a speech about growing up

Speech about Growing up [1,2,3,5 Minutes]

Short 1 minute speech about growing up.

Growing up can be a difficult process, but it is also the most rewarding time in life.

Growing up is a time that we all experience, whether we like it or not. It can be a difficult process, but it is also the most rewarding time in life. It is essential to know what your child needs and what they are going through at this stage of their development.

Growing up is a process of maturing, learning and changing. It is not just about being a kid anymore but also about becoming an adult.

The following are the steps on how to grow up.

1) First, you have to realize that you need to grow up.

2) Next, you need to take a step back and analyze your life. What are your goals? What is your purpose?

3) Now, you need to make a plan for achieving those goals and purposes.

4) Lastly, start taking action on what you’ve planned out in step 3.

2 Minutes speech about Growing up

Growing up is a difficult process that can be filled with joy and happiness or anxiety, fear, and sadness. It is a time of change where you have to make important decisions about your life.

Growing up can be a difficult process filled with joy and happiness or anxiety, fear, and sadness. It is also an opportunity for you to take the next step in your life by making important decisions about your future.

Growing up means different things for different people. Some people may have a hard time adjusting to the big changes that come with growing up, while others may not have any problem with it.

The process of growing up is not easy. It takes a lot of time and effort, but it is something that we all have to go through.

While the idea of how to grow up may seem daunting, there are certain things that can help you on your journey. Here are some tips on how to grow up:

1) Be yourself: The key to growing up is being comfortable with who you are and what you believe in. Don’t try to change yourself into someone you think will be more accepted by society just because they’re popular or cool. Be yourself!

3 Minutes speech about Growing up in technology

Growing up is a process that takes time and effort. It’s not always easy to understand what it means to be an adult, let alone a teenager. But with the help of technology and social media, we are able to better understand what it means to be a teenager in this day and age.

I’m here today to talk about growing up in today’s digital world. I want you guys to know that this process can be difficult and confusing at times but it’s also very exciting and rewarding as well.

Today, we are living in a time where technology has become an integral part of our lives. We have grown up surrounded by technology and now it is hard to imagine a world without it. Technology has also made our lives shorter and more stressful.

There are two ways to grow up: one is by learning and the other is by experiencing. The latter is more difficult, but it can be done in a more natural way.

It can be difficult to learn how to grow up, but there are some ways that you can do it on your own. It’s not easy, though – you’ll need to put in a lot of effort and work hard at understanding yourself and your surroundings.

Grow up by learning: The best way to learn how to grow up is through experience. When you’re young, take on tasks that are beyond your capabilities and try not to give up. When you fail, reflect on what happened and try again next time.

5 Minutes speech about Growing up

Growing up is one of the most difficult experiences in a person’s life. It is a time when you have to decide who you are, what you want to do, and what your goals are.

Growing up is a process that can be painful and challenging for some people. It’s difficult to know how to go about it and how to make it easier for yourself.

I think the speech about growing up could be beneficial for those who need help with this process or just want to talk about it with someone else.

Growing up is a long and complicated process. It involves a lot of stages, which can be difficult to remember. This speech is about the stages of growing up and how it can affect one’s life.

I’m sure that everyone has experienced some kind of change in their life that they have had to deal with as they grew up, whether it was something big like moving away from home or something small like getting your first period. Some people have even had to deal with things like divorce or death, but there are also changes that are more subtle–like the way you think about yourself or the way you look at your body.

The speech talks about the many different ways in which one’s life changes as they grow, and how these changes can affect them in many different ways–both positively and negatively.

The process of growing up is not easy and it requires a lot of effort. It is not just about getting older, it also includes a lot of changes in people’s lives. One of the most significant change that happens to people is their physical appearance.

I am sharing with you some tips on getting ready for adulthood such as:

– Start now, even if you feel like there’s no time left

– Create a list of things that are important to you

– Create a list of things that are important to your future self

Short speech about My Growing up story

I grew up in the city of United States. I had a lot of friends and we would play outside all the time. We would play sports and do whatever we wanted. My parents never really told me what to do, but they did give me some guidelines for what was appropriate for me to be doing during my free time.

My favorite activities were playing sports, hanging out with my friends, and working on homework with my siblings. I had a lot of fun playing games like baseball and football with my dad, who was always there to help us win or lose.

Growing up was great because I learned how to deal with difficult situations that came up in life by myself as well as learn how to work hard towards achieving my goals without any help from others because no one could tell me what to do or how to live life better than myself

Examples of sentences that can be used in starting of this speech

Examples of sentences that can be used in closing of this speech, speeches in english.

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The Power of Words: Inspiring Speeches for Personal Growth

by admin | Nov 4, 2023

Discover the transformative power of inspiring speeches for personal growth. Unleash your full potential, cultivate resilience, and embrace self-discovery with the power of words.

Have you ever been moved to take action or make positive changes in your life simply by listening to a powerful speech? The Power of Words: Inspiring Speeches for Personal Growth is a collection of captivating and thought-provoking speeches that have the ability to ignite a spark within you. Each speech is carefully crafted to inspire, motivate, and empower individuals to reach their full potential. Whether you’re seeking inspiration in your career, relationships, or personal development, this collection is sure to leave a lasting impact on your life. Get ready to be inspired, uplifted, and motivated like never before as you delve into the power of words.

Importance of Inspirational Speeches

Inspirational speeches play a crucial role in personal growth. They have the power to ignite a spark within us, motivating us to overcome obstacles, pursue our passions, and cultivate a deeper understanding of ourselves. These speeches can act as a guiding light, providing us with the necessary inspiration and guidance to embark on a journey of self-improvement and transformation. Words have the ability to uplift our spirits, instill positivity, and spark a sense of determination within us. By listening to inspirational speeches, we can tap into our true potential and unleash a world of possibilities.

Understanding Personal Growth

Before delving into the impact of inspiring speeches on personal growth, it is essential to have a clear understanding of what personal growth entails. Personal growth refers to the continuous process of self-improvement, wherein individuals strive to become the best version of themselves. It involves developing new skills, expanding knowledge, and embracing personal and professional challenges. Personal growth is a lifelong journey that requires self-reflection, commitment, and the willingness to step out of one’s comfort zone. It encompasses various aspects of our lives, including physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual well-being.

The Role of Words in Personal Growth

Words are not merely a combination of letters; they possess the power to influence and inspire. In the realm of personal growth, words act as catalysts for change. They have the ability to shape our beliefs, drive our actions, and impact our mindset. Inspiring speeches are a powerful tool in personal growth as they provide encouragement, guidance, and motivation. They have the potential to awaken our innermost desires, instill confidence, and foster a sense of resilience within us. By internalizing the words spoken in these speeches, we can harness their transformative power and embark on a journey of self-discovery and personal development.

Speeches That Ignite Personal Growth

1. overcoming obstacles.

One of the most common themes in inspiring speeches is overcoming obstacles. Life is full of challenges, and these speeches help us develop the mindset and resilience required to overcome them. They teach us that setbacks and failures are not roadblocks but opportunities for growth. Through these speeches, we learn the importance of perseverance, determination, and staying committed to our goals, even in the face of adversity. By internalizing the message conveyed in these speeches, we can develop a mindset that empowers us to turn obstacles into stepping stones on our path to personal growth.

2. Pursuing Passion and Purpose

Inspiring speeches focused on pursuing passion and purpose remind us of the significance of aligning our actions with our innermost desires. These speeches encourage us to identify our passions, explore our interests, and pursue a path that brings us fulfillment and joy. They emphasize the importance of stepping out of our comfort zones and taking risks in order to pursue our dreams. By listening to these speeches, we are inspired to embrace our passions wholeheartedly, follow our dreams, and create a life that is aligned with our true purpose.

3. Building Self-Confidence

Self-confidence is a crucial attribute required for personal growth, and inspiring speeches can be instrumental in building it. These speeches remind us of our inherent worth and potential, encouraging us to believe in ourselves and our abilities. They instill confidence by emphasizing the importance of embracing our strengths and celebrating our achievements. By internalizing the messages delivered in these speeches, we can develop a strong sense of self-confidence that empowers us to take on new challenges, overcome self-doubt, and seize opportunities for personal growth.

4. Embracing Resilience

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from setbacks and challenges, and it is an essential quality for personal growth. Inspiring speeches focused on resilience remind us that failure is not the end but a stepping stone towards success. They highlight the importance of embracing failure as a valuable learning experience and bouncing back stronger than ever. By listening to these speeches, we gain the strength and determination to face adversity head-on, learn from our mistakes, and continue moving forward on our personal growth journey.

5. Cultivating a Growth Mindset

A growth mindset is the belief that our abilities and intelligence can be developed through dedication and hard work. Inspiring speeches centered around cultivating a growth mindset encourage us to embrace challenges, view setbacks as opportunities for growth, and persist in the face of obstacles. They remind us that intelligence, talent, and success are not fixed traits but can be nurtured and developed. By internalizing the teachings of these speeches, we can foster a growth mindset that propels us towards personal growth and achievement.

6. Fostering Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence involves the ability to recognize, understand, and manage our own emotions, as well as empathize with the emotions of others. Inspiring speeches focused on emotional intelligence guide us towards nurturing this essential skill. They emphasize the importance of self-awareness, emotional regulation, and interpersonal relationships. By listening to these speeches, we are inspired to develop a deeper understanding of our emotions, cultivate empathy towards others, and build meaningful connections that contribute to our personal growth.

7. Cultivating Positive Relationships

Relationships have a significant impact on our personal growth, and inspiring speeches on cultivating positive relationships highlight this fact. They emphasize the importance of surrounding ourselves with supportive and uplifting individuals who encourage our growth and inspire us to be our best selves. These speeches emphasize the power of collaboration, effective communication, and building authentic connections. By internalizing the wisdom shared in these speeches, we can cultivate positive relationships that foster personal growth and create a supportive network of individuals who uplift and inspire us.

8. Enhancing Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the ability to recognize and understand one’s own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Inspiring speeches centered around enhancing self-awareness guide us towards introspection and self-reflection. They encourage us to embark on a journey of self-discovery, identify our strengths and weaknesses, and embrace our authentic selves. By listening to these speeches, we gain insight into our own thoughts and behaviors, which in turn allows us to make more informed choices, set meaningful goals, and continually strive for personal growth.

9. Overcoming Fear and Taking Risks

Fear often holds us back from reaching our full potential, and inspiring speeches on overcoming fear and taking risks address this common obstacle to personal growth. These speeches encourage us to step out of our comfort zones, embrace uncertainty, and confront our fears head-on. They remind us that growth and transformation occur outside of our comfort zones and that taking calculated risks is essential for personal growth. By internalizing the messages of these speeches, we can break free from the grip of fear, embrace new opportunities, and propel ourselves towards personal growth and success.

10. Finding Balance and Inner Peace

In the hustle and bustle of daily life, finding balance and inner peace is crucial for personal growth. Inspiring speeches on finding balance and inner peace emphasize the importance of self-care, mindfulness, and living in the present moment. They encourage us to prioritize our well-being, create space for self-reflection, and cultivate a sense of inner calm. By listening to these speeches, we are reminded to slow down, reconnect with ourselves, and foster a balanced and peaceful lifestyle that facilitates personal growth.

Analyzing Iconic Speeches

1. martin luther king jr.’s ‘i have a dream’.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech is one of the most iconic and influential speeches in history. In this powerful speech, King delivers a message of hope, equality, and social justice. His words inspire individuals to believe in the possibility of a better future and encourage them to take action towards achieving racial equality. King’s speech is a testament to the power of words in mobilizing individuals and igniting social change. By analyzing this speech, we gain insight into the impact that a well-crafted and passionate message can have on personal growth and societal transformation.

2. Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech

Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech is a memorable and thought-provoking speech that encourages individuals to follow their passions and embrace the uncertainties of life. He shares personal anecdotes and life lessons, urging graduates to pursue their dreams and have the courage to make unconventional choices. Jobs’ speech highlights the importance of staying true to oneself, embracing failure, and finding purpose in our work. By examining this speech, we can learn valuable lessons about personal growth, resilience, and the pursuit of our dreams.

3. J.K. Rowling’s Harvard Commencement Speech

J.K. Rowling’s Harvard Commencement Speech is a testament to the power of resilience and failure in personal growth. She speaks candidly about her own experiences with failure and the lessons she learned along the way. Rowling’s speech reinforces the idea that failure is not something to be feared but a necessary stepping stone towards success. She inspires individuals to embrace their failures, learn from them, and persevere in the pursuit of their dreams. By analyzing this speech, we gain valuable insights into the role of resilience, determination, and embracing failure in personal growth.

4. Oprah Winfrey’s Harvard Commencement Speech

Oprah Winfrey’s Harvard Commencement Speech is a powerful and inspiring speech that encourages individuals to live a life of purpose and meaning. She shares personal anecdotes and reflections, detailing the transformative power of embracing one’s true self and following one’s passions. Winfrey’s speech highlights the importance of authenticity, gratitude, and service in personal growth. By examining this speech, we can gain valuable insights into the power of self-discovery, embracing our authentic selves, and making a positive impact on the world.

5. Ellen DeGeneres’ Tulane University Commencement Speech

Ellen DeGeneres’ Tulane University Commencement Speech is a heartfelt and humorous speech that encourages individuals to embrace kindness, compassion, and authenticity. She shares personal stories and anecdotes, highlighting the importance of being true to oneself and spreading positivity in the world. DeGeneres’ speech reinforces the value of embracing diversity, celebrating individuality, and finding joy in everyday moments. By analyzing this speech, we can gain valuable insights into the power of kindness, authenticity, and embracing our unique selves in personal growth.

Strategies to Apply the Power of Words

1. practicing self-affirmation.

Self-affirmation involves consciously and positively reaffirming our own worth and abilities. By practicing self-affirmation, we can counter negative self-talk and cultivate a positive mindset. This strategy involves repeating positive affirmations, such as “I am capable and deserving of success,” to ourselves regularly. By incorporating self-affirmation into our daily routine, we can harness the power of words to boost our self-confidence and drive personal growth.

2. Visualization and Manifestation Techniques

Visualization and manifestation techniques involve creating vivid mental images of our desired outcomes and beliefs. By visualizing ourselves achieving our goals and embodying the qualities we aspire to possess, we can program our minds for success. This strategy involves creating vision boards, meditating on our goals, and visualizing ourselves in the future we desire. By utilizing visualization and manifestation techniques, we can align our thoughts and actions with our aspirations, paving the way for personal growth.

3. Writing and Reflecting on Personal Mantras

Personal mantras are short, powerful statements or affirmations that reflect our values and aspirations. By writing and reflecting on personal mantras, we can remind ourselves of what is truly important to us and anchor ourselves in our values. This strategy involves identifying key principles or beliefs that resonate with us and crafting affirmations around them, such as “I am resilient, adaptable, and capable of overcoming any challenge.” By incorporating personal mantras into our daily practice, we can reinforce positive beliefs and foster personal growth.

4. Daily Affirmations and Positive Self-Talk

Daily affirmations and positive self-talk involve consciously choosing to speak to ourselves in a supportive and uplifting manner. By replacing negative self-talk with positive affirmations, we can reframe our mindset and cultivate a greater sense of self-belief. This strategy involves incorporating positive statements, such as “I am confident and capable,” into our daily routines. By consistently practicing daily affirmations and positive self-talk, we can reshape our self-perception and unlock our full potential for personal growth.

5. Seeking Motivational and Educational Resources

Motivational and educational resources, such as books, podcasts, and videos, can provide valuable guidance and inspiration on our journey of personal growth. By seeking out these resources, we expose ourselves to new ideas, perspectives, and insights. This strategy involves actively seeking out motivational speeches, self-help books, and educational content that resonate with our interests and goals. By immersing ourselves in these resources, we can infuse our lives with fresh perspectives and knowledge, fueling our personal growth.

6. Surrounding Yourself with Positive Influences

The people we surround ourselves with have a significant impact on our personal growth. By intentionally cultivating relationships with positive and supportive individuals, we create an environment that nurtures our growth. This strategy involves identifying individuals who inspire us, motivate us, and uplift us, and actively seeking to spend time with them. By surrounding ourselves with positive influences, we create a support system that encourages our personal growth and provides us with the necessary motivation and guidance.

7. Participating in Public Speaking and Toastmasters

Public speaking and Toastmasters provide opportunities to practice and refine our communication skills, boost our self-confidence, and inspire others through our words. By participating in public speaking events and joining Toastmasters clubs, we can develop our ability to deliver impactful speeches and connect with an audience. This strategy involves seeking out public speaking opportunities, enrolling in Toastmasters clubs, and actively participating in speaking engagements. By honing our public speaking skills, we can harness the power of words to inspire personal growth in ourselves and others.

8. Joining Supportive Communities

Joining supportive communities can provide a sense of belonging, encouragement, and accountability on our personal growth journey. By connecting with like-minded individuals who are also striving for personal development, we create a network of support that empowers us. This strategy involves seeking out communities, such as mastermind groups or online forums, where individuals come together to support and motivate each other. By joining these communities, we can share our experiences, gain valuable insights, and receive the encouragement we need to continue growing.

9. Reading and Sharing Inspirational Stories

Reading and sharing inspirational stories can have a profound impact on personal growth. By immersing ourselves in stories of triumph, resilience, and personal transformation, we gain valuable insights and inspiration. This strategy involves seeking out biographies, memoirs, or personal development books that resonate with our interests. By reading and sharing these stories, we can tap into the power of words to ignite personal growth and motivate others on their own journeys.

10. Incorporating Inspirational Quotes into Daily Life

Inspirational quotes serve as powerful reminders of our capabilities and aspirations. By incorporating inspirational quotes into our daily lives, we can infuse our days with positivity and motivation. This strategy involves selecting meaningful quotes that resonate with us and displaying them in places where we will see them frequently, such as on our desks or as phone wallpapers. By immersing ourselves in these quotes, we create a constant reminder of our potential and the path of personal growth that lies ahead.

The Impact of Words on Personal Growth

1. shaping beliefs and mindset.

Words have the power to shape our beliefs and mindset. By internalizing positive and empowering messages, we can cultivate a growth-oriented mindset that propels us towards personal growth. The words we speak and listen to can reshape our perception, challenge limiting beliefs, and open up new possibilities.

2. Encouraging Action and Motivation

Inspiring speeches and words have the ability to spark action and motivation within us. They awaken our inner drive, fuel our ambitions, and propel us towards taking positive steps on our personal growth journey. By hearing the right words at the right time, we can find the courage and motivation to pursue our dreams and overcome obstacles.

3. Boosting Confidence and Self-Esteem

The power of positive words is undeniable when it comes to boosting confidence and self-esteem. Inspirational speeches and affirmations have the ability to remind us of our inherent worth and potential, instilling a sense of belief in ourselves and our abilities. By internalizing empowering words, we can cultivate a strong sense of self-confidence and self-love that serves as a foundation for personal growth.

