Self Esteem - By Tina Pokuaah

 


                                                                     

  Self esteem

  “It’s hard to improve your self-esteem, when you have so many people to compare yourself too”.

The theme of this month’s blog is self-esteem, having delivered a session with a group of girls recently and hearing them express their honest feelings. It really hit home, and highlighted why it’s important for both parents/carers and professionals to empower young people to develop their self-esteem.

So, what is self-esteem you may ask? Well, it describes how one feels about themselves internally; it looks at one’s self-worth, self-value, etc. It is often one of those words that gets thrown around a lot, making it seem like it is something you can easily just pick up off a shelf. The reality is however, that it takes intentionality and full responsibility to cultivate in one’s life.  



In the UK, studies show 61% of 10 to 17-year-old girls have low self-esteem, while 7 in 10 girls believe that they are not good enough or don’t measure up in some way, with the most common reasons being their looks and performance in school. So how do we address this? The below 5 tips are not an exhaustive list but are a good starting point to encouraging our young people to be intentional in boosting their self-esteem.  

1.       Practicing Affirmations

Positive affirmations are positive phrases and statements that are repeated to help challenge negative thoughts and encourage positive changes in one’s life. We can encourage our young people to choose one or two positive affirmations and read them when they wake up, regularly throughout the day, and again before bedtime. Making positive thoughts a part of their everyday routine!

 


2.       Building Positive friendships

My mum use to say, “show me your friends and I’ll show you your character”. I never understood this until I got older, but ultimately means who we choose to build friendships with is critical to who we can become and what we think of ourselves. The individuals our young people choose to be around shape their personality, the way they think, the way they speak, and the way they perceive the world. Whether they are aware of it or not, the people they choose to pay attention to and consider friends frame their reality and how they perceive themselves with high or low self-esteem.

 

3.       Recognise what they are good at

The reality is none of us are good at everything, but everybody is good at something.  When we encourage young people to find their strongest skills, work on it, use to their advantage, and celebrate it, this is a step forward to boost their self-esteem.

 


4.       Challenge yourself

Encourage young people to come out of their comfort zone, every time they overcome a problem, they would experience personal growth. Challenging themselves helps them grow as a person. And from that growth, they can derive a lot of satisfaction, self-confidence and boost their self-esteem.

 

5.       Be kind to yourself

Teaching young people to be kind to themselves means being their own cheerleader. When they are consistently kind to themselves, they don't need others to validate their efforts and boost their self-confidence, because they can do those things for themselves. They also need to be able to practice self-compassion think about how they speak to the people they love and care about, and then turn that voice on to themselves.

 

Not tackling their self-esteem can have a long-term impact on young people over time. As negative, hurtful or discouraging messages can get internalised and cause them to doubt their abilities and values and seek to find validation elsewhere.



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