"DO HARD THINGS - THE MYTH OF ADOLESCENCE"

What do you know about elephants?

Do you know anyone who owns an elephant? Neither do we. We grew up with all the usual pets. Some unusual ones too—rats, snakes, wild ducklings, turtles, salamanders, a great horned owl, even a baby white-tailed deer. But we never had an elephant. That didn’t stop us from dreaming. We could just picture it: Some kid would brag, “Hey, our family just got a dog! A purebred schnauzerdoodle-something! He fetches and sits and everything!” “That’s great,” we’d reply. “Our family just got an elephant.” From that moment on, we’d be twin rulers of the playground. “Hey, bring your purebred schnauzerdoodle over sometime. Bet our pet can sit on your pet.” Or something like that.

When we got older, we learned a bit more about elephants. For example, in certain parts of Asia, farmers still use elephants to do much of their heavy labor. Elephants pull stumps and trees out of the ground, haul logs, and carry heavy loads. They’re good at it too, because not only are they enormous, they’re also incredibly strong. Some countries hold “elephant festivals” to celebrate the strength, agility, and intelligence of these mighty animals. Handlers enter the elephants in games of basketball and soccer—with giant balls. Elephants perform choreographed dances to music. But the main event is a game of tug of war between an elephant and one hundred grown men.

Let’s think about this for a moment. We’re half-Japanese, so let’s say the average Asian man in this tug-of-war competition is our size—about 135 pounds. Not too impressive (we’re working on that). Still, when you multiply that by one hundred, that’s six whole tons. Plus, the men aren’t just standing around. They’re digging in their heels and pulling. But the elephant still wins—every time. Do Hard Things (pp. 26-28). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

What are teenagers known for?

Could it be that we and most young people we know are like that elephant—strong, smart, holding incredible potential, but somehow held back by nothing more than a piece of twine? Left almost powerless by a lie? We think so. And we’ve come to believe that a big part of what holds us back as a generation is a harmless-sounding but very powerful idea we call the Myth of Adolescence. Do Hard Things (pp. 28-29). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

How long has the word “teenager” been around?

The word teenager is so common today that most people don’t even think about it—and if they do, it’s usually not positive. According to the dictionary, a teenager is a person between the ages of thirteen and nineteen years old. There’s a good chance you fall in that category. Like most teens, you attend school, have a MySpace or Facebook profile, and are more likely to take a photo with your phone than with a camera.

But would it surprise you to find out that at one time teenagers didn’t even exist? Don’t believe us? How about a pop quiz?

The first documented use of the word teenager was:

(a) Tyndale’s first edition English New Testament in 1526. (

b) Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in 1623.

(c) Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1739.

(d) Theodore Roosevelt’s Strenuous Life speech in 1899.

(e) A Reader’s Digest issue in 1941.

(f) Alex and Brett made it up for this book.

The answer is (e). That’s right, the word teenager has been around for less than seventy years. Do Hard Things (pp. 29-30). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Examples -

George -

George was born in northern Virginia in 1732 to a middle-class family. When he was eleven years old, he lost his father. Even though his peers never considered him very bright, he applied himself to his studies and mastered geometry, trigonometry, and surveying (think algebra and calculus) by the time he was sixteen. At seventeen years old, George had the chance to put his studies to use at his first job. Talk about a job! Official surveyor of Culpeper County, Virginia. This wasn’t a boy’s job, and it certainly wasn’t office work. For the next three years George endured the hardships of frontier life as he measured and recorded previously unmapped territories. His measuring tools were heavy logs and chains. George was a man at seventeen. Do Hard Things (p. 31). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

David -

David was born in 1801 near the city of Knoxville, Tennessee, where his father was serving in the state militia. At ten years old, David began a career at sea, serving as a naval cadet on the warship Essex. At eleven he saw his first battle. At age twelve, David was given command of a ship that had been captured in battle and was dispatched with a crew to take the vessel and its men back to the United States. On the journey home, the captured British captain took issue at being ordered around by a twelve-year-old and announced that he was going below to get his pistols (out of respect for his position, he had been allowed to keep them). David promptly sent him word that if he stepped foot on deck with his pistols, he would be shot and thrown overboard. The captain decided to stay below. Do Hard Things (pp. 31-32). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Clara -

Clara was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, on Christmas Day, 1821. She was the baby of the family, with ten years separating her and the next youngest. She was a timid child, so terrified of strangers that she was hardly able to speak. Then something happened that would change her life forever. When she was eleven years old, her older brother David fell from the roof of a barn and was seriously injured. Young Clara was frantic and begged to help care for him. Once in the sickroom, Clara surprised everyone by demonstrating all the qualities of an experienced nurse. She learned better than anyone how to make her brother comfortable. Little by little, the doctor allowed her to take over all of his care, with his complete recovery lasting two years. A year later, at the age of fourteen, Clara became the nurse for her father’s hired man, who had come down with smallpox, and then to more patients as the epidemic spread through the Massachusetts village where she lived. Still shy and timid, her desire to serve others drove her to overcome her fears. By age seventeen she was a successful schoolteacher with over forty students—some nearly as old as she. Do Hard Things (pp. 32-33). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Conclusion -

