When you have a clear recognition of your whole personality, then you can say that you have self-awareness. Self-awareness for teens is when they will be able to get a good grasp on what their strengths, weaknesses, thoughts and beliefs, emotions, and of course, what their source of motivation is. When effective activities on self-awareness for teens are in place, you have helped to be able not only in understanding themselves but with other people as well, along with how they are being perceived by these people including their actions.

There are a lot of people who assume that self-awareness for teens will come easily and naturally. But the truth is, it does not. This heightened awareness can actually be hard to come by, which is why when teenagers are starting to feel things like this, it is important that there is someone whom they can trust to help them in overcoming the process.

This will take a lot of work and a lot of practice, but, this means that they will be able to learn to increase their self-awareness and be able to find new ways of interpreting their thoughts, actions, feelings, and conversations that they will have with other people.

In achieving self-awareness for teens, this will give them the opportunity to make positive changes in their behavior and also to increase their self-confidence.

This article will provide you with activities to encourage self-awareness for teens:

1. Encourage them to write morning pages:

This type of exercise is taken from Julia Caron’s book, wherein this will teach the readers techniques on how they will be able to gain self-confidence by harnessing their creative talents and skills.

This exercise will be composed of three pages of longhand stream-of-consciousness writing every morning as soon as the teenager wakes up. This will not help to declutter their minds but this will also help them in recognizing the things that are at the forefront of their brains which they may need to address the same day.

2. Encourage them to keep a journal:

When someone is keeping a journal, this creates a permanent record of someone’s thoughts, feelings, and the events of their lives. This will also allow someone to look back on the important memories and at the same time rediscover how they felt during that time. Keeping a journal can be a learning experience because, as people grow and face new challenges in the course of living their own lives, a person’s way of reacting and handling certain situations may change.

When a person is able to read his or her past experiences, then they will be able to realize how much they have grown or matured, and how they have put things into perspective. This is a good tool in encouraging self-awareness for teens because as they grow up, they will be able to look back on how far they have evolved since their teenage years.



3. Increase self-awareness for teens by using feedback analysis:

When someone is being faced with an important decision in life, it is recommended that such a person should write down exactly how and why they came up with such decisions which include the factors that motivated them, and the steps that they took in order to come up with their conclusion.

After some lapse of time, make them go back and reflect on their decision-making process. Make sure that the outcome of their choices is assessed in detail and that they will be able to analyze their ability at the time in making the best decision basing on the level of their self-awareness during such time.

4. Encourage self-awareness for teens by making them create a vision-mission:

We normally see visions and missions in various organizations that serve three important roles. One is that it states that the purpose of the organization; it informs the people of the strategy development of such an organization, and it displays measurable goals and objectives to gauge the success of the organization.

So, by encouraging the teens to create their own missions and visions of their lives, it will enable them to define a clear direction and ranking of their priorities. This will also help in setting measurable goals including ways of measuring their success.

5. Encourage them to write a personal manifesto:

If you do not know what this is, a personal manifesto is something that describes a person’s core values and beliefs, what specific ideas and priorities are you standing for your life, and how a person is planning to live their life. This personal manifesto will act as a statement of personal principles and at the same time a call to action.

In developing self-awareness for teens, a personal manifesto can help them in framing their lives; have them be pointed towards the right direction to help them in achieving their goals, and also, this manifesto will act as a tool that will remind them of their primary concerns.


To help them get started, you can have them ask questions about themselves like what do they stand for, or what his or her strongest beliefs are, or how does he or she wants to live his or her life, or how they want to define themselves, or what words do they want to live by. By making them have their own personal manifesto, they will have a very powerful tool that can bring about their best lives.

6. Make them record their ABCs:

Recording their ABCs is a good activity to increase self-awareness for teens. Through this way, it will help them in debriefing themselves and be able to get a chance to reflect and discover their beliefs after they encounter a big negative incident in their lives.

• A – this stands for the Activating event that triggered their inner dialogue
• B – this stands for the Belief that was being formed after the event
• C – this stands for the Consequences or how your newly adopted belief is making you feel

If you can make the teens do this, then you will be able to help them understand what their response is when it comes to stress. Although there are many people who may be experiencing the same activating adverse event, the thought process about such events can contribute a great impact on their lives as they move forward. Through the use of the ABC method, this can help the people to recognize what their automatic thoughts are when they feel mad or upset, and then have them change those thoughts into positive feelings or things.

A good example is when you imagine that you are stuck in a long line, but, you are in a rush. When you are in this situation, you may feel very anxious at the very thought that you might be late to your next obligation, and this will then cause you to complain out loud to the people surrounding you about how long it takes before the line gets to move. On the one side, you may decide to just relax, put your headphones on and listen to calming music while you are waiting. Whatever it may be, the “A” or the activating event remains the same but the “B” and the “C” will show how you have responded to stress.

Through this way, this will help you in helping the teenager to look at things more positively and be able to lead them to find alternatives to solve problems in a more non-destructive way.


7. Inspire them to write a regret letter:

Encourage the teens to write a letter to their younger selves, or even for themselves right now where they can open in the future. This is a very cathartic exercise because this just about simply listing what they wish they had known. Make them tell their younger selves about the regrets that they have realized so far, and have them apologize for any mistakes that they may have, along with any opportunities that they may have let pass by.


Aside from gaining a feeling of empowerment by making them acknowledge their vulnerabilities, their words can also be one way of helping others who are undergoing a similar situation. This newfound wisdom can help readers in knowing that are not alone.

8. Make them do the funeral test:

This type of exercise was made popular by the renowned author, Stephen Covey. To do this activity, make them write their own eulogy and have them answer the following questions:

• How do they want people to speak of them at their funeral
• What should the people remember them for
• Which kind of persons will people think of them when they are gone

By doing this, this will be able to help these teens to add more purpose to their day-to-day activities and how they will live their lives. This may also help them to think twice before they go and react harshly to certain situations or making a decision before thinking about what the possible outcomes may be.

9. Make them record their own personal narrative:

In doing this activity, make them answer the question of how will they tell the story of their lives to themselves and what their autobiographies will look like.Our life stories are one of the essential components of our personalities, thus, by making them map out their own stories, this may help the teens in making some positive changes for their future.