The Happy Teens Life

  Hi, I am Esther Archibong, a teen coach and your favourite partner. I am so delighted to be a part of this journey with you on the the Happy Teenage Life Series. We are already in LESSON 6 and do not hesitate to ask any questions that may be bothering you as we proceed in the series. Lesson 6 discusses a crucial topic ' Recognizing Your Specialty And Ability' and the lesson video is up on the HappyTeensCommunity YouTube Channel. Please like, share and comment so that I know you are following up. Click to watch video HappyTeenageLifeSeries/Lesson6 Here is a good read from the book 'The Teen And Personality' an excerpt that will help you understand more about the lesson. "As every manufacturer has intent for each product he produces, God did for us. Even when the product has to belong to a certain class or family, they have to be identified differently. A close instance is a company producing cutleries (spoons, knives, forks etc.). There are subclasse...

  Excerpts From The Teen And Personality "After God had finished creation in Genesis 1, He looked back to them and saw that they were good. Nevertheless, why did the bible have to record that particular verse? Why was it necessary that we be reminded that God looked back to see that everything He had made was actually good? I presume it was done to emphasize the importance of the consciousness that if you believe that you did not erupt by evolution or by some scientific speculations but were created by God, then you were made to meet a specification; you are complete and approved. God taking out some time to check on His creation and affirming that they were good, could mean that He did a form of inspection and saw that just as He makes no mistakes, everything He created was perfect and fit for a purpose. You and I were also present on that creation day when He gave His guarantee upon every creation. Humanly speaking, I am sure that if God met any error or an...

 Yes! We are assets and our ability to invest in ourselves makes us more confident in who we are. So, is it wrong to look up to people and admire their graces, talent or even to have role models? Not at all! It is natural and okay to admire people's graces, talents, strengths, abilities and outlooks especially when they appear exceptional but it is dangerous when  you let their lives define yours completely. When you tamper with your uniqueness or let envy set in, it becomes a limitation to you. You truly desire and deserve to be loved and that is why you should start by cherishing and loving the person God has made you to be. Begin to discover the beauty in you; those things that make you unique and valuable. So that you will be able to maximize them. You may also have weaknesses, everyone does, and so, do not feel different; these weaknesses can actually be worked on and channeled in the right direction as you will get to see.  Get hold of your originality and quit tryi...

  Excerpts From The Teen And Personality "There is a possibility that as teenagers you would not be hundred percent satisfied with your looks, family background, environment etc. and when these things that seem like loopholes are spotted in your life, dissatisfaction could be stirred. You could see Mr. A having the best part of what you seem not to be getting at all or Miss B, whose world seem to be going all perfect and glittering. But here you are wrapped up in one mess or another; face to face with the realities of your faults and imperfections. In times like this, you could innocently progress from wishing to become someone or the people you admire to actually posing to be who you are not. You could get under emotional, financial, psychological or even physical pressure to do certain things so that you fit into the “Ideal” personality you have in your minds and be seen as such by other people. But this always end up bad because placing your satisfaction on people's percept...

   Excerpts From The Teen And Personality In general, teenage is associated with warmth, energy, risk taking and lots of new trials. Can you learn to use these dispositions to make your lives better? The truth is that there are many mistakes  teenagers are prone to at this stage of their lives and sometimes fall prey to them. From consequences of ill taken decisions to the brokenness gotten from unguided risk, you must understand that you are still in the growing process. Biologically, there are physical evidences to this growth process; some internal organs are not fully matured including the prefrontal cortex -the decision making part of the brain. Science explains why teenagers make even obvious mistakes.  However, does this imply you live according to the dictates of your “supposed” biological limitations and weakness? My humble submission is-No! You need to work out ways to live beyond the ordinary because every teenager is designed to explore life, enjoy the ti...

Excerpts From The Teen And Personality " The reality is, until you have a true understanding of who you are and what value you represent, you will remain completely vulnerable to compromise and a  sense of dissatisfaction in yourself. You could also afford to give away your true nature to settle for who you are not, which would definitely become a threat later in your life; just like it came hunting on Esau after he had traded his birth right. To avoid these, the picture of who you are and what you represent should always reside in your subconscious such that if asked the question at any time, you wouldn't  have to be guessing who you think you are but can boldly affirm who you are.  You do not want to go about making assumptions and wild guess about your very essence (who you represent, your worth or value on earth) or do you?"

