Building self-confidence can be extremely difficult, let alone as a teenager. As a teen your emotions and attitude are constantly fluctuating, making it difficult to build confidence or even to feel comfortable in your own body.
You must be willing to work on self-confidence as a teenager in order to improve your adulthood. Self-confidence is more than just believing in yourself; it is about learning to voice your opinions and stand up for what you believe in.
Without self-confidence it can be hard to have a sense of purpose or achieve our goals and passions. Creating self-confidence as a teen can be hard when we are around people that do not support our confidence or growth.
It is important to work towards confidence for yourself no matter what other people make you believe. Understand that your confidence will not look like others and that is okay, because we are ach meant to be uniquely ourselves.
Ways to build confidence:
- Review past accomplishments
Look back on all that you have achieved, whether big or small. List 5 things that you have accomplished and are proud of. Seeing our accomplishments can help us to feel more confident in ourselves moving forward.
- Encourage yourself to make your own decisions
As a teen it can seem easier to want others to make decisions for us. Starting to make your own decisions can help you build confidence in yourself. This confidence can also help you make better decisions.
Even as a teenager, your thoughts towards yourself may be overly critical. If what you are saying to yourself would not be said to a friend, then you should not be saying it to yourself.
- Accept imperfections
There is no such thing as perfect. We all have imperfections, that is what makes us human. All you can do is try your best and accept that your best is enough. If you struggle with perfectionism, ask a parent, friend, or therapist for help.
- Set achievable goals
Doing things that make you happy and accomplishing those things greatly improves self-confidence. Stick with your goals to see how far you have come and are capable of going.
- Visualize your future
Visualizing yourself achieving your dreams can be that push to have ore self-confidence. Without the confidence, going towards your dreams can feel unachievable or too difficult.
Self-confidence helps us with:
- Making informed decisions
- Achieving goals
- Creating healthy boundaries
- Lowering anxiety
- Having realistic expectations
- Surround ourselves with the right people
- Feeling ready for life’s ups and downs
- Experiencing new opportunities
- The motivation to keep moving forward
- Acceptance and trust within ourselves
- & Much more
Being a teenager is hard and complicated. You may feel confident one day, but not so confident the next. As a teenager you may criticize yourself daily and not understand why you feel this way. When we have these ups and downs of emotions it can be difficult to stay on track and achieve your goals. Working on self-confidence can greatly increase your mental and physical health and well-being. Working on self-confidence as a teen will set you up for success later and will help you achieve anything that you set your mind to.
This is all easier said than done. Some people grow up with family that does not support their confidence and may even tear their confidence down. If this is the case, it is even more important to build confidence for yourself because others are not going to do it for you.
If you have a supportive family or friends, ask them for help with gaining self-confidence. Take time to review all that you have accomplished and what you are proud of within yourself. These things do not have to be large accomplishments, rather anything that pushes you to want to achieve more.
Remember to speak kind thoughts to yourself always. Self-confidence can help you in many ways such as, achieving goals, making informed decisions, accepting, and trusting yourself, and much more. If you struggle with self-confidence, talk to your parents about seeking help from a trained therapist who is experienced in working with teens.
