High school, a bittersweet feeling for most people. As a freshman, I don’t have much experience but adjusting to a new environment, meeting new teachers, and keeping up with work in addition to staying motivated has become quite the challenge, and can sometimes feel overwhelming. With daily stress being placed on us, I find we often individually ask ourselves, how to maintain composure, and live a consistent/healthy life? How do you maintain a balance and stay present in such an advanced and fast paced world like today? We live in a society, where any information or knowledge can be accessed at our fingertips, universally, at any time. Technology has evolved and advanced just in the last few decades. We can communicate with each other through social media platforms and find pleasure in the amount of likes/comments we get on a post. You may argue progress in technology is convenient, but not when we are developing a dependency on it. Not when so-called online resources are affecting the growth and mindset of the younger generation. The pleasure we get when we receive a notification isn’t long term, and it isn’t sustainable for our mental health, self esteem, or well being. It completely impacts how we live our lives, and what we find true contentment or happiness in. These two profusely similar feelings are distinctly different. Too much pleasure is the path to addiction.

The definition of addiction- the state of being addicted to something. We all have our own addictions, whether it’s continuously binge watching a show on Netflix instead of doing something beneficial for our mental health, or having no self control when it comes to screen time. Well let me tell you, it’s, “just one more” away from becoming detrimental to your mental health. And I feel that we neglect how important it really is to stay present, consistent and learn how to manage/cope with stress/emotions in healthy ways. It is statistically proven that teenage high school students are more susceptible to developing mental health disorders such as anxiety, or depression. Overwhelming yourself with a lot of work, and not giving yourself a chance to take a break is mentally straining and exhausting, and I find that I have the least amount of motivation when I don’t give myself a break. Staying focused on your goal- having a goal at all helps tremendously in maintaining composure in life. Having drive or a reason to wake up in the morning, implementing good habits into your routine, is key to staying persistent. I encourage everyone reading this to stay committed towards making a change. It doesn’t have to be a substantial change, any progress at all is great. Whether it’s going for a walk today, or replacing a bad habit with a good one. Getting some work done, or giving yourself a mental break to do something beneficial for you. Some days, it’s hard to even get up and out of bed, but every day that you do is an accomplishment. Don’t take that away from yourself just because everyone else does it. Create standards for yourself, and make a plan. Making a plan, and staying organized is the key to stability. Plan out the assignments or work you’re going to complete, and stay dedicated to doing your best. Everyone has a different definition of success, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t meet your own expectations, instead, accept your failure, and try again. Life is constantly throwing curve balls and hardships at us, but we have to get up, and keep going. It’s how we progress, move forward, and grow. Change is necessary for growth, and growth is necessary for evolvement.