5 Life Lessons For Teenagers

This week, I delivered the most challenging speech I’ve ever had to write. This was a plot twist because I am usually very comfortable with public speaking and I love a stage and a mic. So why did I totally psych myself out?

Months ago, the principal of the high school my daughter went to asked me to deliver the keynote at their annual speech night and oh the pressure. I adore my daughter’s old school and I wanted to make my daughter and her former teachers and principal proud. Finding the right balance between wisdom without earnestness, keeping it relevant and yet age-appropriate absolutely did my head in.
I wrote and re-wrote for days. I panicked, cried and considered pretending I had COVID except that’s not a plausible excuse anymore. I deleted all my drafts, mainlined 48 buckets of tea and panicked some more. Here’s an edited version of where I finally, finally landed……

Girls, parents, teachers, staff, carers, friends …..and randoms - good evening.

I’ll be honest, the pressure to be an inspirational instagram quote tonight has nearly broken me. Do I have wisdom to share? Unclear. Also, there are few things more intimidating than an audience of teenage girls.
My utter loss of confidence has been unexpected, because my favourite thing is to deliver inspirational life lessons to my children….. especially when they are trapped with me inside a car.

My three kids are very scarred by this.

One time, when he was about 14, I was driving one of my sons to school during exams when, for reasons I can’t quite recall, it seemed suddenly urgent for me to explain to him the importance of women’s reproductive rights - not just for women but also for men.

I told him: “If you accidentally get someone pregnant one day - and you probably will - it’s crucial to have safe, legal and affordable choices for you BOTH because sex can have life-long consequences and a lot of teenage boys don’t realise that” - at which point he snapped, “Mum, I’m trying to study for my maths exam and if you don’t stop talking right now I’m getting out at the next lights”

So in the spirit of captivity, the title of my speech is:

5 LIFE LESSONS I WOULD TELL YOU IF YOU WERE TRAPPED IN A CAR WITH ME ON THE WAY TO SPORT

1. Friends come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime

Our culture places so much emphasis on romantic partners and so much art is created about that kind of relationship - movies and songs and poetry and tattoos - but honestly?…. especially for women and girls, friendships are the building blocks of our lives.

Some of the most important relationships you have in your life will be with friends - but that doesn’t mean all those friendships are meant to last a lifetime. Some friends come into your life for a reason or a season - maybe you lived in the same street or your parents were friends……….perhaps you were in the same class or you were just really close for a while and now you’ve changed groups or grown apart.

When a friendship ends…. that doesn’t mean it didn’t have value or it wasn’t real. It doesn’t mean it failed - or that YOU failed.

In the same way that not all romantic relationships last forever - thank heavens for that….. or we’d all be stuck with the first person we kissed - not all friendships are meant to last a lifetime.
Just ask Karlie Kloss.

Also remember: not everyone has a best friend and not everyone is part of a group. And most of us won’t find our tribe or ourpeople until we leave school.

Many of us tonight, including me, may have experienced the end of friendships this year - which can be heartbreaking.

Sometimes a friendship might slowly fade and sometimes it can be sudden and brutal. At first it can feel like there’s a hole in your heart or your lunchtime where your friend or your group used to be…… but trust me, that hole is actually just a space waiting to be filled with new friends you haven’t made yet.

Like Blake Lively.
Year 9 is always a…..you, know…..a special time for friendships and in my daughter’s year, it was particularly special because it fell during COVID ……so after a lot of the groups dissolved as they can in year 9…..lockdown happened before groups could reform and new friendships could be established…… so it was like everyone just floated around in Friend Limbo for two years instead of one. It was really hard on everyone.

Through all of it, the teachers and the older girls assured them that they would get through it ……and of course they did. When you’re in the middle of a friendship drought or drama, it can feel like it will never get better…..but it does. Just ask an older girl and trust you’re teachers. They’ve seen some things.

2. Have strong opinions but hold them loosely

Between the war and the US election….I’ve never seen a news cycle as polarised as the one we’re living through right now. There are so many people shouting their outrage so loudly in so many places about so many things. And it’s mostly…… so pointless.

I’ve been writing online since 2007 and for the first few years, I was one of the outraged ones - lots of righteous indignation, kind of insufferable.

Outraged, shouty people usually are.

