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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