self confidence

Each and every one of us has had his or her self-confidence tampered with in a way or the other. It could be have been as a result of the actions or inactions of our parents, teachers, siblings or even ourselves. Mine was tampered with recently. About two weeks ago, a friend walked into my room and while I stood to give her what she came for, she asked if I noticed how tall I am. I told her I did not and even if I did, it made no difference. Not satisfied, she dropped her bag on the ground and asked if I could pick it faster than she could. I, refusing to the intimidated, moved to the centre of the room and raised my hand to touch the bulb and asked if she could touch the bulb faster than I could. And that sorted it all.
Young adults and adolescents have often associated self-confidence with physical attributes such as beauty, intelligence, sexy figure, attractive abs, and etcetera. A reasonable percentage of young girls try to lose weight in order to gain self-confidence and research has also proven several young lads hit the gym mainly to have a firm body and not feel left out among their peers. Lack of confidence is often deeply rooted in traumatic childhood experiences such as neglect, physical, emotional, verbal or and even sexual abuse. People without self-confidence often see the world as a hostile place to live in, and themselves as its victim.
The question now is ‘how do you boost your self-confidence/esteem?’ Low self-esteem is seeing yourself as unlovable, unacceptable, incapable, inadequate, and/or unworthy of things you do or those around you. How you see yourself makes you create self-critical and negative thoughts about yourself and thereby, lowering your self-worth. I will state three ways that I hope would help you gain self confidence and they are ‘accepting who you are’, ‘maintaining a healthy hygiene’ and ‘staying positive’.
Accepting who you are is the first step to be taken toward building one’s self-confidence. Look at yourself and write down the physical, innate attributes and achievements you like about yourself. It could be your eyes, hair, fingers, honesty, loyalty… you would agree with me these features were created with you and you can do nothing or little to change them. That is just the same way the features that are making you hide in your shell are created with and for you. I know of someone who has a very poor dentition but no one notices the dentition. The focus is always on the wide and beautiful smile he gives always. Learn to define your own image based on your own criteria and not what people think of you. Always have behind your mind no one is perfect.
The second way is keeping and maintaining a healthy hygiene. If you have a low self esteem, it would be almost impossible to motivate yourself to take care of your health and physical look. You don’t have to do it all by yourself, get support from people around you. Taking care of your health does not only involve your physical state, your mental state is also very important. Help your mind to focus on the positive around you only. Remember that girl that said she loves your full eyebrows yesterday. Two weeks ago, a group of young boys said they love your sneakers, focus on that! Talk to your friends, share feelings and experiences with them and you would possibly find someone who would understand and encourage you among them.
If you find it difficult to talk to people that know you for the fear they might gossip about you and further make you sink into yourself, you could try talking to professionals either by going to their offices or speaking to them via the telephone. There are counselors in your schools, approach them. Speak to them. Tell them the cause of your low self esteem and you would obviously note a change. Talking has been seen as a first step to any therapy.
Staying positive is the third step. Learn to avoid negative self talks. Identifying and challenging the negative beliefs you have about yourself {like you are undeserving of happiness, you cannot do certain things / automatically putting yourself down} would have you in being assertive of yourself. Take down notes of every positive thing you did that / the previous day, week, month or year. These things might be difficult to do at first but as time goes on, they will become a part of you. Being positive about yourself would never make you accept less of what you deserve and make you say no when you need to say it to less deserving offers.
Other things you could do are letting go of toxic ideas, living the moment, stop being self-judgmental, connecting to people who love you, setting challenge for yourself and with all these, I believe in no time, you will be able to move from being the intimidated to the intimidator.