it again. Maybe we’ll put it in Italics for emphasis. Publishers just love little bits of emphasis. It breaks up the long pages of type.

Your future is your business

Just like any business you can think of, there is a product to be sold. The product is you! Businesses go under because they don’t manage the business properly or they undersell their product. Can you see what will happen to you if you don’t manage your business properly? Can you imagine where you will be in twenty years time if you undervalue you as a product? You sell yourself too cheaply. What about failing to undertake product development? Use your imagination a little and compare yourself to a can of beans. I’m serious, it’s a good analogy, so work with it. Think of yourself as a can of baked beans. That can of beans has to be marketed before anyone will buy it. And if there are better cans of beans available, your can of beans (you) won’t sell until you do some product development to make your can of beans are more saleable.

Every day you make decisions. Some of the decisions are biggies. Many of them are small decisions. Be aware that every single decision you make is steering you in a direction and those directions shape your life. Make the decision, now, to read the whole book. Whether you want happiness, health or wealth in your life, you can choose today to head in that direction. Move on to the next chapter, reader, it could make an entirely new direction in your life.

By the way, I never introduced myself, did I? I’m a parent, a businessman, husband, motivation trainer, and an observer of life and human behaviour. What I’m not is a preachy do-gooder! One of my life experiences is that I’m an ex-biker. Another was a great time as a bass guitarist in a small-town rock band. They were sidesteps in my life journey which were great learning experiences. So, I’m not going to tell you about the wisdom of leaving out the sex thing until after marriage. I’m more likely to tell you to get clued up on the contraception and the safe-sex angle first. This is a practical handbook offering sound advice based on the practicalities of what you can do for yourself, starting today. Believe it or not, it’s mostly good news and it’s all about the decisions you can make, starting today!

2. Hit the road, Kid!

While preparing the material for this book I noted down such buzz phrases as Interpersonal and timeline dynamics, I also thought of Inter personal relationship skills, Developmental co-ordinates. When I looked at my preliminary notes, even I got bored!

What I needed was a simple way to tell you guys to how to get from school time to being a successful adult. A road map if you like. So that’s the analogy we’ll work with through the book. You are all on a journey. Life is a journey. Like any trip you are going to make, you have to make plans.

Let’s use the analogy of the trip and work with it. You have to know a few things before you complete your journey.

Where are you coming from?

Where are you now?

How good is the vehicle you are travelling in?

Where do you want to end up as your final destination?

What are the obstacles you may come across?

What do you need to have with you for the trip?

Can you dump some excess baggage to make your load lighter?

How do you handle roundabouts, cross roads and judder bars?

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Where did you start from?

I’m serious here. Where are you