4. Cultivating Optimism and Resilience

Optimism and resilience are essential qualities for personal growth, and words can play a crucial role in cultivating these attributes. Inspirational speeches and positive self-talk help us reframe challenges, see setbacks as opportunities for growth, and foster a mindset of perseverance. By embracing the power of positive words, we can build resilience, bounce back from adversity, and maintain an optimistic outlook on our personal growth journey.

5. Fostering Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

Words have the power to foster empathy and emotional intelligence within us. Inspiring speeches and stories of human experiences help us connect with the emotions and experiences of others, fostering a deeper understanding and empathy. By internalizing the words spoken in these speeches, we can develop our emotional intelligence, strengthen our interpersonal relationships, and cultivate a greater sense of compassion on our personal growth journey.

6. Strengthening Relationships and Connections

The words we use in our interactions with others can strengthen relationships and connections. By speaking uplifting and supportive words to our loved ones, we can build trust, understanding, and a sense of connection. By actively listening to others’ words, we show empathy and create a space for meaningful connections that contribute to our personal growth.

7. Expanding Knowledge and Perspective

Words are the vehicle for knowledge and perspective. By listening to inspiring speeches, reading books, and engaging in thought-provoking conversations, we expand our knowledge, broaden our perspective, and gain valuable insights that contribute to our personal growth. By embracing the power of words, we can continuously grow intellectually and cultivate a thirst for knowledge.

8. Overcoming Fear and Limiting Beliefs

Fear and limiting beliefs often hinder personal growth, but the right words can help us overcome them. Inspirational speeches and positive self-talk offer a new perspective, challenging the fear and self-doubt that hold us back. By internalizing empowering words, we can break free from the grip of fear, challenge our limiting beliefs, and step into our full potential for personal growth.

9. Nurturing Personal Development and Transformation

Personal growth is a continuous process of development and transformation. Words can serve as guideposts along this journey, offering wisdom, guidance, and motivation to keep progressing. By immersing ourselves in inspiring speeches and transformative words, we create an environment that nurtures personal development and supports our ongoing transformation.

10. Inspiring Others and Creating a Ripple Effect

Finally, the power of words extends beyond ourselves. When we share our own experiences, deliver inspiring speeches, or simply speak words of encouragement and support to others, we have the ability to inspire and catalyze personal growth in those around us. By harnessing the power of our own words, we create a ripple effect, making a positive impact on the lives of others and collectively fostering a culture of personal growth.

Bejoy Peter's Public Speaking ®

Destroying stage fright since 1996 ®

Growing Up! A Motivational Speech for School Students!

Today is different from yesterday because each one of us is growing up. I am fascinated by the change that is happening. And as you might have guessed by now I am going to talk to you about growing up.

First of all, growing up is an essential part of life. Not one of us can choose to remain a baby or a toddler. Our parents found joy in each stage of our growing up. When we turned over the first time, the first baby steps, the first words, our first day at school and so on.

But our joy came in a different sense. It came as new discoveries about ourselves and the world around us. It is this sense of awareness that makes growing up a joy.

Secondly, growing up is about freedom and responsibility. When we were young, we had to depend on our parents for everything. Slowly but surely as we started growing up, each one of us became independent in varying degrees. There is a tendency in our teens to rebel and look down on others as we exult in our new-found freedom.

But that is being short-sighted because there is a long journey ahead of each one of us and in a short time we will learn that we have to depend a lot on others to succeed in life.

So freedom is to be used with restraint and caution and also with a sense of responsibility. Let us remind us ourselves of Nehru’s words in his Tryst with Destiny speech that rang out in that midnight hour of freedom where he said: “Freedom and power bring responsibility.”

365 Words One Long Sentence Speech: Your Ultimate Destiny!

Thirdly, growing up is about leaving things behind . No one else said it more poetically than St. Paul who said, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” 1

Yes, there is a lot of emotional and childish habits, reactions, and behaviour that we need to leave behind. That is a sure sign of growing up and becoming a man or woman in a true sense of what that means.

Fourthly, growing up is about coping with and adapting to changes . There are changes that affect our physical appearance, emotional make up and thinking patterns. These are needed to make us ready for our life ahead. Some of us might find these changes delightful, others may find it a bit uncomfortable especially when it comes to becoming self conscious in front of others.

Some of us shy away from the limelight; others are daring in their adventures. Yet the fun of it is learning to cope with change.

Finally, growing up is about looking ahead with hope. The future is uncertain. In spite of careful planning, things can go wrong. But even when darkness falls; you can trust God with your future. I cannot stress that thought enough: the antidote to fear of the future in an ever changing world is trust in an unchanging God.

Let me conclude . Growing up is an exciting part of life. Along with new discoveries can come new interests, hobbies, peer pressure, and new temptations. There can be the pressure of expectations of parents, teachers, and friends. There can be the challenge of making mistakes and facing criticism for our failures too. But none of these things need to discourage us.

For as the poet Robert Browning in his poem Rabbi Ben Ezra says, Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith “A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!”

Therefore this is my call to you today my friends. Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be!

1 1 Corinthians 13:11 Bible NIV 1984.

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Speech That Empowers: How to Encourage Growth and Resilience in a Younger Audience

In this podcast episode, we discuss best practices when inspiring young people to seize responsibility.

April 23, 2021

“Communication is such a delicate dance and kids need to emerge from childhood having practiced,” says Julie Lythcott-Haims, former associate vice provost of undergraduate education Stanford University.

In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart , lecturer and podcast host Matt Abrahams sits down with Lythcott-Haims to discuss her new book, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult , and ideas on how to communicate with young people so they feel empowered to take on the various (and often intimidating) duties of adulthood.

“Responsibility isn’t a bad thing,” she says. “Responsibility is actually an amazing thing. And I think we have to do a better job of narrating that truth.”

Think Fast, Talk Smart is a podcast produced by Stanford Graduate School of Business. Each episode provides concrete, easy-to-implement tools and techniques to help you hone and enhance your communication skills.

Full Transcript: Speech That Empowers

Matt Abrahams : This podcast is dedicated to helping people deal with everyday business challenges with confidence and conviction. However, today we’re going to take a different tack. We’re going to look at another challenge that many of us face helping teenagers become adults. And the things that we learn in this conversation will actually help us do better in the workplace. I’m Matt Abrahams and I teach Strategic Communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. I am really looking forward to speaking with Julie Lythcott-Haims. Julie is multitalented, a lawyer by training and a former dean of freshman and undergraduate advising at Stanford. She is now a much sought after speaker and the author of the award winning book, How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overprinting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success . Julie now has a new book, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult. Thanks for being here, Julie.

Julie Lythcott-Haims: Matt, thanks so much for having me. I’m really looking forward to communicating with you today.

Matt Abrahams: Excellent. Meet me, too. Let’s jump right in. Can you define what you mean by the term adult thing and can you share some of the challenges parents and kids face during the transition to adulthood?

Julie Lythcott-Haims: Sure thing. Well, I guess I need to start by giving a nod to the millennial generation. They’re the ones who coined the verb adult. I don’t want to adult. I don’t know how to adult; adulting is scary. And their anguish, their angst over not knowing how or wanting to is really what led me to write this thing. And then I had to examine what adult meant. And I came up with this as the definition adult thing is simply the phase of life between childhood and death, where you’re not dependent upon other people to plan, chart, fix, manage, handle the stuff of life for you where you have this delicious freedom and independence and, oh, the terrifying knowledge that, hey, it’s kind of on me to figure this out, which is not to say any of us ever has to go it alone. So that’s what adult thing is. And the challenges when it comes to parents and kids is as parents, we grew this child in our body perhaps, or adopted into our family or our partner gave birth to it. And we are completely responsible in those early months and years. But over the course of that child’s life, we’re supposed to be slowly moving from being completely in charge of their life to turning the reins over to them. And I think this big leap from the end of high school, the start of college, the start of work, the start of military life, whatever awaits after high school is to leap over a chasm in some ways. I mean, there’s a sense that, oh, my gosh, there’s a big gap I might fall into or, you know, I might not make it. And of course, that’s not literally true. But I think it’s an important moment for us as parents to be preparing for to be thinking, OK, what do I want to have confidence my kid can do when they’re no longer living in our home, when I’m no longer the primary one responsible for their food and their shelter and and their day to day well-being. We want to be parenting in the teenage years and even earlier toward the inevitability that we all want this young person to be a freestanding adult who can fend for themselves one day.

Matt Abrahams: Oh, and it is so fraught with challenges. I am going through this now as a parent myself, it sounds like it’s really balancing between freedom and responsibility, both for parents as well as for kids. What advice and guidance do you have for helping parents and kids communicate about some of these challenges in achieving this balance?

Julie Lythcott-Haims: You’re absolutely right that it’s freedom and responsibility. I can hear John Hennessy, who was president when I worked at Stanford, every year giving the graduation speech and really helping the graduates understand that with this freedom and independence comes responsibility. Responsibility isn’t a bad thing. Responsibility is actually an amazing thing. And I think we parents have to do a better job of narrating to that truth. That is, you’re going to be more, you’re going to be responsible for more of your own things. You’re going to be responsible for making sure your homework is in its bag and taken to school. You’re going to be responsible for making your own lunch. You’re going to be responsible for making your own doctor’s appointments, conveying the expectation that these things will be turned over to the kid and that that’s not a bad thing. You’re actually trusting that they either can already or can almost handle that task. It’s really by handing somebody some additional responsibility, which we’re supposed to be doing increasingly over the years of childhood. We’re actually signaling, I believe you can, and that turns out to be a really important indicator of a person’s wellness. And to which they believe they can do the task in front of them so that a vote of confidence from a parent saying, hey, you’re going to be responsible for this now, as long as it’s done kindly, as opposed to feeling like your parent has turned your back on you. It’s really quite empowering to be given additional responsibility. And that’s how, you know, the freedom and the responsibility really nicely then go together.

Matt Abrahams: So it sounds to me like part of the challenge is to set clear expectations along the way, but also to think about the tone in which you’re communicating those messages so that as you’re having these conversations, you’re being supportive, but also very clear about what is happening now and will happen in the future. Is that right?

Julie Lythcott-Haims: Exactly right. I mean, I think we’re at our best when we’re parenting, when we’re providing unconditional love, a tremendous amount of empathy, optimism that the kid is going to be able to make their way. So the tone of voice, the body language needs to be that of a compassionate yet emotionally somewhat distant adult. And this may sound a bit odd to people. Aren’t parents supposed to be very close to our kids? And kind of, why would you advocate for psychological distance? What I’m responding to is the overprinting tendency, which, as you know, your homework needs to get done. You need to get away. You need to get into this college or go off and do this career so that I feel OK as a parent. That’s a psychological intertwined-ness that’s actually really unhealthy for both the kid and for the parent. The more healthy distance is when you can care very much about how they are. You can offer help and guidance, but you’re not feeling that you own every single thing that they do, whether it’s their homework or their activities or their college applications. It’s we want to be in this place where our child has the agency, the autonomy to kind of make their own way and have their experiences, make their choices fall a little bit here and there, pick themselves up and be stronger based on what they experienced. And our tone needs to be even and positive, optimistic, kind and loving, but never nudging them. Why are you doing it better? You know, we expect better of you or and certainly not being, you know, disinterested. It’s sort of like, picture how loving you can be with your niece and nephew or your best friend’s kid where you care about the kid, but you don’t feel obligated to tell them precisely what to do all the time and you don’t feel obligated to solve their problems. That’s the healthy psychological distance I think we’re going for. Actually, as parents.

Matt Abrahams: I really like that image. That will be very helpful to me and hopefully many other folks. And I like how you highlighted. It’s not just about what you say, but how you say it, that nonverbal openness is really critical. We have on this podcast talked about improvisation in lots of different ways to help people be present oriented, to help people feel more comfortable speaking spontaneously. You talk about adopting principles from improv and design thinking to help when people feel stuck. Can you tell us more about this and how this can help?

Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah, so a lot of people who are trying to spread their wings and enter adult land feel stuck. And I think part of that is the sense that I have to know what I’m doing in advance. I have to be really good at it before I even start. Kind of a perfectionistic tendency. I have to know what I want. I have to know who I am. And I think an overarching message of this new book, your turn is, hey, you don’t have to know. You don’t have to have it all figured out. The point is just start to move in the direction of something. And so both from the school folks and from improv more broadly, I borrowed the language bias toward action and anywhere. And I think whether you’re a designer or whether you’re an improv actor trying to entertain an audience, it’s just all about, let’s go. Let’s just try something. This about being perfect. This is just about what can happen when we leave this point. We’re stuck in or standing in our comfort zone, perhaps, or are our stuck zone perhaps, and just take a step in any direction. You will learn something. You will have an experience. You will, you know, analyze the data, how you felt, you know, what you might do differently. And all of that begins to create some velocity forward.

Matt Abrahams: The bias towards action is such a powerful lesson from both design thinking and improv. And it plays out in lots of ways in our relationships and in our communication. There’s a corollary to that notion, which is, you know, good is great, good enough as great. And it’s this notion that we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. And one of the reasons we don’t. Move forward is we’re afraid it won’t go the way we want or it won’t be as good as it could be, and just giving ourselves permission to move forward is really, really powerful. In your book, Your Turn , you have a chapter entitled “Start Talking to Strangers.” Can you explain the advice you give in this chapter and share any breath best practices you have that can help people use communication to connect with others?

Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah, I think that chapter opens by saying this or in the first couple of paragraphs, this may be the most obvious point I make in the book, but every human is a stranger to you. At the outset. I’m deliberately subverting the childhood norm. Don’t talk to strangers which young adults were raised with and making the point that this was an overbroad rule. The rule should have been learned. Let me teach you how to discern the one creepy stranger from the vast majority of humans who are perfectly fine child. Let me let you walk through the world with me, watching how I discern whether a stranger is OK to talk to. Instead, we’ve given this overbroad rule. Don’t talk to strangers and many, many, many, many young people really don’t know how to be. They feel afraid. They feel unsure. They feel something’s wrong if stranger is trying to talk to them. And that’s way if there’s anything that’s inhibiting or really preventing a normal, free flowing conversation between people who’ve not previously met this mantra, don’t talk to strangers, maybe it. Yeah, well, you know, we shouldn’t like it like it. Rules rarely apply, right. Instinct about how to approach somebody. You’re going to have to talk to strangers when you leave your family home. You’re going to go to a college or a community college or the workplace where the military there will be people who have information that you need. There will be people who can help you on your path. There will be people that you can help. And, you know, all of those things are going to require us opening our mouths and talking to this person. But that’s not all. I mean, we’ve got to be respectful toward this other person. We’ve got to also have a sense of how to advocate for ourselves. Communication is such a delicate dance and kids need to emerge from childhood having practiced. Matt, here’s a fascinating thing that I end up putting in the pages of Your Turn that I got from psychologist and Stanford alum Lori Gottlieb. So many young adults don’t know how to communicate with their significant others or their boyfriend or girlfriend, the person they’re dating. And they show up in her therapy practice and they say, oh, I broke up with my boyfriend. We had an argument and he wasn’t a hundred percent there for me. So I just I dropped him. And she says, Julie, here’s what I think is going on. Their childhood communication conversations were so regulated by well-meaning parents, teachers, other adults who sorted out difficulties when kids weren’t getting along on the playground or on a playdate, who gave the kids language to use to talk to the other kids. Not trusting the kids could ever figure this out themselves with a bit of guidance, right. A lot of adults did that handling. Now we’ve got a set of young adults who haven’t had that practice on the playground and play dates in group play with their peers. And they think that when someone loves them, it means I’ll drop everything to support you. You know, parents basically behave that way, right? You’re not have school. I’ll go argue with the teacher for you. And instead of letting the student practice the child practice how to have a difficult conversation with somebody so they become this young adult who who doesn’t have the skills to communicate in what we would call run of the mill situations, a conversation with a friend, a conversation with with a lover, a conversation with the with a colleague or a boss. We’ve got to let our kids know we need to want for our kids to practice, practice, practice, communicating with their fellow humans well before they ever leave our homes if they’re to make it in the world one day.

Matt Abrahams: The notion of practice and giving space to learn how to communicate better is so important and then helping them. I can imagine you would agree with this to reflect on that communication so you can learn from it and do it differently or better is also a valuable skill to add there.

Julie Lythcott-Haims: Absolutely.

Matt Abrahams: So I’m going to ask you to get a little meta here, Julie, if that’s OK. I have seen you speak on a number of occasions and you are a phenomenal speaker and and actually a great meeting facilitator as well. And those two don’t always go together. Can you share some of the things you think about and do to prepare yourself and your content before you present or facilitate?

Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah, it feels a little personal, but I’m not criticizing or critiquing, I’m just acknowledging that I am going to tell you that the honest, true, honest to God truth here, please. I am spiritual, but not religious. And as a way to kind of get my mindfulness game going, when I’m backstage, about to give a big talk, I offer what some might call a prayer. I am trying to summon my gratitude for where I am and for what’s about to happen and for something that’s, you know, whatever’s going on in my life. I then ask, you know, please let me have access to my to my intellect, to my sense of humor, to my intuition. Let me connect. Let me help everybody here somehow feel seen in the message I’m trying to deliver. I’m centering myself. I’m trying to create space between wherever I just was, you know, hurrying to get there. If I’m late for pandemic, you know, the traffic was bad or, you know, I left too late or or I’m a little stressed. I just try to put a buffer between everything that came up to that, you know, that happened before that moment. And the moment that I’m entering, I’m trying to create a new container of which the conversation, whether it’s a speech to an audience or a conversation among humans where I am just one of you know, I’m I’m a fraction of the of the whole I’m trying to be intentional about the the what I need to do to create a safe and welcoming and interesting and engaging conversational experience.

Matt Abrahams: Wow. Thank you first for sharing that. And second, so many things going on in that ritual that you go through that are so helpful, the ability to be present in getting yourself in the present moment, focusing through what you called prayer, others called mantra, just focusing on the strengths that you bring to the situation. Many of us feel so intimidated and think about all the deficiencies we have before we communicate in front of others. And to focus on our strengths can only help and to really think about the experience. I love that idea of the container that’s being created and thinking about that experience can only help. So, so many lessons to learn in in what you just shared in and so many lessons to learn in watching you speak and facilitate. Before we end, I’d like to ask you the same three questions I ask everyone who joins me on this podcast. Are you up for that?

Julie Lythcott-Haims: I’m up for it, Matt.

Matt Abrahams: Excellent. Number one, if you were to capture the best communication advice you ever received as a five to seven word presentation slide title, what would that be?

Julie Lythcott-Haims: Stop using slides?

