Youth Initiative

We stand our ground

Written by Maximilian Granser, June 2022

Standing your ground is not always easy. Especially as we have our busy and stressful daily life, we tend to forget about the importance of training and caring about our mental health. We might feel like that does not fit into our schedule because we need to work, study for school or university. However, there are multiple ways to increase your confidence and mental strength. A lot of these can be easily implemented into your daily life.

1. Be confident: Being confident is particularly important when it comes to standing your ground. Confidence combined with an opinion on a topic enables you to spontaneously react to unexpected challenges. Building confidence is done by most actions every day, however you can boost your confidence by actively facing and dealing with your challenges as well as saying “No” in situations which you are uncomfortable with. (UNODC Listen FIRST Confidence, 2022)

2. Keep yourself busy: While being sedentary is considered to be unhealthy, there are multiple benefits in keeping yourself busy. Being busy is not only good for your mood, but also decreases the risk of substance use and negative behaviour. (UNODC Listen FIRST Keeping busy, 2022) Activities could be your hobby, something that you are curious about or even something totally new that you want to try out. Excellent options to fight boredom are activities with friends or family as well as physical activities because they combine multiple benefits at once.

3. Be physically active: It’s proven that a suitable number of physical activities is highly beneficial for the human body, heart and mind. Additionally, taking part in physical activities improves the overall well-being and ensures a healthy growth and development in young people as well as a better performance in general. (WHO - Physical activity, 2022) It does not necessarily need to be a high-performance sport - even walking or cycling on a regular basis has a huge impact.

4. Be grateful: Being grateful does not only improve your overall satisfaction with your life, it also helps you to master the skill of self-awareness and self-management. (UNODC Listen FIRST Gratitude, 2022) During your day, there are multiple occasions in which you can show gratitude to your friends, family, teachers and other people and everyone benefits from it.

5. Support others: It is crucial to accept that other people might have different opinions and boundaries as you. Everybody has their own background as well as their own reasons for their decisions. Therefore, being supportive if others ask you for your opinion or support is a key step to a healthy community and strengthens your empathy as well. (UNODC Listen FIRST Empathy, 2022) In some cases, even just listening actively can be enough but you may have a significant impact.

6. Get support: If you feel overwhelmed with your current situation or need an additional opinion, talk to your family, friends or a reference person that you trust. If you cannot or do not want to talk about your challenges with them or you feel like you need further help, reach out to a professional. If needed, this can often be done anonymously and they will be happy to help.

Do not worry, you do not necessarily need to do everything at once. However, if you implement these measures one by one, you are going to have a huge impact on your mental health and general well-being. Personally, I always saw confidence as a key element to standing my ground. Additionally, as becoming more confident often takes some time, keeping yourself busy has proven to be an effective way for me. However, as each of us is different, you can focus on the approaches that you feel best with. For further information and ideas on that topic, I highly recommend the UNODC Listen FIRST website. There, you can learn about additional approaches and find out which of them suit you best.

Sources

(2022, February 27). Retrieved from UNODC Listen FIRST Confidence: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/listen-first/super-skills/confidence.html

(2022, February 27). Retrieved from UNODC Listen FIRST Keeping Busy: https://www.unodc.org/res/listen-first/the-science-of-keeping-busy_html/science_of_keeping_busymrfinal.pdf

(2022, February 27). Retrieved from WHO - Physical activity: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/physical-activity

(2022, February 27). Retrieved from UNODC Listen FIRST Gratitude: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/listen-first/super-skills/gratitude.html

(2022, February 27). Retrieved from UNODC Listen FIRST Empathy: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/listen-first/super-skills/empathy.html

United Nations

Office on Drugs and Crime

Youth Initiative

We stand our ground

Written by Maximilian Granser, June 2022

Sources