You Can Do Hard ThingsSample

A New Kind of Uprising

We hear a lot of negative things about teenagers in the news these days. Society seems to have minimal expectations for the time of life called adolescence.

But we believe that teens can grab hold of a more exciting option for these years than the one portrayed as normal. We believe our generation is ready to rethink what teens are capable of doing and becoming. And we’ve noticed that once wrong ideas are debunked, our generation is quick to choose a better way.

Consider these questions:

• Is it possible that even though teens today have more freedom than any other generation in history, we’re actually missing out on some of the best years of our lives?

• Is it possible that our teen years give us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for huge accomplishments—as individuals and as a generation?

• What would our lives look like if we set out on a different path entirely—a path that required more effort but promised a lot more reward?

Here’s good news—life-changing news. Thousands of teens around the country are making the choice to ditch the low expectations society has for them and do hard things. They’ve started organizations to bring clean water to villages in Africa. They’ve led campaigns in their schools to raise awareness of sex trafficking. They’ve cared for a sibling who was sick, made a commitment to memorize Scripture, and stood up for their faith in the classroom. They’ve discovered ways to reach higher, dream bigger, grow stronger, honor God, live with more joy—and quit wasting their lives.

We’ve seen the idea of doing hard things transform “average” teenagers into world-changers able to accomplish incredible things. And they started by simply being willing to break the mold of what society thinks teens are capable of.

Choosing to do hard things doesn’t mean rebelling against institutions or people. Our rebellion is against a cultural mindset that twists the purpose of the teen years into something far different than what it could be. Our uprising won’t be marked by mass riots and violence but by millions of individual teens quietly choosing to turn the low expectations of our culture upside down. Are you ready to join them?

What would it look like in your own life today to rebel against society’s expectations of teenagers?