Navigating Adolescence: Understanding Personal Adjustment Through Subjective Well-being, Self-Control, and Self-Concept

The accomplishment of personal adjustment, is the process through which people adopt actions and attitudes which help them be comfortable with themselves and to interact harmoniously with the individuals around them, the society at large, is a difficult struggle in all phases of individuals' lifespan. It is most challenging during the adolescent stage of life, characterized by several changes physiologically, intellectually, emotionally, and socially. During this stage, people are supposed to cultivate a critically significant developmental task- steady individuality. Besides the usual challenges encountered by these individuals generally, for example, discrimination both formally and informally. They handle unique challenges that may affect their capacity to achieve personal and social adjustment and attain a constant identity (Agbaria, 2014).

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Some of the factors that facilitate personal adjustment include; subjective well-being and self-control. Subjective well-being speaks of individuals' subjective evaluation of the value of their lives, cheerfulness, and gratification, and the in-depth assessment of their internal experiences in several fields (Diener, 2009). It is founded on emotional responses and intellectual judgments; it thus involves attitudes and self-evaluations of contentment and cheerfulness generally and linking to particular features of life. It has been found that people of high subjective well-being levels have more nourishing relations and a more extensive capability to bond with other individuals, support and understand them, work with them, act dully and selflessly to them and solve disputes proficiently. Therefore, young people with high levels of subjective well-being can cope better with their life situations and adjust accordingly (Gross & Ben, 2016).

Secondly, Self-control is grounded on mental abilities, cognitive structuring, strategies of solving problems, control of speech and self-regulation, and self-confidence in one's aptitude to control feelings and emotions (Natur, 2018). It enables people to choose proper conduct that would help them to meet their goals. It is a variable that can eliminate violent behavior, decrease dangerous behavior, and help individuals cope with worry, and advance subjective well-being (Agbaria, 2015).

Self is a product of conditions and behavior shaper as well, in different circumstances. The logic of who a person is was and will turn out to be and consequently the route they should take in this life is a basic self-project. Self and personality theories assume that individuals are concerned about themselves, strive to know who they are, and should use this self-knowledge to understand their purpose in the world. Self and personality are foreseen to impact what individuals are enthused to do, how they reason and perceive themselves and others (Oyserman & Elmore, 2012).

The act of reflection on oneself is a common deed and a psychological activity as well. It brings the need for an 'I' which can take an object which is 'me.' The self comprises of both an actor who contemplates ('I am contemplating') and also the object of contemplating ('about me'). Further, the actor can contemplate and is conscious of doing it. Another way of explaining these aspects (contemplating, being aware that you are contemplating, and the self-being the object for contemplating) is by using the phrase 'reflexive capacity.' Therefore, if we say that the self is an 'I' which contemplates and a 'me' which contains these contemplations, a significant part of this 'me' content includes psychological perceptions or concepts of who a person is, was, and who they will be on future.

Psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow have had a lot of influence in promoting this same concept of the self. According to what Rogers holds, every person struggles to acquire an "ideal self." He firmly believed that individuals self-actualize when they prove that they can realize their aims and longings. Still, to achieve their fullest potential, they must necessarily have been raised in favorable environments consisting of "realness, acceptance, and compassion." However, failure to associate with people with healthy characters will inhibit the persons' growth, "like a plant that has no water and sunlight." This will affect the person's process to achieve self-actualization. Rogers also postulated that psychologically wise individuals actively avoid roles that are fashioned by other people's expectations. They prefer looking within themselves for authentication, unlike the anxious personalities whose self-concepts are not in line with their experiences and are hesitant to admit that their personal experiences are valid (William R,2018).

In his theory, 'the hierarchy of needs,' Abraham Maslow used the self-actualization concept. In `the same theory, Abraham elucidated the process that a person undertakes to realize self-actualization. He claims that if a person has to get to the advanced level of development needs, they must primarily achieve minor "deficit needs." Once they achieve their "deficiency needs," they aim to realize the next stage, which, according to Abraham, is the "being needs." Maslow observed that when people grow to this level, they mostly tend to "grow as a person" and attain self-actualization. Nevertheless, those that encountered adverse events at the lower levels are prevented from climbing up through the hierarchy.

In conclusion, individuals do have a sense of knowledge of themselves, although what accurately it refers to varies from condition to condition. The same way animals vary: some being softer and more friendly than others but sharing a crucial 'animalness,' people don't always behave the same, but to some extent, they are just the same. Inflexibly separating yourself into justly different units with numerous behaviors is unusual and is viewed as a psychological sickness.

References

Agbaria & Natur, (2018). The relationship between violence in the family and adolescents aggression: The mediator role of self-control, social support, religiosity, and well-being. Children and Youth Services Review, 91(C), 447–456.

William R.; Sullivan, Diane M. (2018). "The Influence of Gender, Self-Identity andOrganizational Tenure on Environmental Sustainability Orientation." Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship.

Oyserman, D. & Elmore, K. & Smith, G. (2012) Self, self-concept, and identity. J. Tangney and M. Leary (Eds). The Handbook of Self and Identity, 2nd Edition, pp 69-104.