Turia Pitt teaches teens about resilience in new book Good Selfie
In the eight years since she was caught in a fire that burned 65 per cent of her body, Turia Pitt has become a poster girl for resilience. Now the athlete and mother wants to share her message with teenagers in her new book.
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Ask Turia Pitt which traits she most wants to instil in her son Hakavai and her answer is spontaneous: “I want him to be happy.”
But then she thinks about it.
“Actually, all parents want their kids to be happy but that’s not very realistic,” she says.
“He might fail some subjects, he may not get on the sports team, he’ll probably have his heart broken and he might not get the job he goes for.”
She pauses again, perhaps examining the catalogue of setbacks she’s experienced in her own precious 31 years.
“OK, if I could instil two traits, the first would be resilience. I want him to know that if he’s going through a hard time then tomorrow will probably be better.”
The other?
“I want him to be kind. It’s such an underrated attribute these days — just being a good human.”
Nailing some of the characteristics and skills needed to flourish in life is central to Pitt’s latest project, a book for teenagers called Good Selfie.
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Full of wisdom, inspiration, grit, reality and that very particular Pitt wit, it’s a must-read for adolescents moving through a stage of life that a lot of adults have either forgotten or fail to understand.
“It’s basically a teen’s guide to a kick-ass life,” says Pitt, who laughingly tells BW Magazine she initially wanted to call it Get High but realised it may be inappropriate for a teen manual.
In the eight years since she was caught in a fire that burned 65 per cent of her body, Pitt has become a poster girl for resilience but more than that she has learned — possibly sooner than many — what it takes to live a good life.
Through her 20s when others were partying, pursuing careers and travelling she was rebuilding her life in a body that looked different and functioned differently to everything she’d ever known.
As such, the athlete, humanitarian, motivational speaker, author and now mother is uniquely placed to share strategies for building self-confidence and getting through the hard times. She says she couldn’t have written Good Selfie before the fire in 2011.
“My accident gave me a sense of perspective over things that are really important. I know life can be gritty and tough and hard but it’s also extraordinary and awesome and delightful and magical,” she says.
“I now know our relationships are the most important things we have and that you have to have a strong enough core to overcome challenges. If we don’t use our resilience muscle, we don’t get an understanding of how strong we actually are.”
Good Selfie is everything a school textbook is not. It’s light on text, quirky in design and talks with kids on their level. It deals with how to get through tough times, how to feel more confident, how to surround themselves with good mates and how to set goals.
There are funny asides, questions from real-life teens and a TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) synopsis at the end of each chapter.
What’s more, Pitt is honest.
“Do you get a little ego boost whenever one of your pics does well on social media?” she asks?
“That’s OK,” she responds. “I get it — that happens to me too! But it can’t be the only way you feel good about yourself.”
One of her core themes — and one she’s been forced to confront herself — is that while life isn’t predictable, it’s how you deal with it that matters.
“Life is 10 per cent what happens to us and 90 per cent how we react,” she says.
“I’m trying to teach kids that they’re in the driver’s seat. The people we choose to spend time with influence our choices and behaviour and we should talk to ourselves how we talk to a best friend. It’s common sense but we don’t get taught it at school.”
Pitt decided to write the book after recognising a common theme in a lot of the questions she was being asked.
As a social media enthusiast, she knew she could relate to kids and she hoped her message of strengthening from within might prove helpful.
“Teenagers are so much more sophisticated now,” she says.
“They’re learning about fashion and make-up and they’re doing STEM and coding but the downside is they’re always connected. When I was bullied at school I could go home and forget about it for the afternoon but these days it’s persistent and extreme.”
Since Pitt and her fiance Michael Hoskin welcomed son Hakavai 16 months ago, she’s gained a fresh understanding of how pivotal parents are in their children’s lives.
“Our kids imprint off our behaviour and you’ve got to know they’re always looking and listening. If you say to kids ‘don’t text and drive’ yet you’re texting and driving then you’re their role model.”
She’s also realised more than ever that her own mood and tone has a bearing on her family.
“If I’m in a great mood and had an awesome day then Hakavai is cruisy as. If I’m shitty, it affects him as well.”
While she employs many of the tips in her book such as practising gratitude and using “self-talk” to replace the negative messages we send ourselves, Pitt is not immune to the tiredness and irritation that troubles most new parents.
She and Hoskin have been together for nearly a decade but she admits parenting has been “stressful”.
“You’re not the sole judge of what is optimal for the child so there’s a lot of compromise but it’s amazing sharing a life with Michael.”
She says her fiance is a great dad and she’s also in awe of his kindness and how that will be modelled to their son.
“There are a lot of things I love about Michael. He’s a kind and beautiful man. He’ll catch a fish and give it to our neighbour whose partner is away — I might not even know they’re away. Or I don’t know that such-and-such has cancer but he will. He’s very thoughtful and kind towards other people.”
Pitt gives in other ways. Despite undergoing more than 200 surgeries since being caught in the grassfire, she’s raised more than $1 million for charity and founded her online life-coaching program, School of Champions. But she wasn’t always so bold.
One of the most affecting chapters of Pitt’s book is where she lists the tough times she’s faced in her own life.
They are challenges kids will relate to: her parents divorcing, suffering from eczema, a classmate dying, changing schools three times, a horrible boyfriend and being told by a teacher she wasn’t smart.
In fact, recently a family friend reminded her that when she was a teenager they’d given her a lift home from touch footy and she’d revealed to them she didn’t have any friends.
“When I look back on it I had heaps of friends but at the time I still felt like that. Being a teen can be a very isolating time. You feel like you don’t fit in and no one really gets you.”
Ultimately, she encourages teens to look forward and have goals.
“If there was one thing I could tell them it would be to dream big,” she says.
TURIA’S TIPS FOR TEENS
Set “champies”
Turia’s word for goals. As she says: “When you set a champy, one that scares and excites you and pushes you way outside your comfort zone — and then you do the work to achieve it — you learn a whole heap about yourself.”
Have a mantra
Use your mantra to get through tricky times and look for “happy tokens” — moments or things you notice that rewire your brain to focus on positives rather than negatives.
Confidence pie
Use the pie in Good Selfie and fill it in with things that give you confidence whether it’s your physical fitness, friends, family, intelligence, sense of humour or giving back.
New friendships
Create new friendships by being the person you want to spend time with. “You have to put yourself out there in new ways, doing the things you love to do.”
Give back
Try helping a neighbour, supporting a cause or volunteering in your community. Says Pitt: “You’ll get a huge hit of perspective — the way you see your life and your problems will dramatically start to change and you’ll start to see the whole world in a different way.”
Originally published as Turia Pitt teaches teens about resilience in new book Good Selfie
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