Matt Abrahams: That might be the best answer to that question, given that I’m asking for a slide title. Excellent. Tell me more. Tell me, what is it about slides that bothers you?

Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah, well, I think some people do manage to use slides quite artfully as a way to enhance whatever it is they’re doing with their body language and the actual language. But to too many of us, don’t matter how many degrees you have or what role you play of importance in the world, really rely on the slide to tell the story, to tell the experience and glazing over, they read your slide instead of reading you. Yes. Look, my work is about connecting with humans, human to human. I actually am interested in the energy that we can create that exists in our bodies, that we can we can sort of strengthen and raise and share and receive from others. And so my work, when I’m this is what makes the pandemic so hard for a speaker like me. I’m trying to create energy through his own experience and a webcam that I’m really interested in. Like what can you feel radiating from the message that I am delivering and the slide? I think if I was to use slides and you can probably tell from my answer that I don’t, I would just use imagery, some kind of image to enhance rather than words. I think it’s too confusing.

Matt Abrahams: Allow me to go to question number two. Who is a communicator that you admire and why?

Julie Lythcott-Haims: Oprah Winfrey and has had a resurgence, not to say that Oprah wasn’t ever always on our minds, but she did this amazing interview recently with Harry and Meghan. Yeah. And so billions of people got to see her again. But I began watching Oprah. I think her afternoon Chicago based talk show was on when I was either in my late high school years, certainly my college years. She conveyed such a mad respect for humans, a deep curiosity about the why behind people’s actions and language, and ultimately could be having a really tough conversation with somebody because the topic was tough or because what they did was difficult, bad, wrong, etc. She managed to to elucidate difficult subjects without judgment, and I thought it was the most profound intersection of curiosity, respect and truth. I mean, Oprah was always going to tell her own truth, but you would feel even if she was disagreeing with you, you would feel kind of held in her arms as she did it. And I just thought that was magnificent.

Matt Abrahams: I like the way you dissected that: curiosity, respect, and truth. And certainly she is an expert at all of that. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

Julie Lythcott-Haims: Maya Angelou, I believe, said they’re not going to remember what you said. They’re going to remember how they felt when you said it. For ten years, I had the distinct, humbling joy of being the dean of freshmen on the Stanford campus. And I gave a big speech, many big speeches, in a year. But orientation is what I’m thinking of. And in the noise of orientation, 200 events across six or seven days, I knew that whatever I said was not going to be memorable. You know, they were drinking from a firehose, right? Just trying not to get wet, just trying not to drown. And yet we wanted some of that water to land because it would be nourishing. And so I aimed to convey that feeling. Right. You will probably not remember the words, but hopefully you are having an experience of being respected and and helped and aided and cared about and rooted for. So I think that’s the advice. Yes. You’re going to use words, but what is it ultimately that you hope the recipient, the listener, the reader is going to take away my new book, Your Turn ? The narrative voice of that took me three years to kind of find and hone, and it ultimately is trying to be me is me trying to be this compassionate, frank, older person saying, I know you’re terrified. I get that it’s valid. And the thing is, you got to you got to step into the adult place. And I’m here rooting for you and I’m going to be alongside you on these pages. And you’re going to be OK. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, you will. And to try to do that on the page, I mean, readers will have to let me know, did I succeed or not? And maybe in some chapters I did. In others I didn’t. But that’s it’s trying to imagine how the other person is going to receive any of the stuff you have to offer. And instead of focusing too much on who am I and how am I, what do I think about it from their perspective, it’ll take some of the pressure off you, I think, and it allows you to create empathy for your reader, your listener, your audience. And ultimately, that’s going to lead to a great presentation, a great communication.

Matt Abrahams: The notion of focusing on your audience and what they need is a recurrent theme that we hear across these podcast episodes. What you’ve added to it around this notion of really thinking about the experience and the feeling is very, very important as well. Thank you for that. Thank you for all of your time and your insights, your ideas about support, compassion, both for ourselves and for the young adults we’re talking to is critical. And these lessons extend well beyond transitioning into adulthood. I encourage everyone to take time to read Julie’s books and to watch her talks. Thank you so much, Julie.

Julie Lythcott-Haims: Matt, thanks for having me. And to all the listeners, thanks for spending time with me today. I appreciate it.

Matt Abrahams: Thank you for listening to Think Fast, Talk Smart , the podcast, a production of Stanford Graduate School of Business. To learn more, go to gsb.stanford.edu. Please download other episodes wherever you find your podcasts.

For media inquiries, visit the Newsroom .

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June 08, 2020 It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Say It: How to Communicate Power On this podcast episode, we discuss how to harness power through non-verbal communication.

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Speech on Childhood

Childhood, a time of innocence and discovery, shapes who you become. It’s your first step in the journey of life.

You may recall games with friends, family vacations, or learning to ride a bike. These moments, big or small, form your earliest memories.

1-minute Speech on Childhood

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Childhood is a time of magic. It is full of dreams, hopes, and endless possibilities. It’s a time when every day is a new adventure, each morning brings a fresh start, and every night ends with a story. A time when life is a beautiful painting, filled with bright colors and bold strokes.

Childhood is also a time of growth. It’s when we learn to walk, talk, read, and write. It’s when we make our first friends and face our first challenges. It’s when we start to understand who we are and where we fit in the world. It’s a time when we are like little sponges, soaking up knowledge, skills, and values from those around us.

But childhood is not just about fun and games. It’s also a time of hard work. It’s when we learn the importance of discipline, responsibility, and respect. It’s when we start to understand the value of hard work and the satisfaction that comes from achieving our goals. It’s a time when we learn that every action has a consequence, and every choice we make shapes our future.

Lastly, childhood is a time of innocence. It’s a time when the world is full of wonder and awe. It’s a time when we believe in fairy tales and happy endings. It’s a time when we trust easily and love unconditionally. It’s a time when we see the world not as it is, but as it could be.

In conclusion, childhood is a precious time. It shapes us into the people we become. It’s a time of joy, growth, hard work, and innocence. Let’s cherish it, protect it, and ensure every child gets the chance to experience it. Thank you.

Also check:

• Essay on Childhood
• 10-lines on Childhood

2-minute Speech on Childhood

Childhood is a magical time. It is the first chapter in the book of life. It is filled with laughter, games, and dreams. It is a time when we are free to explore, learn, and grow.

The first thing that comes to mind when we think about childhood is innocence. Children see the world with fresh eyes. They are curious about everything around them. They ask questions, they touch, they taste, they smell. They are not afraid to make mistakes. They are brave explorers on a great adventure. This innocence, this curiosity, is the heart of childhood. It is what makes childhood so special.

Childhood is also a time of learning. It is when we learn to walk, to talk, to read, to write. It is when we learn about ourselves and about the world. It is when we learn about love, friendship, and family. It is when we learn about joy, sadness, anger, and fear. The lessons we learn in childhood shape us into the people we become. They are the foundation upon which we build our lives.

But childhood is not just about learning. It is also about play. Play is the language of childhood. Through play, children express themselves. They create, they imagine, they dream. They build castles in the sand, they fly to the moon, they fight dragons. Play is not just fun, it is also important. It helps children develop skills, solve problems, and understand the world.

Yet, childhood is not the same for everyone. Some children do not have the chance to be children. They are forced to grow up too fast. They have to work, they have to fight, they have to survive. This is a tragedy. Every child deserves a childhood. Every child deserves to play, to learn, to dream.

In conclusion, childhood is a gift. It is a time of innocence, learning, and play. It is a time of exploration, discovery, and growth. It is a time of magic, wonder, and joy. Let us cherish our childhood memories. Let us protect the childhoods of our children. Let us ensure that every child has the chance to experience the magic of childhood. Thank you.

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TED Radio Hour

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"Those early experiences are very powerful and can be very determinative that you end up developing an image of yourself, and image of what your strengths are, an image of your weaknesses, an image of the ways in which the world is going to limit you." — Andrew Solomon iStock hide caption

"Those early experiences are very powerful and can be very determinative that you end up developing an image of yourself, and image of what your strengths are, an image of your weaknesses, an image of the ways in which the world is going to limit you." — Andrew Solomon

What makes us who we are? How do parents mold children into who they are? In this hour, TED speakers reflect on how our upbringing shapes us.

"As the boundaries of what we determine as the safety zone grow ever smaller, we cut off our children from valuable opportunities to learn how to interact with the world around them." — Gever Tulley TED hide caption

Gever Tulley: What Can Kids Learn By Doing Dangerous Things?

by  NPR/TED Staff

"It's one of the weird illusions we all live under: that there is a right way to parent." — Jennifer Senior James Duncan Davidson/TED hide caption

Jennifer Senior: Why Is Parenthood Filled With So Much Anxiety?

"We are our story — whether we suppress it, whether that is our nature, or we speak it. Family is a group of people who are building story for each other." — Lemn Sissay Paul Clarke/TED hide caption

Lemn Sissay: What Does It Mean To Be A 'Child Of The State'?

"You need to fold the worst events of your life into a narrative of triumph, evincing a better self in response to things that hurt." — Andrew Solomon James Duncan Davidson/TED hide caption

Andrew Solomon: How Do Our Worst Moments Shape Us?

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What Does It Mean to Be A Grown-Up?

Embracing playfulness is important at any age..

By Sue Sanders published January 4, 2022 - last reviewed on January 4, 2022

I pulled my great-grandmother’s calico dress over my 8-year-old frame, excess fabric draping behind me like a ballgown. Slipping on a pair of her black patent leather pumps, I clomped over to the mirror and spun around, admiring my reflection. I was certain I looked like a small but elegant adult. I had no idea what I wanted to be or what I wanted to do once I grew up, but I was certain I would dress like this each day.

In my early twenties, fresh out of college and backpacking around Australia, I felt neither grown up nor adult-like. Surrounding myself with other young people in their late teens and early twenties, I reveled in that suspended state of prolonged adolescence . With a big world to explore and adventures to be had, adulthood could wait. Supporting myself with money saved from waitressing back home and odd jobs on the road, adulthood still felt distant—at least several months away. As I camped in the outback under the stars of the southern hemisphere, ones that looked different from those I remembered, and washed my hands in sinks where water twirled backwards down the drain, everything, including my future, was slightly off kilter. I knew I’d grow up once I returned home.

A year later, I was working as a middle school teacher. I was in charge of young people and heavy with that responsibility. I arrived early at school and stayed late, preparing lessons and chatting with students who lingered in my classroom. When a girl came sobbing after a spat with her now ex-best friend, I helped her navigate the drama. I was an official adult: I paid my rent and taxes. I flossed my teeth. But I still felt as if I were playing a role: I was the adult authority figure who secretly didn’t feel grown up in a room full of children. But I wasn’t worried; I was convinced that it would happen soon.

To me, there’s a fundamental difference between being an adult and being a grown-up. An adult is someone who is mature and trustworthy—a contributing member of society. We strive to become adults. Many of us know someone from our past who never reached that goal, someone who spends life constantly partying and avoiding responsibility. When I encounter non-adults, I tend to pity them and flee. “Grown-up,” however, is a state of mind. Our bodies get older but something inside us doesn’t feel as if it’s progressing as quickly. There’s a slight disconnect between how we view ourselves and how we feel we should view ourselves. I look in the mirror and see gray hair and wrinkles, but I don’t feel that old. My mirror must be broken.

Though I finally sensed I was very much an adult by my twenties, I was still waiting to transform into a grown-up. I felt as if I were impersonating one, putting on a serious grown-up personality the way I played dress-up when I was little, pulling my great grandma’s frocks over mine. Any minute they would slip off my shoulders and the real me would come tumbling out. I’m not alone. When I googled “adult not feeling grown up” more than a billion (!) results popped up. I scrolled through page after page and discovered dozens of forums mostly dedicated to young adults in their twenties and thirties commenting how they don’t feel grown up and wondering when it would happen. Maybe it never will. I now have my AARP card, and I’m still waiting.

At one point, I half expected the President of Grown-Upness to appear, in a snazzy herringbone suit and fedora, the corners of his eyes crinkling around his monocle as he smiled. “Congratulations! You’re now one of us,” he’d say, baptizing me with a martini over the head as cool jazz played in the background. This has not yet happened, and I’m beginning to suspect it never will.

My life marched on. I married my longtime boyfriend and had a baby at 34. I was a conscientious mom—even when I had no idea what I was doing, which was often. As I mashed bananas and spooned the goop into my daughter’s grinning mouth, I was always the responsible adult. I babyproofed the house, placed detergent in a high cupboard, and made sure I didn’t accidentally leave her in the car, but it still felt as though I were faking it as a grown-up. Surely Mary Poppins, clutching her umbrella, would plummet into the nursery and chide me for not cutting the organic strawberries into small enough pieces.

A few years later, I buckled my daughter into her stroller and dashed up the hill to the park, making vroom-vroom noises as we raced to meet a friend. As our toddlers chased each other around an oak tree, my friend and I confessed that we didn’t feel like real grown-ups. Could it be because we were temporarily stay-at-home moms and our lives felt in limbo? Or was it that we rented small apartments filled with thrift store furniture and we assumed the real grown-ups in our neighborhood owned professionally decorated brownstones? We assured each other that we’d feel more grown up once our kids started preschool.

In the following decade, I hit an assortment of adulthood markers. I recycled, and I made my own pizza dough. I got divorced and, eventually, remarried. At our small wedding, my husband and I served guests snow cones and Fudgie the Whale ice cream cake as our kindergartener daughter and her friends played freeze tag in our yard.

I worked and co-parented and chaperoned school field trips to pizza parlors, to apple orchards, to museums. One museum became my 6-year-old’s favorite. During a visit, she requested the “Richard Triceratops Room,” so we headed to the maze-like Richard Serra sculptures. What do adults who don’t feel grown up do when confronted with a giant maze? I looked at my daughter, smiled, and shouted, “Run!” And so we did, holding hands and laughing wildly. When we emerged, breathless and giggling, I brushed a strand of hair from her sweaty forehead as I tried to avoid eye contact with the nearby docent who glared at us. I suspect he would have prefered adult museum-goers who acted grown up.

As our daughter grew, we ate family dinners each night, sitting around the table discussing our days, as well as other topics—my husband and daughter got into a spirited debate over which friend would be the most delicious to eat.

Over the following years, we enforced curfews, monitored sleepovers, and drove carloads of teenagers to track meets and speech-and-debate tournaments hours before sunrise. My adult side sometimes had to sternly reprimand the non-grown-up one. At a track meet where my daughter did a personal best, I wanted to leap from the stands, rush over, and hug her. I didn’t, since adult-me knew that would embarrass her. Our daughter left for college. Through it all, I was always the responsible adult. And yet…the whole time there was that niggling doubt that I was still not a “real” grown-up.

When our daughter was on the high school speech-and-debate team, the coach told students that if they didn’t know the subject matter for a particular event, they could still do well if they sounded as if they did: With confidence , they could fake it. They just needed a bag of tricks.

Sometimes I feel that’s how I’m tackling life, faking it with a bag of tricks.

When I was a young adult and living in New York City, I’d watch with fascination as packs of commuters streamed through Grand Central Terminal during rush hour. Did they feel grown up?

To the casual observer clutching her bag of tricks, they certainly looked it. Could it have been their business attire? Maybe that was the uniform that transformed adults into grown-ups? I think about the Netflix period dramas I’ve binged on. The women in the twenties- and thirties-era films wore great hats. Could that be the key: a felt cloche? But even when I dress up, I still feel counterfeit.

When I turned 57 recently, it occurred to me that maybe I had it all wrong: I should stop waiting to feel grown up. Perhaps it’s simply a myth we’ve been led to believe, one that doesn’t necessarily happen.

What if we embraced this child-like part of ourselves and enjoyed it, guilt -free? If we’re responsible adults and do all the adult things like raise our kids the best way we know or navigate our relationships in a way that works, why should it matter if we don’t feel grown up deep inside? Would I even want that? I enjoy the decidedly un-grown-up-like subversive joy in occasionally sneaking a handful of chocolate-covered almonds with my breakfast toast. Or joining my husband on the driveway to watch a cotton candy–colored sunset so gorgeous I tear up. Would a real grown-up attempt to slide down giant sand dunes during a mother-daughter road trip to New Mexico?

My daughter, now 22, is an adult, but does she feel grown up? During that trip I didn’t ask. Instead, we played Trivia and talked about her plan to spend the following year overseas on a fellowship and her desire to work in refugee resettlement. Both parts of me—the adult and the non-grown-up—burst with parental pride. Later, before we returned to our hotel, we stopped for sweets; for a few glorious moments, we were simply two big kids in a candy store.

Maybe those of us who don’t feel grown up are doing fine as is. A variety of recent news articles discussed the importance of adult play, with studies showing it improves well-being and lessens stress . And although non-grown-ups don’t necessarily play games, we do embrace the playful side of life.

Or perhaps feeling grown up is a big scam—maybe many of us mosey through our lives, moving ahead and becoming responsible adults but never truly growing up. Not long ago, I visited my 81-year-old parents. They still hike and enjoy weekly yoga classes. Do they feel like grown-ups? I’ve viewed them that way all my life, but now I wonder. My mom gave me a batik wraparound skirt she bought in her early thirties, one I’ve long adored. Back home, I put it on and twirled in front of the mirror, just as I did when I was 8. I’m not sure that the outfit is grown-up enough for someone my age, but I don’t care. Maybe the speech-and-debate coach was right: If you don’t know it, fake it with confidence. So I do. I slip on some flats, grab my handbag, and head to the supermarket for dinner supplies. On my way, I drive down a hill, and, as I always do, squeal, “Whee!” At the store, I place broccolini and whole wheat pasta in my cart as Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” is piped through the store’s speakers. I hum along confidently, feeling simultaneously 57 and 15.

Sue Sanders is a writer based in Tucson, Arizona, and the author of Mom, I’m Not a Kid Anymore: Navigating 25 Inevitable Conversations That Arrive Before You Know It.

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The Best Ted Talks for Teens and Tweens To Help Them Learn To Adult

Written by parentingteensandtweens

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Inside: Here are 20 of the Best Ted Talks For Teens to Help Your Kids Learn To Adult

Have you ever heard of Ted Talks?

Most of you probably have, but did you know that there are specific Ted Talks for Teens? Or that many, even if not directly aimed at teenagers, are absolutely perfect for them.

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment, and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 100 languages.

A Ted Talk is a lively and engaging presentation given in an informal manner by guests from all different types of backgrounds They are often a motivational talk that can teach our kids important life lessons and help them to understand themselves and the world around them a little better. They are almost always inspirational and some can even be laugh-out-loud funny. There are doctors, comedians, celebrities, activists, teachers, and sometimes even kids and teens. 

How Can Ted Talks Help Your Teen?

Our teens aren’t always willing to listen to us when it comes to important topics.

