Follow the steps to happiness - the three steps are as follows ad offer the very basic keys to simple happiness, and can be a good boost to self esteem. These include getting regular exercise, regular mental exercise - in other words learning new things and challenging your mind, and of course frequent social interactions. Make sure you do each of these 3 thing as often as you can because these three steps alone can lead to a very simple quality of happiness and confidence.
Do give in to Social Pressure - A very female specific issue in regards to self esteem is the massive social pressure that is placed on us in our culture. If you look at the TV, the news, movies, advertisements, magazines, there is a very similar pattern that is telling us that we must have a small butt and firm boobs or else we are unattractive. This whole social misunderstanding is so fundamentally wrong that I could write a whole book on it!
Creating a positive sense of self is as important to the teenage daughter as her reading the "Do not feed the lions" sign at the zoo. Disregarding either can result in losing very necessary parts of herself.How a girl evolves into her adolescent and teenage years with her self esteem intact can be defined as a tight rope walk at times. Self esteem building begins as a child and continues building upon itself one step at a time. If along the tight rope walk of self esteem she finds herself missing her steps, substantial falls and injury may occur.
Whilst self esteem activities for girls may conjure up ideas of getting makeovers and new hair-do's I'm going to try and steer away from that sort of thing as I've found that this is not really self esteem building, but a very shallow way that gives you fake confidence and is no real help in the end. I'm not against dressing up and looking good (c'mon, every girl loves to look good) but it cannot be your source of confidence and self esteem in life as it is too variable, inconsistent and circumstantial.
The initial step in building self esteem back to a healthy level could possibly be the toughest. It requires total honesty with oneself. The mask of deception and false representations of oneself must be taken off and the individual must be able to see herself as open and bare.Some of the masks could be in the form of anger. Anger is a defense mechanism that could be used to protect against others from seeing what is really going on inside of a person. The anger mask is put on when the individual feels threatened in some way. To those on the other side of the mask, the persona of toughness is seen, when actually on the inside of the anger, fear resides. There is also the fear from the discovery of inadequacies being revealed. Beneath the "anger mask" sits vulnerability and perceived weakness.
Another mask could be the mask of the "class clown". This mask also does a really good job of sending the message that an individual is always joking around. Joking around and not being serious keeps others from learning what is really going on inside isn't very funny at all. Laughing at the jokes is a lot better than laughing at the person that hides behind the mask of the class clown. To keep from being perceived as a "joke" the mask wearer tells jokes to keep everyone laughing at those rather than her as a person.
The bottom line and the best advice I can give you about it is that know that true confidence and self esteem does not come from being eye candy, this is a false sense of self image and confidence which will disappear once a woman reaches a certain age. The trick is not to get swept up in this whole "looks is everything" argument. Make sure you look after yourself and feature whatever you cannot fix(aka - if you have crooked teeth, that doesn't mean they can't be clean) as it is normal for everyone to want to look presentable, this is fine.
Something that is a lot more attractive than looks however is a confident attitude. I have countless male friends who have confided in me that a womans attitude can be VERY addictive and override the fact she may not be a barbie doll look-a-like. A woman with an attractive, positive attitude will in the end receive much more attention than a model with low self esteem and the personality of a tree. This is great because a personality you can develop no matter who you are. A final mindset I'll leave you with is "if something can be done I have just as great a chance as anyone else" is a very humble way to go about life.
There is a mask that girls and women put on called the "beauty mask". This mask disguises the many flaws that lie beneath the make-up and name brand clothes. No amount of eye liner and mascara can ultimately hide what the eyes are truly saying. They are saying "I want you to believe that I am beautiful on the outside because if you really saw what I looked like underneath, you wouldn't think I was beautiful at all". Hiding behind the fabulous outfits, fancy beads, earrings, and makeup "beauty mask" is a shallow shield against the truth that screams "I want to love myself, but I don't!"The masks above are just some of the many masks that people wear. In improving self esteem, help your teenage daughter to discover and name the mask that she may be wearing. If you look close enough, you too may even discover that you wear a similar mask or have in the past. The road to self esteem building may be a journey you can take together. Like I said before, the first step is the most difficult because it calls for honesty and removal of the mask.
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