What I learned though, from writing outrage back then and scrolling past so much of it now…… is that nobody ever changed their mind because of what someone screamed at them in ALL CAPS.
The inconvenient truth is that very few things are black and white. The older you get, the smarter you become……. and the more you can see shades of grey. The more you can appreciate the value of complexity and uncertainty.

When you look more closely at outrage culture, you’ll notice how it’s often driven by people‘s fear which they convert into anger……. calling anyone who disagrees with them evil or immoral.
This is incredibly unhelpful. As soon as you throw names at someone you disagree with, you instantly shut down the hope of them ever listening to you. It helps nobody.

YOU might have felt pressure this year to be certain about an issue…… to pick a side, declare it publicly, block everyone who thinks differently, reject nuance and never, ever change your mind.
Friends? Be sceptical of anyone who demands you be certain.

Don’t let anyone try to force you to agree with them, as the price of their friendship, their love or their respect.

Don’t let anyone shut you down when you have doubts or questions.

And don’t let anyone call your humanity into question because of what you believe.

Your identity is not fixed and your opinions shouldn’t be fixed, either. Push yourself to remain open to new information, new ideas, new opportunities, new people.

Changing your mind is a sign of strength, not weakness. Because the whole point of education and learning… is about evolving your point of view as you gather more data.

This is very different from seeking out confirmation of what you already think.
I always say I have strong opinions, loosely held - and by that I don’t mean I lack conviction. But even though it’s not easy, I try to force my mind OPEN instead of retreating to the comfort of bubbles that will reinforce my beliefs.

Or- worse - letting an algorithm - decide my beliefs for me.

You should also stay open to new ideas about yourself. Your identity and your personality are never locked and loaded. You don’t have to be constrained by who you used to be …or who you are now. We’re all a work in progress.

3. Get comfortable with discomfort

At the start of year 7 during the parents orientation, we were warned by the teachers that things were about to get real as our girls entered high school.

There would be obstacles and disappointments, dramas and challenges and at times, they would struggle.

And we would struggle not to jump in and try to fix everything like we had when they were in primary.

Instead, we were given a new job: ‘let them wobble’.
Just like a kid moving up from training wheels to a big bike, the girls would wobble and we needed to be cool with that.

We gulped and nodded nervously but your teachers were right, of course.

My daughter won’t mind me telling you that she wobbled many times at school. Everyone did. Everyone does. Most days. Hell, I wobbled all weekend as I re-wrote this speech 11 times.

I’m wobbling now.

But it’s OK to wobble.

Yes, wobbling is uncomfortable and unsettling. But a life without wobbling or discomfort…. is not a life well lived. It’s not even a life.

You will be disappointed and you will feel upset and you will experience injustice and you will have your heart broken and at times you will feel lonely or betrayed or lost……. and you will survive ALL of it because everyone around you is surviving it right now.

We’ve all survived it.

Just like you’ve survived every single bad thing that’s happened to you so far in your life. Think of all the wobbles you’ve had. And each time, eventually, you stabilised. Ask for help if you think you’re wobbling so much you’ll hit a tree but the thing to remember is that wobbling’s fine - and you don’t have to be perfect. You just have to keep at it until the wobbling stops because it will.

4. Don’t let anyone tell you there’s a ‘correct’ way to feel about something

A few years ago I was diagnosed with ADHD and for months afterwards, the big feelings breaking over my head felt like trying to swim in rough surf ……..there were waves of shock, relief, embarrassment, anger, curiosity, frustration and overwhelm - but the waves of shame were the most brutal ones.

It’s still something I grapple with most days - the internalised belief there’s something wrong with me because basic tasks that are easy for others…..are so hard for me.

Like finding one central thesis in this speech. The lateness. The interrupting. The lack of filter between my brain and my mouth. The emotional dysregulation. The hyperfixations. The disorganisation. The fact I can’t cook meals for my family or pay my parking fines or remember to charge my phone or find my keys. The talking too much. The being too much.

There’s a particular loneliness that comes from knowing that people think you’re too much. People with ADHD are often told we are….a lot.

And I know, I am. Spending time with me is often like being verbally assaulted by a woodpecker after it’s had 14 double shots of expresso. I ask a lot of questions, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings and I use a lot of words.

I felt grief too, after my diagnosis. Grief for the girl and woman who flailed about….constantly getting in her own way.