So, we have to get a little creative with our parenting. They love being on their phones, so why not make sure they are spending some of that time in a positive way.

Don’t worry, all you have to do is get them to watch one and you’ll be shocked to see them looking for more.

They’re addictive, in the very best way possible. (Other great ways to bond with your teens may be through funny podcasts or audiobooks .)

Here is a list of 20 of the best Ted Talks For Teens

1. Questions Every Teenager Needs to Be Asked – This ted talk is given by Laurence Lewars. He talks about his experience as a teenager and how he realized that the majority of teens don’t know what they would like to do or where they will be in the future. He concluded that many teens have pushed their dreams aside. This talk is very inspirational and informative. Definitely a must on the watch list

2. Why Do We Get Crushes – This ted talk for teens is given by Isabelle O’Carroll. She discusses all the crazy things that we do to get the attention of our crush. This can help your teen have some insight on relationships with also some humor.

3. Stress At School – This ted talk is presented by Carley Rogers. She gives a wonderful speech about the different types of stress and pressure that she has had to face in school.

4. How to Survive High School – This ted talk is presented by Camille Colley. She talks about her idea of high school was very different from the actual experience.

5. Growing Up Stressed or Growing Up Mindful – This ted talk is presented by Christopher Willard. He explains how teenagers are the most stressed humans in America. He gives some great techniques to help destress in fun ways.

6. Hi, I’m Scott – Scott Mescudi, a musician, returns to his high school to give a speech about growing up and his career in the music industry.

7. The Problems of Teenagers are Real – This is a talk given by Nikki Marsh. She talks about how generation Y is misunderstood and are facing real problems.

8. Why I Don’t Use a Smart Phone – Ann Makosinski gives a talk about how she was raised without the toys and smartphones that the majority of kids have and what people want in today’s world.. She explains how even though she may have been viewed as different she was able to be introduced to so much more.

9. Insight Into the Teenage Brain – This talk is presented by Adriana Galvan. She gives a scientific explanation of how the teenage brain develops and how teens think. This is a great Ted talk for teens and parents to watch together.

10. Tales of a Teenage Filmmaker – This talk is presented by Zachary Maxwell who ended up getting the attention of the media after creating a film about school food awareness. He explains how teens can make a difference.

11, Matthew Winkler: What makes a hero?  – What trials unite not only Harry Potter or Frodo Baggins but many of literature’s most interesting heroes  who share traits such as bravery, compassion, and wit? And what do ordinary people have in common with these literary heroes?

12, A Teen Just Trying to Figure It Out – Fifteen-year-old Tavi Gevinson had a hard time finding strong female, teenage role models — so she built a space where they could find each other. At TEDxTeen, she illustrates how the conversations on sites like Rookie, her wildly popular web magazine for and by teen girls, are putting a new, unapologetically uncertain and richly complex face on modern feminism.

13. Looks Aren’t Everything – Believe Me: I’m A Model – Our current social media culture puts a high premium on beauty, and what “beauty” is supposed to look like. She discusses how both teenage girls and boys struggle with their image and this talk encourages youth to look past “beauty standards” and to see what is really important.

14. Inside the Mind of a Procrastinator – We love this one even if your teen isn’t a major procrastinator right now. Procrastination can be the difference between succeeding and achieving your goals, or failure and being frustrated with the state of your life. Understanding why we procrastinate can be a game-changer.

15. After Watching This Your Brain Won’t Be the Same: Growth Mindse t This is another awesome one that discusses why learning is easier for some of us than others and discusses the differences between growth and fixed mindset. which is so important for our teenagers, but we also loved it as parents, too. This one is so great we’re including it below to watch right now!

16. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance : Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job as a New York public school teacher. She quickly realized that IQ wasn’t the only thing separating the successful students getting the best grades from those who struggled in the classroom. Here, she explains her theory of “grit” as a predictor of success.

17. Everyday Leadership : This talk starts with one concept: we have all changed someone’s life — usually without even realizing it. In this funny talk, Drew Dudley calls on all of us to celebrate leadership as the everyday act of improving each other’s lives.

18. T he Power of Introverts : In our society, introverts are often looked at as “less-than” and it can be hard to empower an introverted teenager. In a culture where being social and outgoing are prized above all else, it can be difficult, even shameful, to be an introvert. But, as Susan Cain argues in this passionate talk, introverts bring extraordinary talents and abilities to the world, and should be encouraged and celebrated.

19. The Danger of a Single Story : Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

20. How to Listen Better: In our louder and louder world, says sound expert Julian Treasure, “We are losing our listening.” In this short, fascinating talk, Treasure shares five ways to re-tune your ears for conscious listening — to other people and the world around you.

Bonus Ted Talk

The Power of Vulnerability : We love anything Brene Brown, but especially this talk which focuses on our ability to empathize, belong, and love. In a poignant, funny talk, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity.

Keep on the Lookout for Tedx Talks

What is a tedx talk.

Did you know that there are now local in-person TED events? Called TEDx, the x=independently organized event. TEDx follows the same format as a TED Talk. The main difference between TED and TEDx is that TEDx is focused on a local, geographic area. It is a local gathering where TED-like talks and presentations are shared with the community.

Raising teens and tweens is hard, but you don’t have to do it on your own. Here’s a list of some other popular posts that fellow parents enjoyed:

The Best TV Series Families With Teens and Tweens Can Enjoy Together

The Best Documentaries To Watch With Your Teens and Tweens

The Best 80’s Teen Movies Every Parent Should Watch With Their Teens

5 Simple Things You Need To Keep Doing When Kids Are Teens

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Parenting teens and tweens is hard, but you don’t have to do it alone. Here are some other articles our readers have found helpful.

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November 16, 2019 at 1:38 am

I am hoping to share this info with my great granddaughter and her mom.Thank you.

April 7, 2022 at 2:34 pm

Is there a way to print the list of TED talks so I can give it to my daughter to watch? Thanks

January 29, 2023 at 5:06 am

Introducing the one stop service for a extra productive life.

July 30, 2023 at 10:10 am

You can have all of it!

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Essays About Growing Up: 5 Examples and 7 Prompts

Essays about growing up help us view and understand various experiences from different perspectives. Check out our top examples and prompts for your writing.

How do you know when you’ve finally grown up? Me, it happened when I was in high school. I realized I matured when I had no qualms about looking for ways to help my family financially. I didn’t think I had a choice, but at the same time, I desperately wanted to aid my parents in ensuring we had food on the table. 

I was a fast food crew member, a librarian, and many other odd jobs I could talk about for hours. Some judge my parents’ poor financial literacy when I tell my stories, but I never did. All of it was a part of my growing up; without these experiences, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. 

Growing up is a unique experience for every person, influenced by our surroundings and influences. With so many variables, each person has their own story about growing up; take a look below to see the best example and prompts to begin writing your own. You might also like these essays about youth .

5 Essay Examples

1. social influences on children’s growing up by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 2. growing up in the 626 by katie gee salisbury, 3. growing up in poverty determines the person’s fate by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 4. growing up on the streets by writer bernadette, 5. growing up with hearing loss by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 1. what does growing up mean, 2. the effect of my environment on my growth, 3. growing up rich or poor, 4. family values and growing up, 5. growing up with siblings, 6. your best memories growing up, 7. changes while growing up.

“Human growth and development is a complicated process which is inevitably impacted upon by socioeconomic circumstances within which an individual is growing up.”

To demonstrate the social influences that can impact a child’s experiences growing up, the essay offers several credible citations from professionals, such as Damon and Lerner, the writer and editor of “ Handbook of Child Psychology .” It looks at how social factors, such as living conditions, access to resources, and others, can affect a child’s overall development as they grow. Ultimately, the writer believes that parents play a huge role in the development of their children. You can also check out these essays about development .

“Something welled up inside my throat. All of a sudden I felt a burning urgency to stake a claim, to assert that I was one of them, that I too belonged in this group. ‘Hey guys, I’m Chinese too,’ I ventured. A classmate who carpooled with my family was quick to counter, ‘Katie, that doesn’t count.'”

Salisbury shares her experiences as an overachieving Asian-American, focusing on her grievances at being biracial, not connecting to her heritage, and people’s assumption of her being white. She talks about her life in 626, the area code for Arcadia, Southern California, where most Asians reside. At the end of her essay, Salisbury offers facts about herself to the reader, recognizing and accepting every part of herself.

Looking for more? Check out these essays about time .

“Economic mobility is the ability of someone or a family to move up from one income group to another. In the United States, it is at an all-time low and is currently decreasing.”

The author shares their opinion on how a family’s financial situation shapes their children’s future. To back up their claim, the essay provides relevant statistics showing the number of children and families in poverty, alongside its dramatic effects on a child’s overall development. The writer mentions that a family’s economic incompetence can pass on to the children, reducing their chances of receiving a proper education.

“As a young black woman growing up on the hardcore streets of North Philadelphia, you have to strive and fight for everything. The negativity and madness can grab and swallow even the most well-behaved kids.”

Bernadette opens her readers’ eyes to the harsh realities of being a young black woman throughout her essay. However, she also expresses her gratitude to her family, who encouraged her to have a positive mindset. Her parents, who also grew up on the streets of North Philly, were determined to give her and her siblings a proper education. 

She knows how individuals’ environments impact their values ​​and choices, so she fought hard to endure her circumstances. She also notes that the lack of exposure to different social norms results in children having limited thinking and prevents them from entertaining new perspectives. You might be interested in these essays about dream jobs .

“The world is not accommodating to people with hearing disabilities: apart from professionals, barely anyone knows and understands sign language. On top of that, many are merely unaware of the fact that they might be hurting and making a deaf person feel disrespected.”

The essay discusses critical issues in children growing up with hearing impairments. It includes situations that show the difference between a child growing up in an all-deaf family and a non-deaf environment. While parental love and support are essential, deaf parents should consider hearing impairment a gift and be aware of their children’s needs. 

If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips !

7 Prompts for Essays About Growing Up

Growing up is a continuous sequence where we develop and experience significant changes in our bodies and how we think and feel. It’s the transition between being a child and an adult, so define what childhood and adulthood entail in your essay.

Then, describe how an individual grows up and the indications that they progressed physically and intellectually. For a fun addition to your essay, include questions your readers can answer to see if they have matured.

Many studies show how people’s environments, such as home, community, and school, affect growth. These environments significantly impact an individual’s development through interactions. For this prompt, write about the factors that influence your overall development and explain how you think they affected you. For example, those who studied at a religious school tend to be more conservative.

Money is essential for survival, but only some have easy access. Most people act and make decisions based on how much money they have, which also influences their behavior. In this prompt, cite several situations where money affects parents’ decisions about their children’s needs and wants and how it affects the children as they grow up.

Discuss how financial constraints impact their emotions, perceptions, and choices in life. Choose high, average, and low-income households, then compare and contrast their situations. To create an in-depth analysis, use interview research and statistical data to back up your arguments.

Studies show that children understand rules and have already formed their behaviors and attitudes at seven. Before this age, children are surrounded by relatives who teach them values through experiences within the family. For this prompt, use real-life examples and factual information to discuss the importance of good parenting in instilling good values ​​in children.

Growing up with siblings is an entirely different experience growing up versus being an only child. Use this prompt to explain how having a brother or sister can impact a child’s progress and discuss its pros and cons. For instance, having siblings means the child has more role models and can get more emotional support. However, it can also mean that a child craves more of their parent’s attention. Discuss these points in your essay, and decide the “better” experience, for a fun argumentative essay.

In this essay, choose the best memories you had from childhood to the current day that has contributed significantly to your principles and outlook. Describe each memory and share how it changed you, for better or worse.

Talk about the changes people expect as they grow up. These physical, emotional, or mental changes lead people to act and think more maturely.  Add studies demonstrating the necessity of these changes and recount instances when you realize that you’ve grown up. For example, if before you didn’t care about your spending, now you’re more frugal and learned to save money. For help with your essay, check our round-up of best essay writing apps .

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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16 Most Life-Changing Motivational Speeches & What You’ll Gain from Them

It’s all very well reading about ways to get ahead in life, but no account will ever reach you in quite the same way as hearing someone speak about their own experiences. While these people may be household names now, it wasn’t always that way, and this collection of some of the best motivational speeches will move you and inspire you to make your own dreams come true.

From Arnold Schwarzenneger talking about how he filled every moment of every day with steps to fulfil his ambition of becoming Mr. Universe, to J.K. Rowling’s life as an impoverished single mother, these speeches will fill you with the drive and determination to reach your full potential, and not let anything stand in your way.

Some are long, and some last just a few minutes, but each one will make you want to grab life with both hands and go for what you want, whatever it is.

“Most people have done all that they’re ever going to do – they raise a family, they earn a living, and then they die.”

That’s what we’re supposed to do, right? Wrong! Life is made for greater things, and you are meant for greater things.

When Les Brown was a child, he was labeled ‘educable mentally retarded’, and until a chance encounter with another teacher, he believed that he would amount to nothing. But this one teacher planted the seeds in Les’ head which would blossom and grow, and eventually make him one of the best motivational speakers of all time.

This speech will give you permission to rise above other people’s opinions, to break free of their prejudices, and make a success of whatever you do. Watch ‘It’s Not Over Until You Win! Your Dream is Possible’ and take those first steps towards following your passion and making your dream come true.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f0nIhDpXuU

“Stress doesn’t come from the facts, stress comes from the meaning that we give the facts.”

Life is about choices. Every day we’re faced with hundreds of choices, and this speech by Tony Robbins will help you see that it’s the choices, not the conditions, which shape our lives.

Take a moment during this speech to pause and reflect on some choices you have made in the past, and really think about the direction your life took because of them, both good and bad. Tony Robbins explains in his inimitable way that we have the choice to focus on what we want, and that when we focus, we can achieve whatever we want.

Part of Tony’s speech explains how, when the economy is down, some people thrive and some people crash and burn, and the COVID 19 pandemic is the perfect example. Small businesses took a huge hit, and while some of them threw up their hands in despair and said ‘that’s it, it’s over for us’, others adapted, and saw it as an opportunity to expand, diversify, and turn the situation to their advantage.

And that’s the cornerstone of this video – how we react, how we adapt, and how we choose is the difference between success and failure.

“So every rep that I do gets me closer to accomplishing the goal to make this goal – this vision – into reality.”

Be inspired by Arnold Schwarzenneger as he talks about his goal of becoming Mr. Universe. Never wasting a second of his day, Arnie worked in construction, spent 5 hours in the gym, and went to acting classes, all of which took him further along his journey to making his dream come true.

We all have a propensity to waste time, but if you have a goal, if you have a passion that smolders away, take a leaf out of Arnie’s book and make sure that everything you do propels you forward.

And don’t be afraid to fail.

“Your conviction and your convenience don’t live on the same block.”

If you are a fan of The Secret, you will be familiar with Lisa Nicholls. In this video, Lisa tells Tom Bilyeu how she was willing to leave everything and everyone behind in order to grow into the version of herself that she knew she wanted.

Lisa explains how, as a young mother, she was forced to wrap her baby in a towel for two days because she had no money for diapers, and how it was at that moment that she vowed never to be that broke or that broken again.

Change, success, drive…they’re all inconvenient and disruptive, and Lisa Nicholls demonstrates that wonderfully in this emotional and highly motivating interview in which she declares “your story is not meant to be your fortress, your story is meant to be your fuel.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toQmqLwNtho

Eric Thomas had a dream, a goal, and that goal was to be the best motivational speaker in the world. He didn’t achieve this by giving 70%, or 80%…he didn’t achieve it by staying in bed late in the mornings. He achieved it by giving 100% every minute of every day.

Listen to Eric’s words, hear the passion in his voice, and feel the lessons he is giving to you if you want to be the best at whatever you do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtuHZC-ObA8

“If we don’t take control of our environment, it takes control of us.”

This short piece by Tony Robbins has been designed to show you that you are in control of your own environment. Whether you realize it or not, what goes on around you has a massive influence on the way you feel and the way you act.

By taking leadership of your own life, you can defy outside influences and set your own tone for the day ahead, regardless of whatever or whoever is exerting pressure from the outside.

Follow Tony’s example of taking 10 minutes for yourself at the start of every day – for gratitude, prayer or wishes for family and friends, and a recap of what you want to accomplish that day, and your day will continue on that same path of thankfulness, hope, and goals.

“Your mind doesn’t know the difference between something you vividly imagined and something that’s real, literally!”

If you want to emulate the way successful people behave, take these 10 billionaires’ habits and adopt them yourself for 21 days.

Billed by Jim Kwik as being ‘like a magic pill’, these habits will rewire your brain into thinking and behaving like some of the world’s most successful people.

In this 8 minute clip, Jim shares how, for instance, your brain reacts the same way when you imagine your dog walking in as it does when your dog actually walks in, and this can apply to anything. What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

As much as this applies to positive things, it also can be applied to negative things, so if you imagine failure, that’s what you will get. Fill your mind with thoughts of success and that’s what will happen.

None of these habits are difficult to accomplish, but in doing so you will change your entire mindset into one of a hugely successful person, no matter what you want to achieve in life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fzGPwY40Cw

“Don’t leave crumbs.”

If this sounds more like a housekeeping hint and less like a motivational affirmation, you’re 50% right. Our lives do need housekeeping, and not leaving crumbs – i.e. regrets – which will come back and rob your tomorrow of joy, is one of the chores you need to do on a daily basis.

Matthew McConaughey delivers a powerful speech in a gentle way at the University of Houston Commencement Address.

Discussing the five rules he lives by, he will show you how to avoid falling into a trap of entitlement, and why ‘Unbelievable’ is the stupidest word in the dictionary.

With some invaluable life lessons contained inside a highly watchable speech, Matthew McConaughey is an unlikely but very inspiring speaker who has stayed humble despite all his successes.

“There are a lot of sharks in the world; if you hope to complete the swim, you will have to deal with them. So if you want to change the world, don’t back down from the sharks.”

Spoken with eloquence and quiet assuredness, this six-minute speech draws on US Navy Admiral William McRaven’s experience of survival in the Navy Seals.

He explains how making your bed, while seemingly insignificant and even pointless, will set a series of tasks in motion which will ensure that at best, the first job of the day is done, and at worst, you have a neat, tidy bed to fall into at the end of a trying day.

The world is full of people who want to bring you down (the sharks) but if you stand your ground, they will eventually swim away, leaving you to go on to bigger and better things.

“Sometimes life’s gonna hit you in the face with a brick…don’t lose faith.”

Steve Jobs, chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Apple Inc. was hit in the face with more than one brick during his 56 years on earth. From being given up for adoption as a baby, to being fired from the very company which he founded, he never let anything get in his way.

In this commencement speech at Stamford University in 2005, Steve explained how his love for what he did spurred him on to rebuild his life in spectacular fashion.