   Excerpt From : The Teen And Personality "From the primary word teen, the term teenager evolved and this connotes persons whose age ranges from thirteen to nineteen (13-19). They are the people transiting from childhood to adulthood who are trying to understand themselves, their environment and how to cope with certain prevalent changes. If this describes you, then you are on the right page and so, let's get started by looking within. What do you think about becoming an adult in a moment?Does leaving this phase and clinging onto the opportunities you feel the next phase holds sounds great to you? Moreover, do you have issues trying to  cope with the rapid changes probably happening within and around you? I know you are likely to have different responses to these questions but what if I insist that the teen-age is a gift from God to humanity and if well explored makes your existence on earth even much more colourful and beautiful. You will discover that it is exciting to...

  The character of Moses is what I’m trying to understand; How can a man who had so much passion to deliver Israel from the fierceness of the taskmasters of Egypt, so much so that he could kill one of the taskmasters who was maltreating an Israeli, how can such a man all of a sudden, begin to give excuses and state reasons why he wasn’t qualified   when God finally beckoned on him to go back to Egypt after he had fled, and deliver the Israelites from the hands of their taskmaster. Moses was given the full permission and authority to go and execute what he was passionate about from the beginning, yet, impediments are so powerful, they almost stopped him. Impediments are the little drops that seem to want to stop the flow, they can hinder progress if we let them and a number of things can become impediments in our lives; they could be natural impairments or physical disabilities like blindness, health conditions or self-imposed impediments; things we feel can disqualify us fro...

  Every day of our lives, as we live on the earth, we will live answering this one question -WHO ARE YOU? Circumstances will ask you; people will ask you; your environment will definitely ask you, and as you desire to make progress and gain victory in life, you will definitely have to answer the question – Who are you? Well, some of us already have our answers, but I tell you, if your answer is your name, like saying, “who are you?” and your response is “I am Esther Archibong” for instance, you would have to know that they are many other people bearing your name, and in fact, your first name and surname, and even if nobody else bears your full name, do really think your full name eventually describes you? So, who is this Esther Archibong? That becomes the question, if your name is Francis Junior, who is this Francis Junior?  In the discovery, refining and deploying of who Francis Junior is, will you be able to stand and confront opposing forces and challenges that would want t...

  Peter was now so bold, he was dominating, he could look straight and say to a lame man at gate beautiful, “such as I have I give thee, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” this same peter who was living the ‘normal’ hustle life became such a man that his shadow, could heal the sick, did you read that? Peter’s shadow could now heal the sick, but how did he get there? What happened between the gaps; from the time he was a normal frustrated fisher man to a man living in such realm of dominion? -  A transformation by God definitely happened. You see, we are not created to survive, and yet we are not created to dominate on our own terms, we must be subject to the rulership and authority of God over our lives. So, peter had a choice to either live outside God and be one of those kinds or be subject to God and live in dominion in all areas of life. That’s the blue print and he chose the latter. This decision was the beginning of his self-discovery journey, an...

   If you have ever seen a skilled tall guy in the basketball court dribbling the opponent players who are not as tall, and with the ball dabbles straight to the net to score a point, you will fairly relate to the word ADVANTAGE. The tall guy just seems to have an advantage in that court but have you ever wondered about the other tall guy who is trying to get a chance as a flight attendant but the job specification clearly states out – “Not for people taller than 6 fts?” What seemed to be an advantage to one is looking like a disadvantage to another person because the conditions and needs are different and advantage is dependent on what extent a person fits in and meets the need. It is therefore true that one person can be very useful in a particular setting but also very useless in another setting and this is why it is very important that we understand our individual advantages as we live-on in the world. It’s simply a question of what can I offer to my world?  What vi...

A lot of times I have been a part of a creation process; it could be planning an event and making sure the moments are colourful, building a product to meet a need or taking on a project that will solve a particular problem, whatever the task is, one common thing about the creation process is that they are a lot of behind the scene decisions and actions that are all together informed by the result that is desired.  The engineers understand this, that is why they most times work with a plan, whether it's a building plan, a product design, model or mock-up. This is because they desire that at the end of the day, the finished product will be what they actually hoped to achieve. Even God did not bother creating man without first establishing the model for which man would be created, certain ‘behind the scene actions’ took place before man as a being came to be. From planning to moulding to the breathing of His life into man, these were intentional processes. So, I’ll love us to take a ...