And I grieved for the time and energy I’ve always spent trying to do things that should be effortless but to me, feel like running the City To Surf with my shoelaces tied together.

It wasn’t all bad, there was definitely relief…. and wonder too …..because finally learning how my brain worked was like I’d been handed a secret code to understanding myself.

Anyway, around a year after my diagnosis, I wrote an essay about it that was published on Mamamia.

There are 2 reasons I did this: the first is that writing has always been the way I organise my thoughts and feelings.

The second is that sharing our vulnerabilities is how we forge connections with each other.
Because somewhere out there, someone has a wound in the shape of your words.
And my wound wasn’t in the shape of all the tiktoks I saw where people raved that ADHD was their magical superpower and how it made them a special unicorn. Awesome if your ADHD slaps but my experience has been more complicated. Sure, it may well have contributed to my success in my career - more entrepreneurs are likely to have ADHD than the average person ….but the thruth is - and I wrote this - if I had the choice, I’d give my ADHD back.

That did NOT go down well with Team ADHD Superpower - they were furious - they insisted I was harming people and I had a responsibility to be a ‘good role model’ by focussing on the silver lining of being neurodiverse, not the cloud.

They wanted me to feel what they said was the “correct” way which is that my ADHD is a magical gift. They wanted me to apologise for what I’d written and to take it down because somehow, a perspective they didn’t agree with was so threatening to them, it needed to not exist in the world.

That’s called toxic positivity …..and it’s controlling.

But I didn’t take it down because other people reached out to say thank you - they TOO felt conflicted about having ADHD but they were terrified it was the ‘wrong’ opinion. Or they’d be cancelled for saying it.

Friends, there’s no such thing as a ‘wrong’ feeling. Nobody else gets to decide how you SHOULD feel. There’s just the way you DO feel - which might change and evolve over time or it might not. Don’t ever be ashamed or guilty for whatever it is you feel - it’s nobody else’s business.

5. Shine your light on progress:

Don’t believe anyone who tells you there’s never been a worse time to be a girl or a woman or a person who identifies as part of the queer community.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing the world is on fire.

It’s just not true. I mean, listen……the re-election of Donald Trump isn’t ideal….but the ark of history isn’t a straight line.

There will always be set-backs and breakups and breakdowns before there are break-throughs. And there are always break-throughs.

Algorithms and the Team Outrage directly benefit from freaking us out and making us feel that everything is on fire. It’s not.

Of course…. there are exceptions ….but in MOST countries, women have never had more rights than we do right now, today.

And if you don’t believe me, look around you. There are women sitting here among us tonight who remember when banks wouldn’t allow women to have a credit card in their name. There are women who had to forcibly resign from their jobs in the public service when they got married. Who were forced into backyards because they weren’t ready to be mothers.

Who had to stay in abusive marriages because they couldn’t legally get a divorce without losing custody of their children.

There are women here tonight who remember when they weren’t legally allowed to access contraception unless they were married. Who were groped at work by their bosses. Who spent their lives unable to be open about their sexuality or gender identity for fear of being sacked from their jobs. There are women sitting among us who weren’t legally allowed to marry the person they loved until just 7 years ago.

SO MUCH PROGRESS has been made even in the living memory of the women and girls among us here tonight.

I mean, there are who remember when you couldn’t wear plain studs to school. Or pants. They remember because it was only a couple of years ago.

So never stop believing in progress. Not just for the world but for yourself - because we’re all a work in progress - you don’t have to arrive at a fixed point for your career, or your opinions or your identity - in fact, you shouldn’t even try.

Your identity comes from inside you - not from your ATAR or your follower count or the number of fire emojis you get on a thirsty selfie - it doesn’t come from a ring on your finger or your dress size or who you choose to love or how much money you make or …..whether you have kids.

Those are all arbitrary facts about you - but they’re not you. They may contribute to your identity but they are NOT the sum total of it. They’re certainly not indicators of your happiness or your success.
YOU get to choose what those measures are. It’s not your parents or your friends or the Internet or NESSA who gets to decide what success looks like for you - the power lies with you.

So shine your light on what you love - what you love about yourself, what you love in others…. and what you love out there in the world. Because that’s how you’ll make the world a better place. And I know that you will.