Life dealt a further blow when, in 2003, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

This speech focuses on three stories which, when combined, show how life offers opportunities for change and growth, no matter how dire the circumstances.

Steve Jobs never graduated college, but when he died in 2011, aged just 56, he had a net worth of US$7 billion. He achieved this by doing what he loved, and in this speech he will inspire you to do the same.

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously than you might as well not have lived at all. In which case, you fail by default.”

Let J. K. Rowling inspire you with this 2008 commencement speech at Harvard University. Extolling the virtues of failure and imagination, she tells the graduates how being at rock bottom set her free to pursue her dreams of being an author.

As poor as it is possible to be without being homeless, she created the world of Harry Potter and went on to amass a fortune of £795 million, but that without her failures in life, she would never have had the opportunity to do so.

Let her words become your own mantra, and view every failure in your life as a future success.

“We shine, because baby you just can’t dim the sun.”

A beautiful antidote for anyone who has ever felt or been told that they are ‘too much’, Gina Hatzis’ winning Speaker Slam speech of 2018 will give you permission to be unashamedly you.

Although written by a woman for women, this powerful and sometimes humorous speech about being your own authentic self will inspire anyone – man or woman – to shine and never dim their own light to suit other people.

“The first step you need to take is just that…step.”

If you are in need of a short, sharp burst of motivation, listen to this speech by ex Navy Seal, Jocko Willink.

Running for less than three minutes, this recording will inspire you to take a step into whatever you want to achieve. Awarded both the Silver Star and the Bronze Star for service, Jocko Willink is no stranger to taking those brave steps, having come face to face with Iraqu insurgents in Ramadi. He will spur you on to put one metaphorical foot in front of the other, and will leave you in no doubt as to what you need to do to achieve your goals.

“On the other side of your maximum fear are all of the best things in life.”

If you like your motivation with a side order of laughter, watch Will Smith as he talks about fear. Agreeing to skydive on a night out with friends, Will realizes that he actually has to go through with it.

Discussing how fear ruins things (he couldn’t sleep or eat before the jump), Will also discloses that beyond fear was the most blissful experience of his life, and how that principle can be applied to anything in life.

“Only those that can see the invisible, can do the impossible.”

Tyrese Gibson knows success, and in this speech he talks about how it can be achieved, by anyone who wants it.

Actor, singer, author, model…Tyrese seems to have the Midas touch, but he didn’t get it by luck. Follow his words as he gently but passionately guides you along the path you need to take if you have goals and dreams in life.

“I refuse to be another man who lived and died, and wasn’t significant’”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzl3CQXMRVo

“If it is written, so shall it be.”

When Steve Harvey’s teacher crushed his dreams of being on TV, the one person who believed in him was his father. He told him to put a piece of paper with his dreams on in his drawer, and to read it every morning and every night.

His dreams came true.

It didn’t always come easy for Steve Harvey though – he spent years living in his car when he had nowhere else to go, but the one thing he never lost was his ambition and determination to see his dreams through to fruition.

A firm believer in the Law of Attraction, Steve still has vision boards and still commits his dreams to writing, and encourages you to do the same in this speech that made Obama cry.

These motivational speeches, and many more like them, show how having guts, determination, and a vision will get you anywhere you want to go, no matter your beginnings in life. These inspirational speakers have suffered loss, sickness, and unbelievable hardships, but the one thing that got them through was their desire to win and their belief that they could.

Immerse yourself in their words of wisdom, and take that next step into your best life.

More on Motivation

• 8 Rituals to Cultivating True Self-Motivation That Lasts
• 10 Monday Morning Habits for a Successful Week
• Motivational Quotes

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Senior Speech: What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

By Emma Hudson '21

When I was younger, my main goal in life was to be just like my older sister, Fran. Whatever she did, I did. That is why I aspired to be a professional dancer when I grew up. Unfortunately, that plan fell through for one major reason. During a dress rehearsal for an upcoming recital, my 5-year-old self was too shy and scared to ask if I could use the restroom in the middle of dancing so instead, I thought it would be better to just pee on stage rather than simply ask, “May I go to the bathroom?” I stood there, red faced from the embarrassment, as my mom ran from the audience to get me off stage. From that moment on, I knew that being a professional dancer was off the table.

I knew I needed a new plan, so I thought to myself, “Well, what do I want to be when I grow up?” The most commonly asked question when you’re 5- or 6-years-old goes from being an ambitious dream to a realistic decision of what you should major in which, hopefully, leads to a fulfilling career.

What I want to be when I grow up, job wise, is constantly changing as I go along my journey of life. I am interested in a variety of professions that range from physical therapy to being the head chef in my own restaurant. I don’t want to pinpoint just one of them and call it quits. I believe that in my future, I will pick a general path to follow but that path will create new opportunities within it for me to pursue.

"What I know for sure, is that when I grow up, I want to be the combination of the most distinguishable characteristics of those that I love and care for the most in my life."

By saying that, I’ve realized that my answer to, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” may be different to what the usual answer is, meaning, I may not know what I want to be, but rather who I want to be. What I know for sure, is that when I grow up, I want to be the combination of the most distinguishable characteristics of those that I love and care for the most in my life. The product of taking what I find so inspiring out of each one and merging them into one human is what I hope to be when I grow up.

My mothers, Pam and Leila, are my rocks. They are there for everything, and I mean everything. Whether it's a soccer game or a cross country meet, at least one of them, sometimes even a dog or two, show up. You can always count on them to roll up in the RV, which is undeniably very useful but at the same time, incredibly embarrassing. They are exceedingly supportive which attributes to the long list of reasons why they are my biggest role models. Pam is the CEO of Crestwood Medical Center. She is a leader, mentor, and scholar. She works exceptionally hard at what she does and is devoted to her work and her family and everything in between, while maintaining unwavering composure. To lead a hospital during the day and then come home and co-lead a household cannot be easy, but she makes it look so. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, she has been swamped with work, but has managed to keep her family a priority through it all. She comes home late and stressed, but still manages to make me dinner and have my requested laundry complete by the time I need it. When I grow up, I want to be as devoted as Pam is to my future family and job while keeping composure to get me through the toughest times without giving up.

Leila is a certified MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) teacher and a therapist. She is someone who I feel comfortable going to with any problem and I know that I will not be judged. I can rely on her for the much needed, but not always wanted, advice such as suggesting ways that I can solve a problem rather than just dwelling on it. She is someone who sees every perspective and reminds me to keep others’ feelings in mind as well as mine. She teaches me what it means to be mindful and encourages me to practice it every day. Sometimes, I’m not the easiest person to talk to. I’ll start telling a story about how ironic it is that I can run 7 miles easily, but get winded climbing a flight of stairs at school. Five minutes later, I’ll wind up talking about the woman in front of me that took forever to order at Dunkin’ that morning. I can also be stubborn and when I am, it’s mostly me refusing to drink the energy shake she makes me every morning at 5:00am before cross country practice. The amount of patience Leila has with me and our conversations is downright impressive. Sometimes, I look back at a conversation and think to myself, “Wow, I wouldn’t even talk to me. How did she survive that?” Not only is she a great listener, but she always gives me helpful feedback. The wisdom she sheds on every person she speaks to attests to the person she is. She loves to interact with others and will never fail to make a statement that will stick with you for years. She makes this world a better place because of it. I would do anything to have Leila’s patience and wisdom.

Fran, my older sister, and I are nearly complete opposites. She’s more introverted and I’m more extroverted. She is extremely gifted in music and spends her time practicing the clarinet while I spend hours on the track, on the soccer field, and in the workout room. I’m organized and nit-picky while she has more of an organized mess, which to the average eye, is just a mess, but for Fran, it works. I believe that the biggest characteristic that sets us apart is how strong-willed Fran is. She likes to be heard and make a difference in the world as best she can. She has her beliefs which she sticks to through anything and stands up for them whenever she can. If there’s a problem, she does everything she can to fix it. Fran’s morality and ability to see that a situation isn’t right and try to make a change is what makes her so strong-willed. Having that ability to stand up for what you believe in against all odds is something I aspire to have just like Fran does.

My grandparents have always been a big part of my life. Growing up, my parents, sister and I would spend every Friday night at their house. They come to as many of my sporting events as they can. My grandmother, Betty, is probably the toughest person I know. Recently, she fell and shattered her hip. At any age, let alone 88, that pain cannot be easy to tolerate. She handled it like a woman though. Even though her pain levels were through the roof, she made it seem like it was just a minor inconvenience by carrying on a conversation with me while we waited for my mom to come check her out. She has always been this way and it’s the most inspiring thing about her that I look up to. To have Betty’s toughness would make me invincible.

Fred is my grandfather. His background story is so fascinating that I could hear it a million times and never get bored. He studied missiles and radar, was drafted in the Korean War and worked on the rocket, Saturn V. He is also known as the “Hockey Man” of Huntsville. He helped start the city’s first ever hockey association. At the age of 86, he was still playing the sport he adores. He is truly the most intelligent person I’ve met. Every time I talk to him, I learn something new. To this day, he still likes to work complex math problems in his office. My grandfather’s intelligence is something I’ve always aspired to have and work for.

"I encourage you to find what drives you, what motivates you, and what gets you to achieve your goals. For me, it’s the people around me and what qualities they give to the world that I aspire to have and work harder for."

A lot of people have told me that I am a hard-working student and athlete. I’ve been told that I am so dedicated to everything I do and strive to be the best that I can be. I always get extremely flattered whenever someone tells me this, but I can never give myself full credit for being the reason why I am so dedicated and hard-working. The longest coach I’ve had is Twig, my cross country and track coach. Whenever someone compliments me on my dedication to my many hobbies, I have Twig to thank. Since the day I met him when I was in sixth grade running track with the Randolph Athletics Program (RAP), he has done nothing but push and support me. The many training plans he’s made for me, the pep-talks about mentality and how it’s all between the ears, and the constant yelling during workouts or races show that Coach Twig is dedicated to me and making me a better runner. Twig has taught me that even when I feel like I can’t give any more effort, I am not done trying. He believes in my potential and pushes me to get out of my comfort zone. Twig has never taken his foot off the gas and that motivates me to give everything I’ve got into everything I do. He’s proven to me that dedication can and will take me places. My success in what I do all started from Coach Twig and his unconditional support. He showed me what dedication looks like to a team and to yourself. I’ve looked up to that ever since I met him.

Mr. Raiford, my advisor, and I have become extremely close throughout my high school years. When I first got the letter in the mail saying that Mr. Raiford would be my advisor for the next four years, I asked my sister, “Who’s Mr. Raiford?” She replied by saying that he is someone in her grades’ dad. “Oh great, I’m going to have a dad as an advisor”, I said. Who knew that three years later, I would actually consider him a father figure to me? He has the purest soul and always has a smile on his face. He makes others laugh and cares about everyone. He goes the extra mile in everything he does and all the advisory breakfasts and cookies he’s made proves just that. I know I can turn to him with any problem and he’ll give me the advice that I need. Mr. Raiford’s purity and selflessness is what I aspire to have when I grow up.

So, what do I want to be when I grow up? I want to be the combination of the most distinguishable characteristics of those that I love and care for the most in my life. I want to be as devoted and composed as Pam is, as patient and full of wisdom as Leila is, as strong willed as Fran is, as tough as Betty is, as intelligent as Fred is, as persistent and determined as Twig is, and as pure and selfless as Mr. Raiford is. Striving to have all these characteristics makes me a better person. I look up to these people and can’t help but hope that someday, I can obtain all of these qualities and be able to share them with those that will come after me. I encourage you to find what drives you, what motivates you, and what gets you to achieve your goals. For me, it’s the people around me and what qualities they give to the world that I aspire to have and work harder for.

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I Don't Want to Grow Up: What Should I Do About That?

Ariane Resnick, CNC is a mental health writer, certified nutritionist, and wellness author who advocates for accessibility and inclusivity.

Dr. Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and a professor at Yeshiva University’s clinical psychology doctoral program.

PhotoAlto / Frederic Cirou / Getty Images

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How to get help.

If you've ever thought to yourself, "I don't want to grow up," then you're not alone. Let's face it: being an adult can feel like a bit of a disappointment compared to what we pictured the future would be like when we were kids. The burden of adult responsibilities and the restrictions imposed by our realities can make being a grown-up downright unappealing compared to the freedom we imagined we'd have.

Back when we had bedtimes, couldn't choose our clothes, and had our meals decided for us by our parents or caregivers, many of us thought that one day, when we were grown up, everything would be better. We imagined a world where we could eat whatever we wanted, stay up all night playing video games, and watch endless television.

What we didn't picture was getting tired in the middle of the afternoon, being bogged down with responsibilities, and having to eat our veggies to keep our bodies healthy. In addition to these daily inconveniences, it doesn't help that reaching many of the milestones of adulthood is more challenging than ever before. For example, buying a house is much more difficult today than it was for previous generations—especially without help from parents.

At a Glance

If you think growing up sounds like a lousy thing to do, you're far from alone. However, just because many people feel this way doesn't mean it's conducive to a good or functional life. Ahead, we'll examine why a person might feel like they don't want to grow up, then look at some solutions to make being a mature adult a little bit easier.

Reasons Someone Might Not Want to Grow Up

There's no one main reason that any person feels like they don't want to grow up, but there are some commons ones. These are a few examples of why someone may be hesitant to grow up.

A Lack of Good Adult Role Models

Not having solid role models can negatively affect adolescent behavior. By the same token, having good role models can have a positive impact on youth behavior.

If you don't have the opportunity to witness how wonderful life as an adult can be, and you see only negative examples of adulthood, it's understandable that you don't feel great about the idea of growing up.

And while you might not have realized when you were young that you didn't have solid role models, it still may have affected your view of adulthood in important ways.

Adulting Isn't Always Fun

Even if you have a career you love and are passionate about, work can be challenging—and sometimes it just doesn't feel fun. It can also not feel fun to have to schedule your own appointments, to go to the dentist, to work through therapy , or to be a parent yourself and have to take care of others.

The fact that being a grown-up isn't always the great time we all hoped it would be can make a person feel like they just don't want any part in it. This may seem a little silly to those adults who are very responsible and love it, but it's a valid feeling.

We're programmed to seek new experiences, which in turn makes us happier as people —and being an adult, performing the same duties day in and day out can feel pretty repetitive and mundane.

Being Alone Is Scary

As a child, you're rarely by yourself. Parents or caregivers are who you start and end your day in the company of, and in between that you spend your time in school, which is full of peers and teachers.

As an adult, though, you may find yourself completely solitary, especially if you live alone and don't have a social job that involves working much with other people.

Being alone can feel scary, and it can make a person want to revert to younger days, when they were around friends more. It can also be much more challenging to make friends as an adult, or to find other people who also take part in hobbies you enjoy .

Childhood Trauma

Dealing with abuse, neglect, or other childhood trauma can age you before your time. You might not have had good adult role models, but even if you did, trauma can make growing up feel particularly unappealing.

Undergoing childhood trauma at the hands of adults can lead to confusion about the roles adults have in the lives of children, too. Also, children who experience trauma often feel like adults before they're of legal age, so it makes sense they aren't looking forward to adulthood when they do technically get there.

Aging Is Considered Unattractive

Our society is incredibly youth-focused. Twenty-something actors are often cast as parents to teenagers, who are themselves also twenty-something actors.

News outlets share photos of celebrities getting older in a way that age shames them, as if it was a crime to age.

We talk about people being "over the hill" and "put out to pasture" as if older folks have less value than young ones. Who wants to move from a young person to an older one, knowing that? It makes sense that the ageism in our society leads people to not want to grow up.

Fear of Death

A fear of death is called thanatophobia . While it's perfectly normal to have some fear of death or dying, getting preoccupied with the idea can lead you to worry about getting older or growing up.

Everyone will eventually die, but that fact shouldn't affect your life. After all, you're alive right now!

The more you fixate on being afraid to die, the more it might be intimidating to grow up. Growing up is synonymous with getting older, which bring you closer to the eventual inevitability of death.

What to Do When You Don't Want to Grow Up

Now that you understand some of the reasons why a person might not want to grow up, let's look at some action steps that might help give you better feelings about being an adult.

Keep Healthy Elements of Youthfulness

There's no rule book that says you have to give up everything about being young. In fact, members of Gen X, who are in their 40s and 50s now, are notorious for not dressing like adults. Many have tattoos, or colored hair, as well.

You can absolutely continue expressing yourself in the manner that feels best to you, even if you're an adult. Adulthood is about your actions more than it's about your appearance.

So, if your hesitancy of growing up is centered around you not being able to express yourself, you should be aware that as an adult, you get to dictate that yourself—and you can be as youthful as you want to be, while still being responsible and mature.

Focus On the Joyful Parts Of Adulthood

Sure, there are certainly difficult parts of growing up, but there are some pretty amazing ones, too. Getting to stay up late talking with a friend, spontaneously going out for ice cream, or taking yourself out to see live music are just a few examples of things adults can do on their own that kids cannot.

By focusing on the positive parts of adulthood rather than just the negative ones, you can reframe your attitude . And once you do, growing up might not seem all that bad after all!

Attitudes are known for shaping behavior, which means that by choosing to enjoy the happy parts of adulthood, you can bring yourself to take part in even more of them.

Discover the Beauty of Personal Growth

It may feel safe to be a child, but there is so much to be said for how proud you can feel when you experience self-growth.

The quest to be a better person is an unending one, and it can bring you joy. It can also be incredibly rewarding, because by growing as a person yourself, you can also improve the lives of others.

You can choose to grow in ways that directly affect other people, such as choosing to embark on an anti-racism journey . Or you can begin a gratitude practice, keeping tabs about what in your life you're grateful for. If you aren't sure where to start, you can look at self-help books to decide what path feels right for you.

Press Play for Mental Strength Tips

Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares five mental strength exercises you can do right from your couch (like practicing gratitude). Click below to listen now.

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Sometimes, the desire to not grow up can also be a sign of a more serious problem. If these feelings are accompanied by other symptoms, for example, it might be a sign of a mental health problem such as depression or anxiety. Signs to look for include:

• Losing interest in things that used to bring you joy
• Not having the energy or motivation to do anything
• Withdrawing from friends and family
• Excess fatigue, changes in appetite, and changes in sleep
• Avoiding people, places, or situations due to feelings of anxiety or fear

If you are experiencing such symptoms, it is important to talk to a doctor or mental health professional about how you are feeling. They can evaluate your symptoms, make a diagnosis, and recommend treatments that can help (which might involve psychotherapy, medication, and/or lifestyle changes).

In some cases, avoiding growing up can take a severe toll on a person's life, relationships, and ability to function. Sometimes referred to as " Peter Pan syndrome ," such tendencies can lead to emotional immaturity and excessive dependence on others.

This can harm relationships and may lead to struggles with substance use and unemployment.

