6 March 2026
Young people are often not tired, but overloaded. How do you support a young person who gets stuck in the expectations of the outside world? Sometimes one sentence is enough to get them back on course and turn down the noise.
Many young people are not tired from doing, but from having to. In their heads, a hundred voices compete for priority: friends’ opinions, pressure at school, the perfect image on Instagram, and expectations at home. Everything demands attention, as if it is all equally urgent. And that one message you “still need to reply to” stays open all evening. The result is a coachee who shuts down. Too much social noise, not enough solid ground of their own.
In coaching, the conversation can quickly become about planning or decision stress. But the real question runs deeper:
“Who are you, when for a moment no one expects anything from you?”
At that point it often becomes clear that language is missing. Not because the young person isn’t going deep enough, but because the words they use come from the outside. They speak in clichés, or in answers that are mainly socially desirable.
That is where the search for a personal motto begins. For a young person, a motto is not a trendy quote for a poster, but a small, steady anchor. A sentence they can whisper to themselves when it gets tense, or when someone else’s opinion is about to take over again.
Talking about these themes can easily stay in the head. That’s why it often works better to do something tangible. The card game My Personal Motto supports that process: picking cards, turning them over, putting them aside. It creates distance from the inner voice that has an opinion about everything. Step by step, the noise fades and a sentence remains that feels right. And you usually see it immediately: there is more calm, and there is a sentence.
A good motto doesn’t have to sound pretty. It has to be real. It is the difference between a young person who goes wherever the wind blows, and a young person who, even when things get difficult, knows what their own line is. It’s that one sentence that helps you remember who you are, especially when the world asks something else of you.
And that is why a personal motto doesn’t stop at finding the right words. What matters is that a young person can use that sentence when the noise returns. Not as a perfect promise to themselves, but as a compass in difficult moments.
So make it practical right away. Connect the motto to one small action for the coming week:
“When will you practise this?”
That way it doesn’t remain an insight, but becomes something they can do and keep going.
To reinforce that foundation, the Strength Cards for Young People can make visible what a young person already has within them. Where the motto sets the course, the strength cards show: I can carry this too.
Sometimes, during the process, emotions and needs are still too mixed up. In those cases there are cards for the young person that help you choose the right entry point:
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