All three of these young people were given increasing levels of responsibility at early ages, and they not only survived, they rose to the occasion. Even more important, as the quote we shared from Professor Heer shows, at the time in which they lived, young men and women like them were not all that unusual. Do Hard Things (pp. 32-33). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The problem -

For the powerful elephant, a shackle looks like a piece of twine. For young people today—a powerful, educated, and unusually blessed generation—our shackles hide in simple, deadly ideas like “adolescence” and “teenager.” Are you ready to set yourself free by changing how you think? Do Hard Things (p. 34). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

With all this money and attention focused on teens, the teen years are viewed as some sort of vacation. Society doesn’t expect much of anything from young people during their teen years—except trouble. And it certainly doesn’t expect competence, maturity, or productivity. The saddest part is that, as the culture around them has come to expect less and less, young people have dropped to meet those lower expectations. Since most of us have grown up surrounded by these low expectations, meeting them is like breathing to us—we never give it a thought. And we never realize what we’ve lost. Do Hard Things (p. 36). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Recently, we decided to Google the words teens and expectations to see what came up. The results were far more entertaining than we would have imagined. Most web browsers have a built-in Google search box, and as you type in your search terms, it gives you suggested searches based on terms that are used most often. Here are some of the suggestions it gave us as we tried to Google teens and expectations: • teens and drugs • teens and alcohol • teens and smoking • teens and drinking • teens and marijuana • teens and cell phones Even Google has low expectations for teens! Anyway, we did our search. Do Hard Things (p. 37). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Are teens driven by expectations? If so how and why?

Don’t miss this: statistically the classes were exactly the same. The only difference was in what their teachers expected of them. Soon, the students began to meet those expectations. The “best and brightest” class began to excel, and the “slower to average” class began to lag behind. As teens, we’re no different from the middle school and college students in those studies. For all of us, expectations are a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the words of Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, “Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.” Do Hard Things (pp. 40-41). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

What does the Bible say about Teens -

You might wonder what the Bible has to say about adolescence. The answer is simple. Nothing. You won’t find the words teenager or adolescence anywhere in Scripture. And you won’t find any reference to a period of time between childhood and adulthood either. Instead you’ll find the apostle Paul writing in 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” Notice what he didn’t say. He didn’t say, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But then I became a teenager and I looked like an adult, I sounded like an adult, but I still acted like a child.” No! He said, “I became a man, and I gave up childish ways.” Do Hard Things (p. 42). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

1 Corinthians 13:11 NASB95

11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

1 Timothy 4:12 NASB95

12 Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.

So what?

Here’s how it works. When the elephant is still young, his owner takes him from his mother and shackles him to a large tree—with a heavy chain around his right hind leg. For days and weeks, the young elephant will strain and pull, trying to break free, but all he succeeds in doing is causing the shackle to cut deep into his leg. Eventually he gives up and accepts the idea that he can’t go anywhere when there is something around his right hind leg. Soon the owner can replace the tree with a post and the chain with a piece of twine. Once the elephant feels resistance, he stops. There’s nothing but a piece of twine around his ankle, but there are heavy shackles around his mind. Do Hard Things (pp. 44-45). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

In this book we hope to demonstrate that we—Alex and Brett, you, teenagers everywhere—are like that elephant. We have proven strength and God-given potential—the potential to do hard, important things—but we are held captive by a lie. We have been conditioned to believe what is false, to stop when things feel hard, and to miss out on God’s incredible purpose for our teen years. In the chapters that follow, we want to show you that deep down you want to do hard things, that you were created to do hard things, and what’s more, you can do hard things. What you’ll discover is a whole new way of living your teen years and of living the rest of your life. God’s Word and all of history demonstrate that we are far more capable than we think. This world is trying to trap you by tying its pathetic piece of twine around your ankle. We want to help you break the twine. This is what we call the Rebelution: throwing off the shackles of lies and low expectations and returning our generation to a true and very exciting understanding of the teen years—not as a vacation from responsibility but as a launching pad for the rest of our lives. Do Hard Things (p. 45). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

As we have seen in this chapter—and as you no doubt know from personal experience—we live in a culture that wants to tell us how to act, how to think, how to look, and how to talk. It tells us what to wear, what to buy, and where to buy it. It tells us what to dream, what to value, what to live for—and it’s not Christ. To quote an old Pepsi ad from the nineties, “Be young. Have fun. Drink Pepsi.” Nike tells us, “Just do it.” Sprite tells us, “Obey your thirst.” And who hasn’t heard the joke that 92 percent of teens would be dead if trendsetting Hollister decided breathing was uncool? Do Hard Things (p. 43). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

1 Corinthians 14:20 NASB95

20 Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature.