What was your biggest teenage mistake and how did you overcome it? 🤔 #teenagemistakes #lifelessons #growth #selfreflection
Reflecting on the Past
Have you ever stopped to think about the biggest mistake you made during your teenage years? It’s a common experience that many of us can relate to. Whether it was a bad decision, a missed opportunity, or a regrettable action, reflecting on our past mistakes can be a valuable learning experience.
Learning from Mistakes
Making mistakes is a natural part of growing up, but it’s how we handle them that truly matters. By taking the time to reflect on our past actions, we can learn valuable lessons that can help us avoid similar pitfalls in the future. It’s all about embracing our mistakes and using them as stepping stones for personal growth.
Share Your Story
What’s your biggest teenage mistake and how did you overcome it? Share your story with us and let’s learn from each other’s experiences. Remember, we’re all in this together, navigating through the ups and downs of life. Your story might just inspire someone else to overcome their own mistakes and emerge stronger on the other side.
Thought people think about me and my mistakes.
Doing shrooms with the wrong group of people.
Assuming life would get better as an adult.
Its different, but it still sucks.
Selling my apple stock in highschool. it was 2007…..
Repressed.
Should have just been antisocial like I am now and focused on school. I could have actually made something of myself if I had realized earlier that I have a decent brain, I just have to apply it.
Dropping out of school.
Had sex for the first time and even though I knew I should’ve worn one, I didn’t have any condoms on me and I just went ahead. The girl wasn’t exactly well off and already had a 2 year old from someone else. Not only that but I found out the boyfriend she supposedly broke up with previous to that, wasn’t broken up with. And he’s a big guy with big muscles and he’s already abusive to his girlfriend. Luckily nothing happened from any of that but it felt like I was lighting a stick of dynamite at my feet.
Dropping out of high school. Granted, my dad walked out after my mom died and left me with bills, etc. Also, it took me 20 years, but now I’ve got a masters.
Get into a serious relationship at 17…
Being scared of trying new things
Our grad class in High school always took a trip to a ski resort that was a few hours away. It was a weekend trip and everyone always looked forward to it. When our grad trip rolled around, my friends and I got this really bright idea. Instead of taking the bus with everyone else, we were going to drive our own car up to the resort. Why? Because we planned on getting our older cousins to buy us a shit ton of booze which we in turn were going to sell to everyone else in our class at an insane markup.
Everything was going smoothly until the day of the trip. One of my buddies that was in on the scheme had an over protective mom who wasn’t happy with him driving up. So he told her that the school approved us of driving and that we were going to follow the bus the whole way. His mom then called the school to verify his answer, and thats when everything fell the fuck apart. We had made fake permission slip and had it fake signed by the principal and everything. We knew we were fucked right away when in the middle of class, the 4 of us(we were in the same class at the time)got pulled out by the principal himself. We got booted from the field trip, got 3 days suspension, and the entire upper grades of the school had an emergency assembly the day after the trip to warn of the dangers of doing what we did.
We laugh about it now, but people were super pissed at us then. Our parents, our teachers whose signatures we faked, and a bunch of our class who were relying on us for their party favors on the trip. we graduated but we didn’t get to walk because of that. So thats the story of how ‘The Gang got caught making an illegal racketeering business.’
Keeping my first love for more than 4 years though he was a huge abusive asshole. Smoking pot on daily basis. Being too shy to communicate my needs and feelings
I convinced myself that I’d never be happy. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.
being totally unmotivated
Embarrassing myself without thinking before acting. Many people say to live life without regrets, but i’d be lying if i didn’t say i had such an embarrassing/anxiety filled childhood/life in general that it’s hard to cope as an adult now. Sometimes i wish i was a different person or lived in a completely new area but that’s just unrealistic at this time.
didn’t leave my mom’s house to go live with literally anyone else
Prioritizing education.
Stopped routinely working out after I quit sports. Still struggling to get back down to a healthy weight, it’s always kinda funny that during my last season of Lacrosse my coach told me that I was on track to play in college, but I needed to gain like 30 lbs, of course he was talking muscle. I was always in good shape, though a bit skinny, because I played sports year round. I ran cross country, for many years I played two separate leagues of Lacrosse in the winter and spring, and then sports camps during the summer.
I had myself convinced I had a super high metabolism. Turns out that wasn’t true and I actually put on weight pretty quickly when I’m not active. But I never really hammered in the routine when I was 17 and 18 because I felt so liberated when I finally had no more sports in my afternoons and weekends.
Makiing friends with the wrong people. Which ended in me having to leave that highschool and going to an in between school for a year and a half where I could only take math and english and then luckily ending up in an awesome alternative highschool but the BS from them is still a part of my life now and rumours from 20 years ago are still believed and perpetuated.
Get ahold of a camera and youtube… glad i deleted everything when i got older.
Cared a lot about what others thought about me.
Didn’t spend enough time with my old man. Died over Christmas break my freshman year of college and always wished I spent more time with him during highschool years.
Obsessing about not being in a “relationship.”
It felt like everyone was dating, having boyfreinds/girlfriends, having sex, etc. Of course, that was far from the truth, but it was how I felt!
This all lead to a lot of crushes and some pretty ill-advised infatuations that took up a lot of my time and energy.
Ironically, I think it all set me back years from actually having a relationship because I was so focused on it and put it on such a pedestal.
Getting a credit card at 18 – it started a debt cycle and now at 42 I’m about 6 months from being debt free for the first time in my adult life
Thinking a first “love” is your forever love.
Having someone who obviously had a crush on me that I was totally oblivious about until I finally figured it out like 15 years later.
