Throughout high school, I, like many teens, have faced a lot of outside pressure to succeed. Wrapping up my junior year, I found myself struggling to balance AP exams, sports, the college search and standardized tests like the SAT and ACT with “me time.” I started pushing off activities I enjoyed to comply with everyone’s expectations; I quit track to have more time to study for my APs, pushed off getting together with friends and family to work, and brought my homework to lunch rather than talking with my classmates. At some point, I realized that I was just going through the motions and my high school experience was slipping away.

I’ve always prioritized planning for the future and scoffed at advice to “live in the moment” and “enjoy the day” until I realized that the most formative years of my life were slipping through my fingers. Like many teens, I often find myself waiting for the weekend, for summer, for college, for life to come to me. But I’ve begun to realize that happiness is best attained when you stop waiting for it to come to you and instead try to find it in the situation you’re in. How can we teens balance being prepared for the future with finding happiness in the moment we’re in now?

Research shows that 10% of happiness is determined by the circumstances in which you live and 50% of happiness is established by your genes, leaving your actions, attitude, and mindset to control the remaining 40%. When considering the half of happiness which you control, devoting inordinate amounts of time to improving your financial and social situation has a relatively menial impact on your personal satisfaction in comparison to developing the way you approach life.

One method we teens can employ to improve our happiness is appreciating what we already have. We tend to view life as a to-do list in which checking off all the boxes will bring us immense satisfaction rather than a journey in which we find joy as we go along. Although it’s natural for us teens to crave improvement and want to advance to the next challenge as soon as we achieve a goal, pausing to recognize all the blessings we already have and everything we’ve accomplished can help us become content with our lives. The key to happiness for us teens may not be changing what we have but changing how we perceive it.

Another way we teens can find happiness is by putting effort into things that matter to us. Identifying activities that merge our talents with our interests and setting reasonable goals in those pursuits can give us a sense of accomplishment and a feeling of purpose. We shouldn’t let other people in our lives — parents, teachers, coaches — dictate our goals but instead base them on what we enjoy doing and what we’re good at. If we mindlessly comply with the expectations others have set for us, finding motivation and happiness is much more difficult because the only catalyst for our work is the demands of others.

One final strategy we teens can apply to pursue happiness is finding meaning in life, through big and small ways. What kind of impact do we want to have on the world? Finding small daily actions which answer that question can give us a sense of purpose and increase our happiness. For example, I started participating in my school’s weekly pocket change collection because the money is donated to further the education of students in Haiti and I believe giving every child the opportunity to attend school is incredibly important. I now collect coins in a jar on my desk which I donate each week because knowing that I made an impact on another student’s education brings me a lot of joy. We teens should live life according to the values that matter to us, whether that’s making sure all students feel included or standing up for the planet.

My goal for the future is to practice mindfulness. I want to deliberately perform each action knowing the reason behind it rather than blindly follow what is expected of me. To make this goal a daily habit, I need to break it down into small, specific steps. The same goes for all the other ideas we discussed. Happiness is not something that will come to us. If we teens want to be happier, we need to work toward it.

Maria Proulx of Ledyard is a rising senior at St. Bernard School in Montville.