  Many a time we pay dearly for the truths we do not know, ignorance cost more! If we check the harm, pain, destructions, uneasiness, grief that has occurred simply because some persons did not know better, you will agree to this. They are lot of such example around our society and to be honest, most of us wish we knew better during certain season of our lives, of we only knew better, our response to lives circumstances would have been different and surely our results too and this is why it is important to be established in the truth. As a child, I grew up with different myths, one of which was that while sucking orange If I mistakenly gulp in the orange seed in the juice, it was said that the seed will germinate and grow right in my belly, and then through my head. Have you heard something like that before? Have you also heard about the tooth fairy?  You may have noticed that somehow the things we believe informs our actions, so much so that our responses to life, the way we ...

   Much often than not we see differences in different people. I mean, no matter how identical twins resemble, the similarities will be great, but they will be differences; the voice tone, walking posture, approaches to life, something will definitely show that -THEY ARE DIFFERENT, and that difference is beautiful. One person may love fried rice for instance, and the other doesn’t, the other may love swimming while one is aqua phobic, you see, differences! Skin colour, hair texture, eye colour, nails, height, lip colour, all these come to us differently, they are unique to us but we will get it totally wrong if we believe that all there is to us is what we see on the outside. Have you ever seen a dark, tall beautiful lady? How about a fair, curly haired handsome guy? Oh! these are fair to look upon, especially if the guy is broad chested, with a perfect 6 packs macho figure and the lady is with a flawless smile and a perfect figure 8 shape. You know what I mean right? They bot...

  A lot of us love trends, we love to keep abreast with whatever is happening around us, For some of us, the latest fashion always finds their way to our wardrobe we just want to look trendy.  We partake in social media activities, tweeting and retweeting, sharing and joining up online challenges; I love the online space. Somehow, they are lots of activities and clouds of events that keeps flooding in everyday, but one thing we are left with, is the one thing called CHOICE. In the beginning of this series we started by looking at the story of a young man called Gideon. Through the lessons, we have seen the various encounters Gideon had and how he broke forth from living a defeated, inferior, settle-for-less,  fear grabbed life to living a life in the path of faith which finally handed him and the entire city the victory and freedom they had truly desired. In the course of the lesson, we have learnt truths about how to deal with fear, how to conquer limiting beliefs, how t...

  Sometime ago, I wrote an article about ‘the enemy within’, I discovered that the enemy within is much more subtle, twice smart, more dangerous and unfortunately, we can be much more vulnerable to them than we are to the whips of the many enemies outside. The enemy within knows that you are relaxed and comfortable with him, so he struggles to keep that trust, he plays the master game of blind-folding, he is the architect of deception, he plans it and cunningly executes it, and while he stabs you, you may be tempted to praise him and even cry on his shoulders, because he has mastered the art of secretly keeping you in detention yet showing up as the pleasant saviour.  “Oh, Samson the Philistines are after you” she would cry out as though she wanted well for him, yet she was the chief architect, master planner for Samson’s capture.  Can you remember the story of Delilah told in Judges 16? It is true that Delilah played a destructive role, it is true she was an arch-enemy, ...

  If I tell you that as you move on with Faith everything would come easy, I would be lying to you. Victors, do you want to know the truth?  As you try to pull away the thorns, as you seek to progress and move your life forward by faith, that faith will be tested and that it why it was necessary to look back and be sure that by faith, we were holding on to the right things. Friends, as much as I would love to tell you that things would come by very easy once your faith is right, truth is, it won’t. Your faith will be tried and your stamina will be tested. A few winds would blow, it would come to check how firmly rooted you are. It would come to check if your convictions are heart-ward or mouth-ward, if you are just saying them, or you truly mean them I will tell you what to do at such times. If  you have gone through Judges  chapter 6,7 and 8,  you will notice that in that story, after Gideon had pulled down the altar of baal and cut down the Asherah, and as ins...

Many times, I have been in situations where I knew the truth but did not act on the truth and you know what? Nothing really changed because my faith alone didn’t in itself sustain the ability to change my circumstances.  It was just a step towards victory, I had not held on to the victory yet. The closest illustration to give to this is; imagine a student who is studying so hard for an exam he has not registered for and never gets to write. He knows all that there is to know about the subjects to be written and is even confident that if he attempts the exams, he will get distinctions but he has not registered for the exams, he has not taken the steps that will make certain his victory, steps that will materialize his faith and birth the realities of his convictions. Do you understand what I now mean? A little look about Gideon’s story will explain more (Judges 6, 7 and 8 contains the full gist about Gideon), After he had confirmed that indeed he had found faith, truth, a new realit...