I could have been a Contender

Teenagers have this ability to be in the moment and to dream largely about the future. When I say dream, I mean dream.

Just ask a typical teenager what they want to do when they are older and they have the most outstanding ideas about what they might accomplish.

From discovering a cure for major illnesses, ending world hunger, rap artists, sports athletes to professors, they have no problem dreaming of careers in almost all fields.

I have worked with teens that have major reading and writing disabilities, but they have no concerns about goals of becoming writers. I have worked with teens that have not taken a biology class or anything related to it, but they plan on becoming biologists. The same goes for dreaming of acting, specializing in chemistry, or sports but not really having the experience or talents in these areas.

Often times, it is their parents that offer the dose of reality to their dreams with input on the actual amount of work that will go into fulfilling their goal.

I have had a lot parents admit to me that they feel like they have to remind their teens daily that if they want to make it as a doctor, lawyer, or whatever their child admits to wanting to do then they are going to have to do great in school.

The teens seem to have a different perspective of this advice; often my clients would report that they feel that their parents were nagging them.

Some teens would say that their parents made them feel like they failed before they could even start. Or others would wonder why their parents would not let them experience things for themselves without always telling them how things were going to turn out.

Teens rarely have a reality check in place to understand what hard work will be required for their dream of the future, maybe that is what allows them to dream so big.

It is their awkward sense of their own futures that makes it so interesting to me how teens can almost automatically know accurately when an adult is happy about what they do professionally. It is a strange talent they have.

When they have a teacher that loves what they do, a substitute, a coach, a youth leader, a doctor, a family friend, any adult in their life that loves what they do, it seems to inspire them.

If an adult doesn’t like what they do, if an adult doesn’t like their life, whether it be a job, or a relationship, something that brings major dissatisfaction…a teenager in that adult’s life will know it, even if that adult thinks they are hiding it from them.

I think I was 12 years old, when I was watching an old movie really late at night with my Mum, you could always count on finding her sitting in the dark watching some really old movie in the middle of the night and she never minded if you joined her.

I will never forget the moment when I heard Marlon Brando in the 1954 movie, On the Waterfront, “I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody.

I looked at my Mum, as if she should say something. As if something big had just happened. I am not sure why that line meant something to

me. “I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody.”

Maybe it was the way Marlon Brando delivered it, the desperation in his voice, the regret, the warning to anyone who was listening. It was a line that stuck with me.

I remember thinking that I better not regret anything, I better do as much as I can in my life. At 12 years old it is easy to think that way. I didn’t have a lot of responsibility at the time.

The other thing is that as a young teen I was a contender, everything was a contest…I just didn’t exactly realize it at the time. It took years for me to understand that there was an underlying message in our culture as a teenager, that I needed to win, get the best grades, go to good schools, accomplish my goals, be a great kid, to be a contender.

Teens often feel they are compared to by others, by parents, by teachers, by peers. It takes years to undo the message that we do not need to compare ourselves to anyone else.

The hard part in my work of bridging parents and teens is that often teens have a hard time with understanding some of the choices and some of the dissatisfaction in their parent’s lives.

So when I read about the self-discrepancy theory that was first developed by E. Troy Higgins in 1987, it explained a pattern that I often see in my practice. Maybe one of the reasons why some teens struggle to connect with their parents is that these parents are actually struggling with themselves, and their teens know it.

The theory of self-discrepancy is that that people struggle between who they are in everyday life (the actual self), who they really would

like to be (the ideal self) and then who they think others want them to be (the ought self).

Higgins believed that individuals are strongly motivated to maintain consistency among personal beliefs and self-perceptions.

Problems arise when the actual experience is somewhat less what we feel should achieve, then we experience fear, worry and other anxieties.

Teenagers only know their actual self, who they are in everyday life,

and who they really would like to be, the ideal self. They could care less about who they think others want them to be, the ought self.

When parents talk about the future, reality, concerns about what they think, most teenagers could care less. They compartmentalize this; they often do not care what others want them to be.

So if a teenager has spent time with a parent or parents that is struggling with their own issue of self-discrepancy, struggling between who they are in everyday life, who they really want to be, and then who they think others want them to be, what do we expect them to learn?

They do not understand what it is like to struggle with what others expect of them. They do not understand what it is like to fail yet. Some teens have begun to fail some things, but they do not factor this into the larger picture of their lives. Teens see their parents, adults in their lives, guardians that are struggling with who they are everyday versus who they want to be and ask, WHY? They do not really get why you cannot just change.

Sure, we have all had moments like this, do not get me wrong, what happens when we allow ourselves to become complacent with our selves over a long period of time?

I could easily see this playing out in my own life. I spent over a decade in school, with a big dream of becoming a clinical psychologist.

My actual self is I am raising children. I am facing the everyday struggle of not wanting to miss a moment, wanting to build major attachment with them, and needing to be a hands-on mother.

My ideal self has a doctorate in clinical psychology with a specialization with youth and technology. I ran summer camps to experience a living

laboratory to understand children and teenagers first hand.

My ought self is half wanting me to be a stay at home mother, and half begging me to come back and work.

Could it happen, could the years slip by, one year, two years, before you know it, my dream of returning to a career that I love or a passion, a relationship, that I care about? Could my own children one day look at

me as teenagers and question my actual self versus my ideal self-discrepancy. Yes, the answer is yes.

What I have learned about Higgins’ theory is that self-discrepancy is a normal process.

We should all embrace this process of self-discrepancy, knowing our everyday selves, our ideal selves is a good thing.

We should be able to continue to dream, like teenagers, maybe not as big It is just that different from teenagers we should be able to interject reality, knowing what we can actually accomplish with our hard work and what want to accomplish. We should be able to know when we are struggling, when we are dissatisfied, anxious or at odds with what our everyday selves and ideal selves needs or wants.

This way we can let our teenagers dream big, while ensuring that they won’t end up saying … “I coulda been a contenda.”