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I apologize in advance for the incoherence of the relatively short post below
Hey everyone! I'm only a teen and so that means I've been growing an awful lot in the last couple of years alone. I've always been passionate about things and now I've realized how I can start to improve my own life through positive thoughts and actions, it's inspired me that I really do want to help people in my life. If I can achieve goals I set for myself then I know I can work to achieve goals I set for other people.
Basically right now I have a lot of maturing to do, but since I've been starting to think about it recently, I'd love it if some of you could offer me some advice on sort of... where I could start.. I know I'm not really ready yet but it's a goal I think I'd love to work towards. I'm very anxious of being misconstrued or called naive, so it's not necessarily something I want to announce, but I'd just like it if you have basically any thoughts at all on the subject, be it career or study goals that could get me somewhere there or something very small to ease myself into more recently.
To clarify, I don't feel ready to commit too much right now, but as long as I'm doing okay in whatever studies I'm doing, and my diet's good, then I'd be happy to dedicate at least a little of my free time to something.. more rewarding you could say. I've been gaining a lot more confidence personally, but I have a long way to go and that is without a doubt my focus, I just feel this part of the journey I'm taking is opening up the doors in my mind to a less selfish way, even if very slightly, of using my resources.
It could be your views on something more grand, or specific ideas for something absolutely tiny, I'd just like to hear the opinions of my elders who know a lot more about this than me. Thanks a lot for reading.
P.S: I care about emotional and similar issues a lot, is there a way I could sort of understand how to apply myself here in a non-professional sense? I know I sound like a complete and total twat, but that's why I'm posting here really, it's just something fairly new that's been on my mind.
Tl;dr: Help me do good I'm bad at it atm D:
 
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I think it's a good idea to look around you in your immediate vicinity to begin with. Try to see what kind of needs that exists close to you. Then try to learn more about the subject you find and talk to people about the specific situation, that way you can build up a stronger passion for it and then perhaps use this passion to take action in some way. In my experience, passion is one of the biggest qualifications for "doing good", and if it doesn't come naturally, it can definitely be discovered if you search for it.
Just an example to make my thoughts a bit more clear:
Lets say you have a friend who is struggling with some sort of mental illness, then perhaps it would be nice of you if you could read a book or talk to a doctor or something about it so that you can be more understanding and supportive when talking to your friend about it. Do smaller things like that and perhaps in time you will find a greater passion for something that you want to dedicate your life to, for example studying to become a doctor or whatever. ^^
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First tip: Start to do a physically exhausting sport, combat sport or something similar. Learning how to defeat the boundaries of your body will make it easier to cope with future personal problems. You will personally grow with every bit of progress you fought hard for.
Will help you in the future as people will expect much more from you once you are done with highschool/college. You will just realize that the ratio between leisure time/work gets muuuch worse for you. Doing "hard" sports will help you to deal with the harsh conditions on the labour market in the future. You will internalize the important, self confident thinking "yeah I can do that", which will be of great help regardless of the nature of your future endeavors.
If you like books more than physical activity (TL is a community with loads of nerds afterall) you could read Seneca the senior. Reading his work will lesser the feeling of self importance many young people carry, although we live in atomized societies in which the individuum is basically useless. His thoughts will teach you that you need to focus yourself on tasks you deem important. Doing things half assed serves nobody, whining about circumstances you have no influence on doesn't help you. If you internalize this thinking and try to do the things you care about as good as you can, the way will become the goal. Work will no longer be work, but a way to do your task or achieve your goal.
As the point before both these things will help you to do your best in the things you care about, which things you deem important you have to find out for yourself. Hard for other people to give tips on that, self reflection should help you to find out more about your goals/wishes.
Edit: Forgot the conclusion after the text: Start to work on yourself first. Only when you become "stable" enough you can invest time/ressources and power into others. Many people who work in "helping" jobs in elderly care, cancer stations etc. burn out after some time. Their surroundings simply take their toll, you need to "harden the fuck up" first before you can really invest into helping others.
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Basketball is part of what I've been doing a lot of recently ^. I know the hours of hard sport a week doing that have indeed been a big part of my changing experience  Honestly, it feels easy compared to plucking up the motivation to actually take part in activities like that after having what I'd consider very much emotionally unstable and depressed early teen years. I have great parents and I'm truly incredibly fortunate in the artists I know and hence are able to learn from though, I've never cut very seriously or attempted suicide, but since nobody I know will read this (I hope), I'll admit it's things along the vein of crying every day, usually at night but often during the day depending on how bad it is, for consecutive weeks and months over the last couple of years. Not doing very much at all, just becoming obsessed with my self and that depressive perception. I consider myself someone who's quite an "emotional" person, but I don't mean that in a self deprecating way, not like a drama queen, just as a way of existence, and that's why other people's emotional issues interest me and I find it especially easy to empathize with them.
I've been listening to the specific artists and people that are most important to me and I think recently, I've grown a lot in transcending, or discarding the ego though of course I'm not close to my realistic potential there yet. These thoughts have come as a mindset of seeing life as simply doing the things I think are important, and that matter most to me, and every action or piece of hard work puts in something towards that achievement in life. Most importantly, growing myself as a person so that I can do this better. There is no pressure though, there's no really bad actions or failures, just a different way of creating your outcomes.
EDIT: 1-2 hours Basketball in 16+ team with a coach a few times a week, so not just shooting around
I still have a lot of symptons of insecurity and because of this my social persona may be awkward, arrogant, weird, annoying, uninteresting? How about all of the above 
Thanks a lot for your posts.
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Sorry, just to make sure, you're asking for help doing good deeds, rather than help working on yourself in general, correct?
If it is the good deeds, go to the nearest Salvation Army/equiv. and volunteer there. They need the help, it's not bad work, it's more involved than just throwing money at them, and it helps your community.
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I support the idea of volunteering with an organization, you actually get a hands-on experience with helping. I'm fond of kids so I joined teams to help at orphanages before, was tiring but worth it.
You also get to practice teamwork and what not, and it looks nice on a resume, so it helps yourself as well.
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On October 18 2012 12:44 targ wrote:
I support the idea of volunteering with an organization, you actually get a hands-on experience with helping. I'm fond of kids so I joined teams to help at orphanages before, was tiring but worth it.
You also get to practice teamwork and what not, and it looks nice on a resume, so it helps yourself as well.
An orphanage would be a great place to volunteer! Something like that could always use an extra nice person. Definitely consider it if you have the free time, rather than "Wasting" the time playing SC2/other video games.
And you are right - if you read my first blog post it shows the tremendous positive effect it had on me in terms of teams/socially(quick summary is that it really helped me break out of my shell). The volunteer hours look great, too. You can easily rack up a couple hundred over the summer if you go in for a few hours(4 or so?) every weekday. 12 weeks * 5 days/ week * 4 hours/day = 240 hours.
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EPT