If you are struggling to deal with the expectations and responsibilities of adulthood, there are things you can do to get help. Talking to a mental health professional is a great place to start.

A therapist can work with you to develop coping skills to help you manage the things you find the most stressful about being a grown-up. Instead of avoiding these tasks, you'll be able to tackle them effectively without feeling overly stressed.

Examples of healthy coping strategies that can help you deal with the challenges of being an adult include:

• Leaning on your social support system
• Practicing mindfulness meditation
• Getting regular exercise
• Utilizing good sleep habits
• Journaling to cope with stress
• Using visualization to picture yourself dealing with challenges
• Developing your time management skills to maintain a regular routine and schedule
• Using conflict-resolution tactics to handle difficulties in your relationships
• Maintaining a sense of humor
• Developing a sense of optimism

Establishing a healthy work-life balance can also be beneficial. Managing the stresses of adulthood is that much harder when it feels like your work life is encroaching on your personal life.

Establishing and maintaining boundaries to separate your work and home life can give you the time and space you need to do things that bring you peace and joy.

Keep in Mind

Growing up can be incredibly daunting. Know that you aren't alone in having difficulties on this topic, and that there are many different avenues you can take to get yourself on the path of becoming a happy adult.

Doing things that help you feel young, focusing on the joyful aspects of adulthood, and staying on a path of self-discovery can help make being a grown-up more joyful. If you're still struggling, talk to a mental health professional about things you can do to manage the stresses of adult life.

Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. How many young homebuyers get support from their parents and how much of a difference does it make? .

Atif H, Peck L, Connolly M, et al. The impact of role models, mentors, and heroes on academic and social outcomes in adolescents .  Cureus . 2022;14(7):e27349. doi:10.7759/cureus.27349

Heller AS, Shi TC, Ezie CEC, et al. Association between real-world experiential diversity and positive affect relates to hippocampal-striatal functional connectivity .  Nat Neurosci . 2020;23(7):800-804. doi:10.1038/s41593-020-0636-4

Colich NL, Rosen ML, Williams ES, McLaughlin KA. Biological aging in childhood and adolescence following experiences of threat and deprivation: A systematic review and meta-analysis .  Psychol Bull . 2020;146(9):721-764. doi:10.1037/bul0000270

Dimitroff LJ, Sliwoski L, O’Brien S, Nichols LW.  Change your life through journaling--The benefits of journaling for registered nurses .  JNEP . 2016;7(2):p90. doi:10.5430/jnep.v7n2p90 

By Ariane Resnick, CNC Ariane Resnick, CNC is a mental health writer, certified nutritionist, and wellness author who advocates for accessibility and inclusivity.

77 Heartwarming Poems About Growing Up

Here are my favorite poems about growing up categorized:

• Poems about growing up too fast
• Poems about growing up as a girl
• Poems about growing up and changing
• Poems about growing up as a boy

So if you want the best poems about growing up, then you’re in the right place.

Let’s get started!

• 61 Fulfilling Poems About Retirement
• 113 Engulfing Poems About Growth
• 143 Stupefying Famous Poems About Life
• 65 Carefree Poems About Innocence
• 83 Courageous Poems About Change
• 21 Memorable Poems About New Beginnings
• 163 Meaningful Poems About Life

Heartwarming Poems About Growing Up

Discover a carefully curated collection of the most inspiring poems about growing up, thoughtfully categorized for your browsing pleasure.

Our selection features works that explore the joys and challenges of growing up, including poems about growing up too fast and the experiences of growing up as a boy.

With our handpicked selection, you can find the best poems about growing up all in one convenient location.

Take a moment to reflect on these powerful works and the universal themes they evoke.

Let’s dive into it!

My #1 Favorite Poem About Growing Up

“Sweet Are the Flowers of Life” by Louisa May Alcott

Sweet are the flowers of life, Swept o’er my happy days at home; Sweet are the flowers of life When I was a little child.

Sweet are the flowers of life That I spent with my father at home; Sweet are the flowers of life When children played about the house.

Sweet are the flowers of life When the lamps are lighted at night; Sweet are the flowers of life When the flowers of summer bloomed.

Sweet are the flowers of life Dead with the snows of winter; Sweet are the flowers of life When the days of spring come on.

Poems About Growing Up Too Fast

“Days of My Youth” by St. George Tucker

Days of my youth, Ye have glided away; Hairs of my youth, Ye are frosted and gray; Eyes of my youth, Your keen sight is no more; Cheeks of my youth, Ye are furrowed all o’er; Strength of my youth, All your vigor is gone; Thoughts of my youth, Your gay visions are flown.

Days of my youth, I wish not your recall; Hairs of my youth, I ’m content ye should fall; Eyes of my youth, You much evil have seen; Cheeks of my youth, Bathed in tears have you been; Thoughts of my youth, You have led me astray; Strength of my youth, Why lament your decay?

Days of my age, Ye will shortly be past; Pains of my age, Yet awhile ye can last; Joys of my age, In true wisdom delight; Eyes of my age, Be religion your light; Thoughts of my age, Dread ye not the cold sod; Hopes of my age, Be ye fixed on your God.

“Nature” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As a fond mother, when the day is o’er, Leads by the hand her little child to bed, Half willing, half reluctant to be led, And leave his broken playthings on the floor, Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured and comforted By promises of others in their stead, Which, though more splendid, may not please him more; So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest so gently, that we go Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, Being too full of sleep to understand How far the unknown transcends the what we know.

“The Retreat” by Henry Vaughan

Happy those early days, when I Shin’d in my Angel-infancy! Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white celestial thought: When yet I had not walk’d above A mile or two from my first Love, And looking back—at that short space— Could see a glimpse of His bright face: When on some gilded cloud, or flow’r, My gazing soul would dwell an hour, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity: Before I taught my tongue to wound My Conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispense A several sin to ev’ry sense, But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness.

O how I long to travel back, And tread again that ancient track! That I might once more reach that plain Where first I left my glorious train; From whence th’ enlightned spirit sees That shady City of Palm-trees. But ah! my soul with too much stay Is drunk, and staggers in the way! Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move; And when this dust falls to the urn, In that state I came, return.

“To Hilda” by Paul Bewsher

On Her Seventeenth Birthday

Now has rich time brought you a gift of gold – A long sweet year which you can shape at will, And deck with roses warm, or with the chill And heartless lilies – God gives strength to mould Our days, and lives, with fingers firm and bold, And make them noble, straight and clean from ill, Though few are willing, and their years they fill With dross which they regret when they are old.

What splendid hours of your life are these When youth and childhood wander hand in hand, And give you freely all which best can please – Laughter and friends and dreams of Fairyland! Mourn not the seasons past with useless tears, But greet the pleasure of the coming years!

“When I Was One-And-Twenty” by A. E. Housman

When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, ‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free.’ But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, ‘The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; ’Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue.’ And I am two-and-twenty, And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

“When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

“Embers” by Sara Teasdale

I said, “My youth is gone Like a fire beaten out by the rain, That will never sway and sing Or play with the wind again.”

I said, “It is no great sorrow That quenched my youth in me, But only little sorrows Beating ceaselessly.”

I thought my youth was gone, But you returned, Like a flame at the call of the wind It leaped and burned;

Threw off its ashen cloak, And gowned anew Gave itself like a bride Once more to you.

“Childhood Memories” by William Saphier

Those years are foliage of trees their trunks hidden by bushes; behind them a gray haze topped with silver hides the swinging steps of my first love the Danube.

On its face grave steel palaces with smoking torches, parading monasteries moved slowly to the Black Sea till the bared branches scratched the north wind.

On its bed a great Leviathan waited for the ceremonies on the arrival of Messiah and bobbing small fishes snapped sun splinters for the pleasure of the monster.

Along its shores red capped little hours danced with rainbow colored kites, messengers to heaven.

My memory is a sigh of swallows swinging through a slow dormant summer to a timid line on the horizon.

“Man” by Paul Cameron Brown

In the old air by his rocker, a silent trapeze of thought suspends an aging man.

Each movement as of the katydid droning – a monologue with the past; a buzz escaping across still, warm air. Elsewhere, cicadas whittle about the octogenarian heat.

Nestled quietly, a supine stare erodes both time & place unto bearded grey – nuances clasped in a breathless chat with death.

“Old Photographs” by George Augustus Baker, Jr.

Old lady, put your glasses on, With polished lenses, mounting golden, And once again look slowly through The album olden.

How the old portraits take you back To friends who once would ’round you gather All scattered now, like frosted leaves In blustering weather.

Why, who is this, the bright coquette? Her eyes with Love’s bright arrows laden “Poor Nell, she’s living single yet, An ancient maiden.”

And this, the fragile poetess? Whose high soul-yearnings nought can smother “She’s stouter far than I am now, A kind grandmother.”

Who is this girl with flowing curls, Who on the golden future muses? “What splendid hair she had! and now A ‘front’ she uses.”

And this? “Why, if it’s not my own; And did I really e’er resemble That bright young creature? Take the book My old hands tremble.

“It seems that only yesterday We all were young; ah, how time passes!” Old lady, put the album down, And wipe your glasses.

“When I Was Twenty” by Bliss Carman (William)

It was June, and I was twenty. All my wisdom, poor but plenty, Never learned Festina lente. Youth is gone, but whither went he?

Madeline came down the orchard With a mischief in her eye, Half demure and half inviting, Melting, wayward, wistful, shy.

Four bright eyes that found life lovely, And forgot to wonder why; Four warm lips at one love-lesson, Learned by heart so easily.

We gained something of that knowledge No man ever yet put by, But his after days of sorrow Left him nothing but to die.

Madeline went up the orchard, Down the hurrying world went I; Now I know love has no morrow, Happiness no by-and-by.

Youth is gone, but whither went he? All my wisdom, poor but plenty, Never learned Festina lente. It was June, and I was twenty.

“The Old Remain, the Young Are Gone” by Madison Julius Cawein

The old remain, the young are gone. The farm dreams lonely on the hill: From early eve to early dawn A cry goes with the whippoorwill “The old remain, the young are gone.”

Where run the roads they wander on? The young, whose hearts romped shouting here: Whose feet thrilled rapture through this lawn, Where sadness walks now all the year. The old remain, the young are gone.

To what far glory are they drawn? And do they weary of the quest? And serve they now a king or pawn There in the cities of unrest? The old remain, the young are gone.

They found the life here gray and wan, Too kind, too poor, too full of peace: The great mad world of brain and brawn Called to their young hearts without cease. The old remain, the young are gone.

They left us to our Avalon, The ancient fields, the house and trees, Where we at sunset and at dawn May sit with dreams and memories. The old remain, the young are gone.

Dear Heart, draw near and lean upon My heart, and gaze no more through tears: We have our love; our work well done, To help us face the wistful years. The old remain, the young are gone.

“A Song for Old Age” by Madison Julius Cawein

Now nights grow cold and colder, And North the wild vane swings, And round each tree and boulder The driving snow-storm sings – Come, make my old heart older, O memory of lost things!

Of Hope, when promise sung her Brave songs and I was young, That banquets now on hunger Since all youth’s songs are sung; Of Love, who walks with younger Sweethearts the flowers among.

Ah, well! while Life holds levee, Death’s ceaseless dance goes on. So let the curtains, heavy About my couch, be drawn – The curtains, sad and heavy, Where all shall sleep anon.

“Middle-Ages” by Siegfried Sassoon

I heard a clash, and a cry, And a horseman fleeing the wood. The moon hid in a cloud. Deep in shadow I stood. ‘Ugly work!’ thought I, Holding my breath. ‘Men must be cruel and proud, ‘Jousting for death’.

With gusty glimmering shone The moon; and the wind blew colder. A man went over the hill, Bent to his horse’s shoulder. ‘Time for me to be gone’… Darkly I fled. Owls in the wood were shrill, And the moon sank red.

“Youth and Age” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oh give me back the days when loose and free To my blind passion were the curb and rein, Oh give me back the angelic face again, With which all virtue buried seems to be! Oh give my panting footsteps back to me, That are in age so slow and fraught with pain, And fire and moisture in the heart and brain, If thou wouldst have me burn and weep for thee! If it be true thou livest alone, Amor, On the sweet-bitter tears of human hearts, In an old man thou canst not wake desire; Souls that have almost reached the other shore Of a diviner love should feel the darts, And be as tinder to a holier fire.

“Virgin Youth” by D. H. Lawrence

Now and again All my body springs alive, And the life that is polarised in my eyes, That quivers between my eyes and mouth, Flies like a wild thing across my body, Leaving my eyes half-empty, and clamorous, Filling my still breasts with a flush and a flame, Gathering the soft ripples below my breasts Into urgent, passionate waves, And my soft, slumbering belly Quivering awake with one impulse of desire, Gathers itself fiercely together; And my docile, fluent arms Knotting themselves with wild strength To clasp what they have never clasped. Then I tremble, and go trembling Under the wild, strange tyranny of my body, Till it has spent itself, And the relentless nodality of my eyes reasserts itself, Till the bursten flood of life ebbs back to my eyes, Back from my beautiful, lonely body Tired and unsatisfied.

“For the Old” by Madison Julius Cawein

These are the things I pray Heaven send us still, To blow the ashes of the years away, Or keep aglow forever ‘neath their gray The fire that warms when Life’s old house grows chill: First Faith, that gazed into our youth’s bright eyes; Courage, that helped us onward, rain or sun; Then Hope, who captained all our deeds well done; And, last, the dream of Love that never dies.

“The Flight of Youth” by Richard Henry Stoddard

There are gains for all our losses, There are balms for all our pain: But when youth, the dream, departs, It takes something from our hearts, And it never comes again.

We are stronger, and are better, Under manhood’s sterner reign: Still we feel that something sweet Followed youth, with flying feet, And will never come again.

Something beautiful is vanished, And we sigh for it in vain: We behold it everywhere, On the earth, and in the air, But it never comes again.

“Old Age” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The course of my long life hath reached at last, In fragile bark o’er a tempestuous sea, The common harbor, where must rendered be Account of all the actions of the past. The impassioned phantasy, that, vague and vast, Made art an idol and a king to me, Was an illusion, and but vanity Were the desires that lured me and harassed. The dreams of love, that were so sweet of yore, What are they now, when two deaths may be mine,— One sure, and one forecasting its alarms? Painting and sculpture satisfy no more The soul now turning to the Love Divine, That oped, to embrace us, on the cross its arms.

“Love and Life” by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

All my past life is mine no more; The flying hours are gone, Like transitory dreams given o’er, Whose images are kept in store By memory alone. The time that is to come is not; How can it then be mine? The present moment’s all my lot; And that, as fast as it is got, Phillis, is only thine. Then talk not of inconstancy, False hearts, and broken vows; If I by miracle can be This live-long minute true to thee, ’Tis all that Heaven allows.

“Mine Enemy Is Growing Old” by Emily Dickinson

Mine enemy is growing old,— I have at last revenge. The palate of the hate departs; If any would avenge,—

Let him be quick, the viand flits, It is a faded meat. Anger as soon as fed is dead; ’T is starving makes it fat.

“A Memory of Youth” by W.B. Yeats

The moments passed as at a play, I had the wisdom love brings forth; I had my share of mother wit And yet for all that I could say, And though I had her praise for it, A cloud blown from the cut-throat north Suddenly hid love’s moon away.

Believing every word I said I praised her body and her mind Till pride had made her eyes grow bright, And pleasure made her cheeks grow red, And vanity her footfall light, Yet we, for all that praise, could find Nothing but darkness overhead.

We sat as silent as a stone, We knew, though she’d not said a word, That even the best of love must die, And had been savagely undone Were it not that love upon the cry Of a most ridiculous little bird Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.

“On His Being Arrived to the Age of Twenty-Three” by John Milton

How soon hath Time the suttle theef of youth, Stoln on his wing my three and twentith yeer! My hasting dayes flie on with full career, But my late spring no bud or blossom show’th. Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth, That I to manhood am arriv’d so near, And inward ripeness doth much less appear, That som more timely-happy spirits indu’th. It shall be still in strictest measure eev’n, To that same lot, however mean, or high, Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav’n; All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great task Masters eye.

“Old Youth” by Orrick Johns

There’s nothing very beautiful and nothing very gay About the rush of faces in the town by day, But a light tan cow in a pale green mead, That is very beautiful, beautiful indeed … And the soft March wind, and the low March mist Are better than kisses in the dark street kissed … The fragrance of the forest when it wakes at dawn, The fragrance of a trim green village lawn, The hearing of the murmur of the rain at play— These things are beautiful, beautiful as day! And I shan’t stand waiting for love or scorn When the feast is laid for a day new-born … Oh, better let the little things I loved when little Return when the heart finds the great things brittle; And better is a temple made of bark and thong Than a tall stone temple that may stand too long.

“The Cup of Life” by Mikhail Lermontov

We drink life’s cup with thirsty lips, Our eyes shut fast to fears; About the golden rim there drips Our staining blood, our tears.

But when the last swift hour comes on, The light long hid is lit, From startled eyes the band is gone, We suffer and submit.

It is not our part to possess The cup that golden gleamed. We see its shallow emptiness: We did not drink—we dreamed.

“Youth and Age” by William Butler Yeats

Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.

“How Fast the Year Is Going By” by Richard Le Gallienne

How fast the year is going by! Love, it will be September soon; O let us make the best of June. Already, love, it is July; The rose and honeysuckle go, And all too soon will come the snow.

Dark berries take the place of flowers, Of summer August still remains, Then sad September with her rains. O love, how short a year is ours – So swiftly does the summer fly, Scarce time is left to say goodbye.

“Summons to Youth” by Rudolph Altrocchi

Exultant youths who would bewail or vaunt The odds of love, no longer waste your breath: A greater feat now summons you than love Or life itself—it’s war, and war is death!

Poems About Growing Up as a Girl

“To a Young Girl at a Window” by Margaret Widdemer

The Poor Old Soul plods down the street, Contented, and forgetting How Youth was wild, and Spring was wild And how her life is setting;

And you lean out to watch her there, And pity, nor remember, That Youth is hard, and Life is hard, And quiet is December.

“The Net” by Margaret Widdemer

The strangers’ children laugh along the street: They know not, or forget the sweeping of the Net Swift to ensnare such little careless feet.

And we—we smile and watch them pass along, And those who walk beside, soft-smiling, cruel-eyed— We guard our own—not ours to right the wrong!

We do not care—we shall not heed or mark, Till we shall hear one day, too late to strive or pray, Our daughters’ voices crying from the dark!

“A Daughter of the States” by Madison Julius Cawein

She has the eyes of some barbarian Queen Leading her wild tribes into battle; eyes, Wherein th’ unconquerable soul defies, And Love sits throned, imperious and serene.

And I have thought that Liberty, alone Among the mountain stars, might look like her, Kneeling to God, her only emperor, Kindling her torch on Freedom’s altar-stone.

