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I don't know how this would work with teenagers, but one thing that worked for me is to see that:
1. People rarely have control of the circumstances of their lives, BUT
2. Everyone has the power to control their reaction to those circumstances.
3. Your reaction determines your consequences and hence, to some extent, your new circumstances.
To wit: my brother died. Freak accident, nothing anybody could have done about it. I had no control over the situation, and I was NOT happy about any aspect of it. I could have been angry, bitter, blamed myself, blamed the driver, blamed my brother, gone off the deep end. Instead I chose to forgive and contact the driver who hit him, accept my brother's absence, and change my life so I was living it for myself, which would have made my brother proud.
Another example: your parents are being unreasonable, setting a 10:00 curfew when your friends have a midnight curfew. You can do several things: 1. obey the curfew and be pissed off about it. 2. defy the curfew and get pissed when you're punished. or, you could 1. obey the curfew and keep your other priveleges, 2. defy the curfew knowing the consequences and accept the punishment like an adult. The first two have no power; the second two have all the power.
When you see that you are ultimately in control not of your situation but of your experience of that situation, suddenly you become the ultimate seat of power in your life. You may not always like having to be ultimately responsible for your own experience (sometimes it's easier to blame someone else for things) but in the end, you'll have a much more powerful life.
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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
- Anatole France
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