Building self-confidence and self-esteem
If you're at an age where most of your peers are in relationships, you might be feeling left out. When every post on social media is a love song to the person they're crushing on, it can be hard to feel special. But there are ways to feel better about yourself and get that much-needed confidence boost!
This blog post will cover things like how to act like a star when you're feeling empty, how to build self-confidence for something that's always been hard for you, and more. And if you want to discuss things on Reddit, please message the mods directly.
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Building self-confidence for something that's always been hard for you To build self-esteem, you need to challenge yourself. When you're doing just well enough in school or work to finish a book, play a game on your phone, or watch some TV, it's easy to feel like an underachiever. You don't want to be the kid who can't play catch or the one who lags behind in school for a while. You want to be the master of your own domain!
You can get just about anything you want with confidence. This includes not just things like that book or game, but also more intangible things like how you feel about yourself and how your friends treat you.
It's important to remember that you need to make a choice for what sort of person you want to be, and face any challenges in it head-on. And when it comes to challenges, there's no time like Christmas for making them hard.
Give yourself a challenge: Aha! I had the idea for my next book, and now that it's time to sit down and write it, I'm dreading it.
The first step in overcoming this is to realize that there is not just one thing you need to work on, but many. I remember when I was younger, feeling like I didn't have self-confidence in school because most of the time it felt like all the other kids were getting As or Bs while I was going home with Cs.
Well, this is probably the last grade where you're getting straight Cs (at least until your college final).
I'd much rather have a kid who does poorly in school but goes home and learns how to do things like play piano, or read books, than I would have a kid who gets As in school because he spends all of his free time on video games.
Do you know what gives the biggest return-on-investment? Not the Cs, nor the As. It's the Bs! And that's why I urge you to focus on learning something new every day.
Trying to learn an instrument? Master that one skill (like how to hold your hand on the keys in a way that enforces consistency). Do some research and teach yourself how to read sheet music. Find a website that teaches note reading and break down the tonal relationships.
And when you're getting really good at it, teach yourself how to play songs (as you're getting even better at it).
I don't know anyone who can truly master an instrument. But I'm pretty damn sure they don't go around saying "Well, my Mom can sing really well! I guess I'll take lessons from her!".
The same applies here: you can be a shy person until you conquer that shyness. You can have friends who will make fun of you for being quiet until you speak up more. You can be too scared to ask out girls until you start speaking up in the random first date conversations.
If you're shy, it's going to be hard to talk to people. But if you have a goal in life, you can overcome this. And if you haven't found anything that truly interests you, I urge you to try out sports. It's a blast once you start it! Just look at the best athletes in the world: they've all succeeded by challenging themselves. They don't just go to the gym and do bench presses because they want bigger biceps; they go specifically so they can lift more weight than anyone else!
I started out playing guitar when I was 11 or 12. I'm not sure if I'm still outplaying my Mom, but at least I can play songs on the guitar and get recognized for it. I remember being able to play something from a video game when I was 11, and the next day learning how to read sheet music. The next week, I was teaching myself how to move my fingers so that they'd produce the notes with the correct sounds.
You can't just play one song and then say "I've learned the guitar!". You have to learn how to sight-read sheet music, how to find your way around a fretboard, how to read chord charts, etc... And you also have to practice moving your fingers on a fretboard with consistency and speed.
This is something I've had to focus on a lot in the last year. I'm still very slow at it, but my speed has increased substantially! It's been massively frustrating and terrifying, but it's put me on a whole new level of confidence.
The same principle extends into more abstract things like self-worth. Say you're playing a game and you feel like you're having trouble. You want to quit playing entirely, because you don't think you'll ever get better.
Conclusion: you won't get better, and that's okay.
You can always play another game. Imagine if you aren't allowed to play another game! You'd just be sitting there saying to yourself, "I wish I could have gotten better at this!"
You have to say "I'm good enough". You can't say "This is beyond my ability". If you keep saying those things, you'll feel bad about yourself and try harder, believing that a goal requires infinite resources and effort.