For in her self, regal with riches of Beauty and youth, again those Queens seem born – Boadicea, meeting scorn with scorn, And Ermengarde, returning love for love.

“To a Very Young Lady” by Sir George Etherege

Sweetest Bud of Beauty! may No untimely frost decay The early glories, which we trace Blooming in thy matchless face. But kindly opening, like the rose, Fresh beauties, every day disclose; Such as by Nature are not shown In all the blossoms she has blown: And then, what conquest shall you make; Who hearts already daily take! Scorched, in the morning with thy beams, How shall we bear those sad extremes Which must attend thy threatening eyes, When thou shalt to thy noon arise?

“The Living Beauty” by W.B. Yeats

I’ll say and maybe dream I have drawn content— Seeing that time has frozen up the blood, The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent— From beauty that is cast out of a mould In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears, Appears, and when we have gone is gone again, Being more indifferent to our solitude Than ’twere an apparition. O heart, we are old, The living beauty is for younger men, We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.

“A Maid Who Died Old” by Madison Julius Cawein 

Frail, shrunken face, so pinched and worn, That life has carved with care and doubt! So weary waiting, night and morn, For that which never came about! Pale lamp, so utterly forlorn, In which God’s light at last is out.

Gray hair, that lies so thin and prim On either side the sunken brows! And soldered eyes, so deep and dim, No word of man could now arouse! And hollow hands, so virgin slim, Forever clasped in silent vows!

Poor breasts! that God designed for love, For baby lips to kiss and press; That never felt, yet dreamed thereof, The human touch, the child caress – That lie like shriveled blooms above The heart’s long-perished happiness.

O withered body, Nature gave For purposes of death and birth, That never knew, and could but crave Those things perhaps that make life worth, – Rest now, alas! within the grave, Sad shell that served no end of Earth.

“Bacteria” by Unkn”Of Joan’s Youth” by Louise Imogen Guineyown

I would unto my fair restore A simple thing: The flushing cheek she had before! Out-velveting No more, no more, On our sad shore, The carmine grape, the moth’s auroral wing.

Ah, say how winds in flooding grass Unmoor the rose; Or guileful ways the salmon pass To sea, disclose: For so, alas, With Love, alas, With fatal, fatal Love a girlhood goes.

“The Old Maid” by Sara Teasdale

I saw her in a Broadway car, The woman I might grow to be; I felt my lover look at her And then turn suddenly to me. Her hair was dull and drew no light, And yet its color was as mine; Her eyes were strangely like my eyes, Tho’ love had never made them shine.

Her body was a thing grown thin, Hungry for love that never came; Her soul was frozen in the dark, Unwarmed forever by love’s flame.

I felt my lover look at her And then turn suddenly to me, His eyes were magic to defy The woman I shall never be.

“To a Virtuous Young Lady” by John Milton

Lady that in the prime of earliest youth, Wisely hath shun’d the broad way and the green, And with those few art eminently seen, That labour up the Hill of heav’nly Truth, The better part with Mary and with Ruth, Chosen thou hast, and they that overween, And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen, No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth. Thy care is fixt and zealously attends To fill thy odorous Lamp with deeds of light, And Hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure Thou, when the Bridegroom with his feastfull friends Passes to bliss at the mid hour of night, Hast gain’d thy entrance, Virgin wise and pure.

Poems About Growing Up and Changing

“To a Child Dancing in the Wind” by W.B. Yeats

I Dance there upon the shore; What need have you to care For wind or water’s roar? And tumble out your hair That the salt drops have wet; Being young you have not known The fool’s triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind. What need have you to dread The monstrous crying of wind?

II Has no one said those daring Kind eyes should be more learn’d? Or warned you how despairing The moths are when they are burned, I could have warned you, but you are young, So we speak a different tongue.

O you will take whatever’s offered And dream that all the world’s a friend, Suffer as your mother suffered, Be as broken in the end. But I am old and you are young, And I speak a barbarous tongue.

“A Tale” by Louise Bogan

This youth too long has heard the break Of waters in a land of change. He goes to see what suns can make From soil more indurate and strange.

He cuts what holds his days together And shuts him in, as lock on lock: The arrowed vane announcing weather, The tripping racket of a clock;

Seeking, I think, a light that waits Still as a lamp upon a shelf,— A land with hills like rocky gates Where no sea leaps upon itself.

But he will find that nothing dares To be enduring, save where, south Of hidden deserts, torn fire glares On beauty with a rusted mouth,—

Where something dreadful and another Look quietly upon each other.

“Oft, in the Stilly Night (Scotch Air)” by Thomas Moore

Oft, in the stilly night, Ere slumber’s chain has bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood’s years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimm’d and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken! Thus, in the stilly night, Ere slumber’s chain hath bound me, Sad memory brings the light Of other days around me.

When I remember all The friends, so link’d together, I’ve seen around me fall, Like leaves in wintry weather; I feel like one Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all but he departed! Thus, in the stilly night, Ere slumber’s chain has bound me, Sad memory brings the light Of other days around me.

“Innocent Child and Snow-White Flower” by William Cullen Bryant

Innocent child and snow-white flower! Well are ye paired in your opening hour. Thus should the pure and the lovely meet, Stainless with stainless, and sweet with sweet.

White as those leaves, just blown apart, Are the folds of thy own young heart; Guilty passion and cankering care Never have left their traces there.

Artless one! though thou gazest now O’er the white blossom with earnest brow, Soon will it tire thy childish eye; Fair as it is, thou wilt throw it by.

Throw it aside in thy weary hour, Throw to the ground the fair white flower; Yet, as thy tender years depart, Keep that white and innocent heart.

“Unanswered” by Madison Julius Cawein

How long ago it is since we went Maying! Since she and I went Maying long ago! – The years have left my forehead lined, I know, Have thinned my hair around the temples graying. Ah, time will change us: yea, I hear it saying – “She too grows old: the face of rose and snow Has lost its freshness: in the hair’s brown glow Some strands of silver sadly, too, are straying. The form you knew, whose beauty so enspelled, Has lost the litheness of its loveliness: And all the gladness that her blue eyes held Tears and the world have hardened with distress.” – “True! true!” I answer, “O ye years that part! These things are chaned – but is her heart, her heart?”

“Men Improve With the Years” by W.B. Yeats

I am worn out with dreams; A weather-worn, marble triton Among the streams; And all day long I look Upon this lady’s beauty As though I had found in book A pictured beauty, Pleased to have filled the eyes Or the discerning ears, Delighted to be but wise, For men improve with the years; And yet and yet Is this my dream, or the truth? O would that we had met When I had my burning youth; But I grow old among dreams, A weather-worn, marble triton Among the streams.

“To the Girls of the Unions” by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

Girls, we love you, and love Asks you to give again That which draws it above, Beautiful, without stain.

Give us weariless faith In our Cause pure, passionate, Dearer than life and death, Dear as the love that’s it!

Give to the man who turns Traitrous hands or forlorn Back from the plough that burns, Give him pitiless scorn!

Let him know that no wife Would bear him a fearless child To hate and loathe the life Of a leprous father defiled.

Girls, we love you, and love Asks you to give again That which draws it above, Beautiful, without stain!

“Looking Forward” by Robert Louis Stevenson

When I am grown to man’s estate I shall be very proud and great, And tell the other girls and boys Not to meddle with my toys.

“Age and Youth” by George William Russell

We have left our youth behind: Earth is in its baby years: Void of wisdom cries the wind, And the sunlight knows no tears.

When shall twilight feel the awe, All the rapt thought of the sage, And the lips of wind give law Drawn from out their lore of age?

When shall earth begin to burn With such love as thrills my breast? When shall we together turn To our long, long home for rest?

Child and father, we grow old While you laugh and play with flowers; And life’s tale for us is told Holding only empty hours.

Giant child, on you await All the hopes and fears of men. In thy fulness is our fate— What till then, oh, what till then?

“Memory” by W.B. Yeats

One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain Because the mountain grass Cannot but keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain.

“Picture-Show” by Siegfried Sassoon

And still they come and go: and this is all I know— That from the gloom I watch an endless picture-show, Where wild or listless faces flicker on their way, With glad or grievous hearts I’ll never understand Because Time spins so fast, and they’ve no time to stay Beyond the moment’s gesture of a lifted hand.

And still, between the shadow and the blinding flame, The brave despair of men flings onward, ever the same As in those doom-lit years that wait them, and have been… And life is just the picture dancing on a screen.

“Alexander Throckmorton” by Edgar Lee Masters

In youth my wings were strong and tireless, But I did not know the mountains. In age I knew the mountains But my weary wings could not follow my vision— Genius is wisdom and youth.

“To Dick, on His Sixth Birthday” by Sara Teasdale

Tho’ I am very old and wise, And you are neither wise nor old, When I look far into your eyes, I know things I was never told: I know how flame must strain and fret Prisoned in a mortal net; How joy with over-eager wings, Bruises the small heart where he sings; How too much life, like too much gold, Is sometimes very hard to hold…. All that is talking-I know This much is true, six years ago An angel living near the moon Walked thru the sky and sang a tune Plucking stars to make his crown And suddenly two stars fell down, Two falling arrows made of light. Six years ago this very night I saw them fall and wondered why The angel dropped them from the sky But when I saw your eyes I knew The angel sent the stars to you.

“Wisdom” by Sara Teasdale

When I have ceased to break my wings Against the faultiness of things, And learned that compromises wait Behind each hardly opened gate, When I have looked Life in the eyes, Grown calm and very coldly wise, Life will have given me the Truth, And taken in exchange, my youth.

“Emily Sparks” by Edgar Lee Masters

Where is my boy, my boy— In what far part of the world? The boy I loved best of all in the school?— I, the teacher, the old maid, the virgin heart, Who made them all my children. Did I know my boy aright, Thinking of him as spirit aflame, Active, ever aspiring? Oh, boy, boy, for whom I prayed and prayed In many a watchful hour at night, Do you remember the letter I wrote you Of the beautiful love of Christ? And whether you ever took it or not, My boy, wherever you are, Work for your soul’s sake, That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you, May yield to the fire of you, Till the fire is nothing but light!… Nothing but light!

“I Years Had Been From Home” by Emily Dickinson

I years had been from home, And now, before the door, I dared not open, lest a face I never saw before

Stare vacant into mine And ask my business there. My business,—just a life I left, Was such still dwelling there?

I fumbled at my nerve, I scanned the windows near; The silence like an ocean rolled, And broke against my ear.

I laughed a wooden laugh That I could fear a door, Who danger and the dead had faced, But never quaked before.

I fitted to the latch My hand, with trembling care, Lest back the awful door should spring, And leave me standing there.

I moved my fingers off As cautiously as glass, And held my ears, and like a thief Fled gasping from the house.

“Memory” by Siegfried Sassoon

When I was young my heart and head were light, And I was gay and feckless as a colt Out in the fields, with morning in the may, Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom. O thrilling sweet, my joy, when life was free And all the paths led on from hawthorn-time Across the carolling meadows into June.

But now my heart is heavy-laden. I sit Burning my dreams away beside the fire: For death has made me wise and bitter and strong; And I am rich in all that I have lost. O starshine on the fields of long-ago, Bring me the darkness and the nightingale; Dim wealds of vanished summer, peace of home, And silence; and the faces of my friends.

“To-Day” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

I rake no coffined clay, nor publish wide The resurrection of departed pride. Safe in their ancient crannies, dark and deep, Let kings and conquerors, saints and soldiers sleep— Late in the world,—too late perchance for fame, Just late enough to reap abundant blame,— I choose a novel theme, a bold abuse Of critic charters, an unlaurelled Muse.

Old mouldy men and books and names and lands Disgust my reason and defile my hands. I had as lief respect an ancient shoe, As love old things for age, and hate the new. I spurn the Past, my mind disdains its nod, Nor kneels in homage to so mean a God. I laugh at those who, while they gape and gaze, The bald antiquity of China praise. Youth is (whatever cynic tubs pretend) The fault that boys and nations soonest mend.

“Childhood Calls” by John Frederick Freeman

Come over, come over the deepening river, Come over again the dark torrent of years, Come over, come back where the green leaves quiver, And the lilac still blooms and the grey sky clears.

Come, come back to the everlasting garden, To that green heaven, and the blue heaven above. Come back to the time when time brought no burden And love was unconscious, knowing not love.

“Time and Life” by Algernon Charles Swinburne

I. Time, thy name is sorrow, says the stricken Heart of life, laid waste with wasting flame Ere the change of things and thoughts requicken, Time, thy name.

Girt about with shadow, blind and lame, Ghosts of things that smite and thoughts that sicken Hunt and hound thee down to death and shame.

Eyes of hours whose paces halt or quicken Read in bloodred lines of loss and blame, Writ where cloud and darkness round it thicken, Time, thy name.

II. Nay, but rest is born of me for healing, So might haply time, with voice represt, Speak: is grief the last gift of my dealing? Nay, but rest.

All the world is wearied, east and west, Tired with toil to watch the slow sun wheeling, Twelve loud hours of life’s laborious quest.

Eyes forspent with vigil, faint and reeling, Find at last my comfort, and are blest, Not with rapturous light of life’s revealing Nay, but rest.

“Love in Thy Youth” by Walter Porter

Love in thy youth, fair maid; be wise Old Time will make thee colder, And though each morning new arise Yet we each day grow older. Thou as heaven art fair and young, Thine eyes like twin stars shining: But ere another day be sprung, All these will be declining; Then winter comes with all his fears, And all thy sweets shall borrow; Too late then wilt thou shower thy tears, And I too late shall sorrow.

“On a Child’s Portrait” by Arthur Stringer

Deep in the fluted hollow of its shells Dimly some echo of the ocean dwells.

Still in September’s fruitage, mellow-cored, The filtered sweets of golden noons are stored.

And shimmering on a blue-bird’s migrant wings Some poignant touch of June’s lost azure clings.

Still in the rustling sheaf to-day there gleams The lingering gold of April’s vanished dreams.

Still in the cell of one autumnal bee I find lost summer in epitome.

And all that better life that I would lead, Writ small in this, one childish face, I read.

“Life” by John Hall Wheelock

Life burns us up like fire, And Song goes up in flame: The radiant body smoulders To the ashes whence it came.

Out of things it rises With a mouth that laughs and sings, Backward it fades and falters Into the char of things.

Yet soars a voice above it— Love is holy and strong; The best of us forever Escapes in Love and Song.

“The Change” by Charles Philip Nettleton

Unconsciously we wail with life’s first breath, So dark and dure the past throws down its shade; But ripening years to strength and peace persuade Our souls, and consciously, we smile at death.

“An Old Man’s Song” by Alexey Koltzov

I shall saddle a horse, A swift courser, he, I shall fly, I shall rush, As the hawk is keen, Over fields, over seas, To a distant land. I shall overtake there My young youth again. I shall make myself spruce Be a blade again, I shall make a fine show For the girls again. But alas! no road leads To the past we’ve left, And the sun will not rise For us in the west.

“Youth, Day, Old Age and Night” by Walt Whitman

Youth, large, lusty, loving—youth full of grace, force, fascination, Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?

Day full-blown and splendid—day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.

Poems About Growing Up as a Boy

“The Boy” by William Allingham

The Boy from his bedroom-window Look’d over the little town, And away to the bleak black upland Under a clouded moon.

The moon came forth from her cavern, He saw the sudden gleam Of a tarn in the swarthy moorland; Or perhaps the whole was a dream.

For I never could find that water In all my walks and rides: Far-off, in the Land of Memory, That midnight pool abides.

Many fine things had I glimpse of, And said, “I shall.find them one day.” Whether within or without me They were, I cannot say.

“My Heart Leaps Up” by William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

“Wisdom Cometh With the Years” by Countee Cullen

Now I am young and credulous, My heart is quick to bleed At courage in the tremulous Slow sprouting of a seed.

Now I am young and sensitive, Man’s lack can stab me through; I own no stitch I would not give To him that asked me to.

Now I am young and a fool for love, My blood goes mad to see A brown girl pass me like a dove That flies melodiously.

Let me be lavish of my tears, And dream that false is true; Though wisdom cometh with the years, The barren days come, too.

“Francis Turner” by Edgar Lee Masters

I could not run or play In boyhood. In manhood I could only sip the cup, Not drink – For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased. Yet I lie here Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows: There is a garden of acacia, Catalpa trees, and arbors sweet with vines – There on that afternoon in June By Mary’s side – Kissing her with my soul upon my lips It suddenly took flight.

“Going Down Hill on a Bicycle” by Henry Charles Beeching

A Boy’s Song

With lifted feet, hands still, I am poised, and down the hill Dart, with heedful mind; The air goes by in a wind.

Swifter and yet more swift, Till the heart with a mighty lift Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:— “O bird, see; see, bird, I fly.

“Is this, is this your joy? O bird, then I, though a boy, For a golden moment share Your feathery life in air!”

Say, heart, is there aught like this In a world that is full of bliss? ‘Tis more than skating, bound Steel-shod to the level ground.

Speed slackens now, I float Awhile in my airy boat; Till, when the wheels scarce crawl, My feet to the treadles fall.

Alas, that the longest hill Must end in a vale; but still, Who climbs with toil, wheresoe’er, Shall find wings waiting there.

“Improvisations: Light And Snow 05” by Conrad Potter Aiken

When I was a boy, and saw bright rows of icicles In many lengths along a wall I was dissappointed to find That I could not play music upon them: I ran my hand lightly across them And they fell, tinkling. I tell you this, young man, so that your expectations of life Will not be too great.

“A Son of the Sea” by Bliss Carman (William)

I was born for deep-sea faring; I was bred to put to sea; Stories of my father’s daring Filled me at my mother’s knee.

I was sired among the surges; I was cubbed beside the foam; All my heart is in its verges, And the sea wind is my home.

All my boyhood, from far vernal Bourns of being, came to me Dream-like, plangent, and eternal Memories of the plunging sea.

“A Man in His Life” by Yehuda Amichai

A man doesn’t have time in his life to have time for everything. He doesn’t have seasons enough to have a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment, to laugh and cry with the same eyes, with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them, to make love in war and war in love. And to hate and forgive and remember and forget, to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest what history takes years and years to do.

A man doesn’t have time. When he loses he seeks, when he finds he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves he begins to forget.

“Odes of a Boy” by Margaret Steele Anderson

Fades the great pyramid, the blank walls fade! And thou, immortal boy, dost walk with me Along that grove from out whose deeper shade The nightingale sings living ecstasy.

And where thy burial-stone so long is set With plaintive lines that tell a day’s despair, Lo, now that urn with happy figures fret Which cannot fail, but go eternal fair!

Yet, suddenly, the wind of death is blown On all earth ‘s beauty, even at its prime; The red rose drops, the hand of Joy is flown, And thou, oh, thou art dust this long, long time!