Not running away from home.
Starting to smoke cigarettes
Dating a guy who was 10 years older and allowing him to destroy my confidence. He kept stringing me along and made me super insecure. After him, I needed people to like me so desperately that I did a lot of stupid things.
Drugs
Not taking my future seriously.
Slacking off in high school
I trusted people
This happened in rural TX. I went bowling with a classmate I didn’t know very well and some of her friends–I was trying to test out a potential new friendship. Her boyfriend was over 21 and bought drinks for the group. I, a sheltered religious 15-year-old at the time, didn’t partake. When it was time to drive back to hers they decided I was the designated driver. I’d had my driver’s permit for only a few months and resisted because of my inexperience, but they insisted I drive her car because they were paranoid about being pulled over while driving under the influence. They were my ride there so I didn’t have much of a choice.
I drove 99% of the way back completely FINE and was inwardly celebrating when I pulled into her driveway… where I mixed up the gas and break pedals and **gassed** it into her family’s mobile home, causing a huge dent in both the home and the car. Her granny came out and started screaming. It was super late at night and I was mortified. Everyone insisted it wasn’t my fault since I was pressured into driving, but I didn’t hang out with that girl again. But I never made that driving mistake again either!
Talking too much. I gave my advantage away in too many situations.
Listened to my Father.
He told me if I didn’t have a 4.0 I’d never get into anything other than community college. At the time no one else in my family had been to college. I couldn’t ask anyone for advice and he said this *all the time.*
I graduated high school eight months early, with a 3.67, a 29 ACT, and a Certificate of Initial Mastery. (All with my newborn!)
I only applied to one community college because I thought I wasn’t good enough for anywhere else. He never even finished high school, and spent years making me feel badly about my academics.
He also told me that pills were detrimental to health, so I was never allowed to take Tylenol/Advil when I had my period, when I had tendinitis from sports… Anytime. At all. So, when my doctor asked me if I wanted to go on birth control (which I really did) I inevitably said no because my Father had more or less scared me. I had my first son at seventeen. Then my Father wanted me to have a chemical abortion. After telling me how bad all the other pills were. I was scared and he was mean and callous.
My son is brilliant and lovely, but my Father didn’t do me any favors.
Many other things my Father has pushed onto me.
However, listening to him was arguably the worst mistake of my adolescence.
When I was 14 I met a girl named Jessie.
She was very pretty. Blue eyes, long blonde hair. Athletic. Nice smile. She laughed at my jokes.
Basically she was the first girl to pay attention to me, and I was head-over-heels immediately. We “dated” my freshman year of high school…which was basically holding hands, passing notes between classes, lots of hugs and phone calls, that sort of thing. She was my first kiss. I wrote her sonnets and imagined our future together. I was absolutely *smitten* with her, as much as any 14-year-old-boy can be.
Then she moved away at the end of Freshman year. Went to a different school 30 minutes away, but to a kid who wouldn’t get a license for 2 more years, she may as well be on the moon.
And this was when social media was in its infancy. MySpace wouldn’t really be a “thing” for 2 more years. Basically if someone moved away and you didn’t have a phone number to their new landline? They’re as good as a memory.
She eventually wrote me a letter and we stayed as friends (much to my dismay, as I kept trying to “get back with her”)
In hindsight, Jessie enjoyed the attention I gave her – she loved the sonnets, the poems, the way I’d treat her. She’d say things to me like, “If you and I were to be together, we’d be together *forever*…but I don’t know if I’m ready for that….” like, *juuuuust enough* to keep me hooked, y’know? Didn’t help that she’d occasionally give me grief about it if I mentioned other girls at my school – almost like she was jealous, but not? idk, teenagers can be weird like that.
I mean it’s as much my fault as it was hers, I should have known better and moved on, but I was also a kid and didn’t know any better.
Over the next few years I got heavily involved in sports. I started lifting weights and I built a lot of muscle. I was on the wrestling team and I was constantly running, and skateboarding when I wasn’t in school. I got pretty fit, got taller, and leaned out.
Once again, in hindsight?
*I had girls THROWING THEMSELVES AT ME*, but I was too head-in-the-clouds with Jessie, who only liked me for the attention I gave her.
I remember a girl named Erica, I met her when I was 17. She was 16, a sophomore when I was a junior. She was on the volleyball team and she had an ass *that would make Kim Kardashian jealous*. She had this wavy dark hair and legs for *days*. I remember being at a party, sitting on the couch and she comes over, puts her long legs over mine. I remember feeling the heat of her thighs and the way she looked at me, like she was hungry.
My stupid-ass *stood up and LEFT* because *”oH nO whAt WoUlD JeSsIe ThInK?!”*
I still remember the look Erica gave me as I stood up. Like, this look of just….fuckin…*hurt* and *confusion*, rejection on her face. Like, guys probably were killing each other to be in the position I was, and here I am, turning her down for a girl who *barely gave me the time of day*. And Erica wasn’t the last one before I FINALLY told Jessie to take a fuckin’ hike and I broke contact with her.
That was nearly 25 years ago now and it still makes me cringe when I think about it.
I’m happily married now, I got a great life…but if there’s *one thing* I could go back and change, is to go back and tell 14-year-old me that there’s plenty of girls out there, and you don’t need to commit to the first one who gives you even the smallest bit of attention.
Spending way too much time caring about what other people thought of me
Not asking for the help I needed
Attempting suicide, I am grateful every single day that my parents helped me survive that and then recover. Your life is worth living.
Colombia House records, had to fake my death and start over, only way to escape them.