According to most people, who include me and many others, self-confidence, and self-esteem are two of the most important things we need in life for personal development. However, not many of us are blessed with an abundance of confidence, and if you’re reading this, then I guess you want to improve your self-confidence and consider teenage confidence-building activities that you can implement in your homes and schools.
Luckily, there are many things that we can do to build and improve our confidence levels, and in this post, I’m going to discuss a few practical activities that’ll help you and your teenagers banish negative thoughts and instead develop healthy self-esteem.
But, before moving forward, it’s important to understand that building and maintaining confidence is not an overnight thing rather, it’s a life-long process. It requires practising. You must keep working on building self-confidence and keep growing in order to achieve that happy life.
Teenage Confidence Building Activities that we can implement
Yet there is good news! You can banish negative self-talk and low self-esteem with empowering activities. So, with that in mind, let’s discuss the 6 really effective confidence-building activities that you can incorporate easily into your daily lives and get amazing results.
1. Practice…Practice and Practice
Practice really does make you perfect. No matter how much you trust your abilities, practising them continuously will definitely improve your confidence and performance. Many of us want to be an expert but we don’t start at that point.
Preparing consistently for something helps you to identify your fears and triggers and allows you to overcome them. The key here is to believe that, with the necessary time and effort you can improve at something that you are not good at. Therefore with school work or a presentation practising new things is what will help you the most. This is a great way to learn a new skill and build your confidence in doing so. We all know that hard work generally pays off in exams and good grades follow, this is as much to do with self-belief and confidence as it is to do with the subject matter.
When you start something you are not an expert and you shouldn’t expect to be, take running for example, when you start you cannot run a marathon, first you need to run for twenty minutes and then improve. Just because you want to be good at something or feel confident about something doesn’t mean that is the starting point. The more you do whatever ‘it’ is the better and more confident you will become.
2. Speak positively about yourself
A big part of building confidence and having higher self-esteem begins with how you treat yourself and how you talk about yourself. If you continuously put yourself down by doubting your abilities and talking negatively about yourself, you’ll actually live up to that.
So instead, always talk positively about yourself and try to be nice to you. Tell yourself that mistakes are bound to happen, it’s okay to make them, but you won’t get caught up, you’ll learn from them and move on.
You can also practice positive affirmations daily. This trains your brain into believing them, and you’ll unconsciously start working towards them. When you are talking or working with teenagers, it is imperative that we speak positively to them and about them, use lots of positive statements. We can make an impact and build confidence in teenagers when we model that to them. As a teacher and mum to teenagers, I see my words as really powerful and they have a direct effect on building confidence.
Sometimes we are really mean to ourselves, and we would never treat others the way we treat ourselves. Therefore be your own friend, one of the best ways to do this is with a gratitude journal and reflect or write a positive statement about yourself each day. Tell yourself all the good things about you.
3. Help someone in need
Focusing more on how you can help others with something can make you more aware of your abilities. The process of making a significant difference in someone else’s life not only provides you with a sense of satisfaction but also makes you aware of your ability to make an impact on the world. This is a really powerful method in creating high self-esteem as you will feel worthy and like an expert. It also helps you become a good friend to others!
Become a mentor, a role model, or a guide to those around you, this will surely help you to increase your sense of self-worth. We all really benefit from having role models in our lives. Schools often can put families in touch with mentors if they feel it will be beneficial, youth workers might also fill this role. Also, consider the adults who are in your children’s lives. I encourage my teenagers to talk to family friends if they need support but don’t want to come to me. These influential friends can all contribute to growing confidence in the teenage years.
On the flip side in addition to looking at who can support you, think about how you can support others, is there some volunteer work that you could do, maybe raise money for a particular situation or charity that matters to you. Doing good is a great way to improve positive self-esteem, it is one of the best confidence building activities out there as it helps you feel valued and that you are giving to others.
4. Have a self-care routine
It’s important to take care of yourself in order to grow your confidence because your physical health is directly connected with your mental performance.
Eat a balanced diet, sleep properly, and indulge in some kind of physical activity regularly. Besides, take regular breaks to relax, unwind, and de-stress. Why not take a day off home learning or out of our busy days and create a spa day at home as this makes a fabulous teenage confidence-building activity.
Looking after yourself is really important as without it you cannot look after others. If we are tired and run down then we don’t feel great and this has a huge impact on confidence and our positive self-image. It is a good idea to set some time aside each week to do something for yourself, it can be a simple activity that you enjoy or just taking time out to recharge.
5. Improve your body language
I know, we don’t like to hear this, but people do judge us based on our physical appearance and our body language. Things like standing tall, holding your head high, arching your shoulders, and sitting up straight, etc really help you to build a positive impression on others.
Apart from this, maintaining a good posture can have a colossal impact on how you feel about yourself (especially in social situations) as well, it makes you look and feel more powerful. Thus, people see you as a more confident person, so they treat you with more respect, which in turn increases your self-confidence.
6. Do one thing that you fear every day
Write down a few manageable challenges in your journal and try to take on one each day. These challenges don’t have to be something that scares you to death, it can be as simple as approaching a colleague in the office to whom you have never talked with before. This helps develop and improve your social skills.
Facing your fears every day will condition you to overcome other types of major anxieties and insecurities. Moreover, this will slowly impart you with the courage and confidence you need to take on a bigger challenge next time one arises.
That’s all from my side. I hope that some of these activities can help you to build and grow your confidence over a period of time. Have any other confidence-building activities helped you to build your confidence? Go on and share the positive things that have helped with everyone in the comments section below.
All teenagers need confidence-building activities and here another mum looks at how to build confidence in young people with additional needs.