“I Remember, I Remember” by Thomas Hood

I remember, I remember, The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon, Nor brought too long a day, But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away!

I remember, I remember, The roses, red and white, The violets, and the lily-cups, Those flowers made of light! The lilacs where the robin built, And where my brother set The laburnum on his birthday, – The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember, Where I was used to swing, And thought the air must rush as fresh To swallows on the wing; My spirit flew in feathers then, That is so heavy now, And summer pools could hardly cool The fever on my brow!

I remember, I remember, The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky: It was a childish ignorance, But now ’tis little joy To know I’m farther off from Heav’n Than when I was a boy.

“The Young Man’s Song” by W.B. Yeats

I whispered, ‘I am too young,’ And then, ‘I am old enough’; Wherefore I threw a penny To find out if I might love. ‘Go and love, go and love, young man, If the lady be young and fair,’ Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny, I am looped in the loops of her hair.

Oh, love is the crooked thing, There is nobody wise enough To find out all that is in it, For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away, And the shadows eaten the moon. Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny, One cannot begin it too soon.

“Threes” by Carl Sandburg

I was a boy when I heard three red words a thousand Frenchmen died in the streets for: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—I asked why men die for words.

I was older; men with mustaches, sideburns, lilacs, told me the high golden words are: Mother, Home, and Heaven—other older men with face decorations said: God, Duty, Immortality —they sang these threes slow from deep lungs.

Years ticked off their say-so on the great clocks of doom and damnation, soup and nuts: meteors flashed their say-so: and out of great Russia came three dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die for: Bread, Peace, Land.

And I met a marine of the U.S.A., a leatherneck with a girl on his knee for a memory in ports circling the earth and he said: Tell me how to say three things and I always get by—gimme a plate of ham and eggs—how much?—and—do you love me, kid?

“Not a Child” by Algernon Charles Swinburne

I. ‘Not a child: I call myself a boy,’ Says my king, with accent stern yet mild, Now nine years have brought him change of joy; ‘Not a child.’

How could reason be so far beguiled, Err so far from sense’s safe employ, Stray so wide of truth, or run so wild?

Seeing his face bent over book or toy, Child I called him, smiling: but he smiled Back, as one too high for vain annoy – Not a child.

II. Not a child? alack the year! What should ail an undefiled Heart, that he would fain appear Not a child?

Men, with years and memories piled Each on other, far and near, Fain again would so be styled:

Fain would cast off hope and fear, Rest, forget, be reconciled: Why would you so fain be, dear, Not a child?

III. Child or boy, my darling, which you will, Still your praise finds heart and song employ, Heart and song both yearning toward you still, Child or boy.

All joys else might sooner pall or cloy Love than this which inly takes its fill, Dear, of sight of your more perfect joy.

Nay, be aught you please, let all fulfil All your pleasure; be your world your toy: Mild or wild we love you, loud or still, Child or boy.

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Watch Lana Wachowski’s Emotional Speech About Growing Up Transgendered

At the Human Rights Campaign’s gala fund-raising dinner in San Francisco on October 20, the co-director of The Matrix and Cloud Atlas accepted the Visibility Award, and gave a 25-minute speech revealing the pain of growing up transgendered and the triumph of her coming out.

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Japanese Prime Minister Kishida addresses Congress amid skepticism about U.S. role abroad

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Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida addressed U.S. lawmakers at the Capitol on Thursday, urging them to consider the importance of global commitments at a time of tension in the Asia-Pacific and deep skepticism in Congress about U.S. involvement abroad.

Kishida is in Washington this week visiting President Biden as the White House completes hosting each leader of the Quad — an informal partnership among the U.S., Japan, Australia and India that is seen as important to countering China’s growing military strength in the region. Kishida highlighted the value of the U.S. commitment to global security and offered reassurances that Japan is a strong partner.

On Capitol Hill, his audience included many Republicans who have pushed for the U.S. to take a less active role in global affairs as they follow the “America First” ethos of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The Republican-controlled House has sat for months on a $95-billion package that would send wartime funding to Ukraine and Israel, as well as aid to allies in the Indo-Pacific including Taiwan and humanitarian help to civilians in Gaza and Ukraine.

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President Biden welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to the White House for talks on the security situation in the Pacific, and more.

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“As we meet here today, I detect an undercurrent of self-doubt among some Americans about what your role in the world should be,” Kishida told Congress.

He sought to remind lawmakers of the leading role the U.S. has played globally since World War II. After dropping two nuclear weapons on Japan to end the war, the U.S. helped rebuild Japan, and the nations transformed from bitter enemies to close allies.

“When necessary, it made noble sacrifices to fulfill its commitment to a better world,” Kishida said of the U.S.

Japan has taken a strong role in supporting Ukraine’s defense against Moscow as well as helping humanitarian aid get to Gaza. It is also seen as a key U.S. partner in a fraught region where China is asserting its strength and North Korea is developing a nuclear program.

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Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said in a floor speech Thursday, “The best way the House can heed Prime Minister Kishida’s words is to pass the national security supplemental as soon as possible, to approve defense funding not just for Ukraine but also for the Indo-Pacific.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell also said earlier this week that he hoped Kishida’s visit would underscore “that we’re in a worldwide situation here against the enemies of democracy — led by China, Russia and Iran.”

Kishida offered reassurances that Japan is also committed to global security and human rights. He said that since recovering from the “devastation of World War II,” Japan has transformed from a reticent ally to a strong partner “standing shoulder-to-shoulder” with the U.S.

The prime minister called China’s stance “unprecedented” and “the greatest strategic challenge, not only to the peace and security of Japan but to the peace and stability of the international community at large.”

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Kishida was also attending a U.S.-Japan-Philippines summit on Thursday in another effort to bolster regional cooperation in the face of China’s aggression. The United Kingdom also announced Thursday that it would hold joint military exercises with Japan and the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific next year.

Beijing has pushed back strongly on those actions during Kishida’s visit.

Mao Ning, the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, said, “Despite China’s serious concerns, the U.S. and Japan attacked and smeared China on the Taiwan question and maritime issues, grossly interfered in China’s domestic affairs and violated the basic norms in international relations.”

Meanwhile, Kishida cast the future of the conflict in Ukraine as having far-reaching consequences. He emphasized that Japan has committed to providing Kyiv with $12 billion in wartime aid, including anti-drone detection systems.

Philippines confronts China over South China Sea claims in tense encounters

The Philippines decries China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea, through which trillions of dollars in trade transit yearly.

April 27, 2023

“Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow,” Kishida told lawmakers, and later added: “Japan will continue to stand with Ukraine.”

The statements drew standing ovations from much of the chamber, but a group of hard-line conservatives remained seated. Other lawmakers skipped the speech, and Capitol staff filled empty chairs with congressional aides.

Those moments encapsulated the pressure that House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing as he searches for a way forward for the foreign security package. It will be a difficult task to navigate the deep divides among Republicans. Making matters worse for the Republican speaker, he is already facing the threat of being ousted from the speaker’s office.

In a statement after the address, Johnson praised the U.S. partnership with Japan and said, “We will not let tyrants disrupt the prosperity and security we all enjoy.”

Sunken boats. Stolen gear. Fishermen are prey as China conquers a strategic sea

Beijing’s aggressive South China Sea expansion shows its willingness to defy international laws for President Xi Jinping’s visions of power.

Nov. 12, 2020

Kishida, who was elected in 2021, arrived in Washington while facing political problems of his own in Japan. Polls show his support has plunged as he deals with a political funds corruption scandal within his ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The nation’s economy has also slipped to the world’s fourth-largest last year, falling behind Germany.

This is the first time a Japanese prime minister has addressed Congress since Shinzo Abe traveled to Capitol Hill in 2015. Kishida is the sixth foreign leader to address Congress during Biden’s presidency.

He relished the moment and highlighted his ties to the U.S. He told lawmakers how he spent his first three years of elementary school in New York City while his father worked there as a trade official. Lawmakers applauded and laughed as he recalled American pastimes like attending baseball games and watching “The Flintstones.”

“I still miss that show,” Kishida told them. “Although I could never translate, ‘Yabba dabba doo.’”

Groves writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Didi Tang contributed.

More to Read

House Speaker Mike Johnson says he will push for aid to Israel and Ukraine this week

April 14, 2024

Editorial: Speaker Johnson must ignore GOP hardliners and pass Ukraine aid now

April 7, 2024

Biden and party leaders implore Speaker Johnson to help Ukraine in ‘intense’ Oval Office meeting

Feb. 27, 2024

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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Saw Working at The National Enquirer During Donald Trump’s Rise’

Inside the notorious “catch and kill” campaign that now stands at the heart of the former president’s legal trial..

By Lachlan Cartwright

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At the center of the criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Manhattan is the accusation that Trump took part in a scheme to turn The National Enquirer and its sister publications into an arm of his 2016 presidential campaign. The documents detailed three “hush money” payments made to a series of individuals to guarantee their silence about potentially damaging stories in the months before the election. Because this was done with the goal of helping his election chances, the case implied, these payments amounted to a form of illegal, undisclosed campaign spending. And because Trump created paperwork to make the payments seem like regular legal expenses, that amounted to a criminal effort at a coverup, argued Alvin Bragg, the district attorney of Manhattan. Trump has denied the charges against him.

For Lachlan Cartwright, reading the indictment was like stepping through the looking glass, because it described a three-year period in his own professional life, one that he has come to deeply regret. Now, as a former president faces a criminal trial for the first time in American history, Cartwright is forced to grapple with what really happened at The Enquirer in those years — and whether and how he can ever set things right.

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Politics latest: UK needs Iron Dome to protect London, MP argues; Rwanda plan dealt another Lords defeat

Rishi Sunak's smoking ban passes convincingly on second reading, despite high-profile Tory MPs voting against it - while his Rwanda bill is defeated again. Meanwhile, the PM holds a telephone call with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu.

Tuesday 16 April 2024 23:17, UK

• Rwanda bill suffers four defeats in Lords - teeing up crucial day
• Government wins vote on smoking ban despite opposition from ministers | Who voted against?
• UK needs Iron Dome like Israel to protect London, MP argues
• Jon Craig:  PM will hope Tory rebellion doesn't mean he's at fag end of premiership
• Sunak tells Netanyahu that 'calm heads should prevail'
• Number 10 criticises 'disturbing' bid to shut down conference by Brussels police
• Farage - who addressed event - speaks out
• Darren McCaffrey: Crackdown only helps cancel culture cause
• Live reporting by Ben Bloch and (earlier)   Faith Ridler

Thank you for joining us in the Politics Hub for another busy day in Westminster.

Here's what happened:

• Peers in the House of Lords inflicted another four defeats on the government over the legislation to rescue the embattled Rwanda scheme, sending the bill back to the Commons as the parliamentary "ping-pong" continues;
• Rishi Sunak's flagship bill to ban young people from ever being able to smoke passed its first major hurdle in the Commons - but not without a significant number of Tories opposing it;
• Just 178 Conservative MPs voted in favour of the bill out of 347 - barely half of the parliamentary party - and six ministers, including Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, voted against it;
• A local mayor sent police to shut down the National Conservatism Conference where Reform UK's honorary president Nigel Farage and former home secretary Suella Braverman were speaking - but the conference continued, and the attempt to stop was condemned as "unconstitutional" by Belgium's president;
• Rishi Sunak finally spoke by phone with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu following Iran's attack on Saturday, telling him this is a moment for "calm heads to prevail";
• The government unveiled plans to make the creation of sexually explicit deepfake images a criminal offence.

Join us again from 6am for the very latest political news - and for live coverage of the first session of Prime Minister's Questions in nearly a month at 12pm.

We heard a short while ago from Tory MP and former defence minister Tobias Ellwood who is suggesting that the UK needs an Iron Dome system, like the one that protected Israel from Iran's missiles ( more about the system here ).

He told Sky's The World with Yalda Hakim that the conduct of warfare is changing, which was visible with Iran using drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles as part of a simultaneous attack.

"If that is the way that warfare is now being conducted - we see this not just in the Middle East with Iran's attack, but also with what's going on in Ukraine - we need to move with the times as well."

He added that the UK already has "impressive air defence assets", but says: "There is nothing protecting London, for example, in the same way that Iron Dome operates over Israel."

Asked if Britain's focus should be on properly arming itself rather than an Iron Dome system, Mr Ellwood said there "needs to be a thorough review of the threats that are emerging".

He pointed to Russia's development of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons.

"We need to perhaps wake up to the fact that we've had three to four decades of relative peace - we've now entered a new era of insecurity."

Asked how likely it is the UK will see an attack like the one Iran launched, Mr Ellwood replied: "At the moment, it's not."

He said the "biggest threat" to Europe is Russia's Vladimir Putin, and he said both the US and Europe have hesitated in providing support for Ukraine, unlike Britain.

"We need to brace ourselves for an alliance of authoritarian states working together to challenge global order," he concluded. 

As we reported earlier, Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch voted against Rishi Sunak's flagship legislation to stop young people from ever being able to smoke.

It has set tongues wagging that her public opposition to the PM's bill is leadership posturing.

But she rejected such suggestions out of hand, saying it is a "shame" people are seeing it that way.

She told LBC: "We need space for people to be able to have disagreements without it being put down to ulterior motives.

"Everything we do is looked at through the prism of the worst possible intention.

"And I think that's one of the reasons why politicians feel they don't get a fair hearing, that many people decide not to do this job.

"Sometimes we have to take what people are saying at face value."

Over a year ago, Rishi Sunak made five pledges for voters to judge him on.

The prime minister met his promise to halve inflation by the end of 2023.

But with the general election approaching, how is Mr Sunak doing on delivering his other promises?

You can see the progress for yourself below:

Earlier this evening, Rishi Sunak's bill to ban young people from ever being able to smoke passed its first Commons hurdle.

The government is claiming this as a big win - but was it really?

Just 178 Conservative MPs voted in favour of the bill out of 347 - barely half of the parliamentary party.

A number of sitting ministers voted against it, including:

• Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch;
• Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker;
• Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart;
• Science minister Andrew Griffith;
• Digital minister Julia Lopez;
• Housing minister Lee Rowley.

Much of the right of the party voted against it, including party deputy chair Jonathan Gullis, ex-PM Liz Truss, high-profile ex-minister Robert Jenrick, former cabinet minister Sir Simon Clarke and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, among many others.

Also notable were the abstentions, with 106 Tory MPs not casting a vote either way - including the Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt.

It was a free vote, meaning the Tory high command did not tell its MPs how to vote either way. But there is a clear split within the party.

Meanwhile, not a single one of the 201 Labour MPs went against the party's instructions to vote against the bill. But 40 did abstain, however.

"Absolutely nuts" was how former prime minister Boris Johnson described Rishi Sunak's plan to gradually phase out smoking – banning anyone born since the start of 2009 from ever being able to buy cigarettes or tobacco products like vapes.

Liz Truss, who was also briefly prime minister in between the two men, is also among some critical of the proposal – which she described as "profoundly un-conservative".

Tories were given a free vote in the Commons – allowing them to vote with their conscience, not necessarily the government.

But will the policy create a smoke-free generation? And what will it mean for Conservative Party ideology?

Niall Paterson looks at the health implications with Alice Wiseman, vice president of The Association of Directors of Public Health, and the politics of the policy with Sky's political editor Beth Rigby and Tory peer Lord Frost, who disagrees with the planned legislation.

👉 Listen above then tap here to follow the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts 👈

Rishi Sunak has been badly burned by a Commons rebellion by nearly 60 Tory MPs who voted against his flagship Tobacco and Vaping Bill.

When Commons deputy speaker Dame Eleanor Laing called the vote just before 7pm, the rebels on the Conservative backbenches made a lot of noise screaming "No!"

And minutes later, it was revealed that their rebellion was not only noisy, but also a defiant show of strength by the mutinous Tory Right that will leave the PM and his allies gasping.

In an ominous but entirely predictable warning shot to the PM, the list of rebels included a roll call of the right-wing contenders for the Tory crown, both serving and former Cabinet ministers.

Topping the list of leadership candidates desperate to please those party activists was Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, who never misses an opportunity to play to the Tory gallery.

Next was the equally ambitious Robert Jenrick, who also voted against the bill, while Penny Mordaunt, another darling of the activists, appears to have abstained.

Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, dashed back from a controversial conference of right-wingers in Brussels so she could fire her latest salvo against Mr Sunak.

But the most high-profile and public rebel during the six-hour debate was former prime minister Liz Truss, who made a speech lashing out at "virtue-signalling" and "finger-wagging, nannying control freaks".

Read Jon's analysis in full below...

After the government's bill to stop young people ever smoking passed its first hurdle in the House of Commons, Labour's shadow health secretary spoke to broadcasters with his party's view.

Wes Streeting said Labour has "led the debate on phasing out smoking in our country and making sure this generation of children and young people grow up in a smoke-free Britain".

He said: "It is thanks to the votes of Labour MPs we got this measure through the House of Commons today because of the size of the Conservative rebellion."

"Labour is proud not to play politics on the vote. We will get this bill through as quickly as possible. So let's get our skates on, get it through the Commons, get it through the Lords and get it under the statute book."

He pledged that Labour will implement the ban if it forms the next government.

Mr Streeting also said the government has been "slow to act" on the "explosion in the number of children and young people vaping", which he said will have "serious consequences" for their health, and also for their education, as "kids are skipping school to go and vape".

By Becky Johnson , communities correspondent

Immigration enforcement staff have had their leave cancelled as the government hopes its plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda will become law this week.

Speaking to Sky News, Lucy Moreton from the ISU, the union for borders, immigration and customs, said the staff who will be expected to arrest and remove people still know very little about how they will be expected to force people on to planes.

She said immigration enforcement officers have had all leave cancelled for six weeks, beginning the week after next.

Initially, they had been told leave was cancelled from next week but that has been delayed.

Read the full story here:

The IMF is reporting that the UK economy is going to be growing less than expected this year, and we asked Labour's Jonathan Ashworth how concerned he is about the statement of the economy.

He said growth has been "anaemic", and blamed the Conservatives for the cost of living crisis.

"And then today you've got Liz Truss parading around the studios, asking people to congratulate her for the action she took."

"But the serious point is that the Conservatives haven't learned the lesson. In Liz Truss's book, she's talking about abolishing national insurance. That's exactly the policy. Rishi Sunak has adopted."

Sophy Ridge pointed out that it is a long-term ambition, and he replied that he has not yet explained how he will fund it.

"He's got to explain how he's going to fund a £46bn commitment to get rid of National Insurance. Is it borrowing, putting pressure on mortgages? Is it cuts, the NHS, the state pension, or is it more tax for pensioners?

"Until he explains that, people can conclude he's making exactly the same mistakes that Liz Truss made."

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