Finding your self-worth as a teenager is probably the most difficult feeling to come to terms with at that stage of life. If you’re a teenager reading this, make sure you stick to the end. I promise you will love it.
Teenage is a very sensitive period of life. There is so much going on inside you that the outside world seems like a pothole.
This is the time of life when you crave support from the people around you.
There are so many changes already taking place in your body that you might not be familiar with.
On top of that, if there is no one to understand you and your feelings, that is the worst position to be in.
You want your family to understand you and your friends to support you. Some adolescents are lucky enough to have good people around them. Some struggle to get that support.
No matter what your position is, it is necessary to educate yourself. Being aware of these will also help you in coping with them.
The present lifestyle, the work culture, and your dreams above all may bring you to a point where you have to move away from your family. For example, to pursue your higher studies.
The truth of life is you are not going to be around your family forever. This is where self-education can help you to understand your self-worth during your teenage. It allows you to not let your surroundings impact how you see and feel about yourself.
So, let’s get into understanding how you can find your self-worth as a teenager. These are the 6 habits that helped me. I hope they will help you too.
How to Find Your Self-Worth as a Teenager? 6 Important Habits to Build
Self-worth is the value you have about yourself.
It is the total of all the attitudes, beliefs, and thought patterns you have about yourself.
You will meet many people throughout your life. All of them will have different opinions about you. If your self-worth is weak, it will be very easy for anyone to lower your spirits.
A balanced self-worth will help you analyze the kind of opinions you need to take seriously and the ones you need to ignore. It lets you understand what to accept and reject when it comes to criticism from your surroundings.
Building a positive self-worth will help you grow in all aspects of life. On the other hand, a negative self-worth will only form a weak personality.
While many factors contribute to building a strong self-worth, The foundation for building a strong self-worth lies in the early years of your life. Hence, working on it during your teenage years is important.
6 Important Habits to Find Your Self-Worth as a Teenager
All teenagers are confused about what is happening to them suddenly. Some get guidance from their family others just brush their thoughts and queries under the carpet.
What matters is inculcating habits in your lifestyle that can help you build your self-worth.
While some habits will be easier, others can get tricky to follow. Being aware of them can help make life smooth for you.
Let’s understand these better:
1. Engage in Activities That Build Your Confidence
There might be a talent or a skill that you are good at. Never sideline it because you are growing older. That is a big mistake that a lot of teenagers make.
Irrespective of your academic choices, indulge in self discovery. Invest your energy in growing your skill stack because it is something that no one can ever take away from you.
It could be dancing, singing, painting, writing, or anything else. Spare some time from your day or week and keep it locked entirely for it.
My niece is just 13. As an aspiring artist, I encourage her to feed her artistic curiosity and explore her skills.
I know it is easier said than done, but down the years it will prove to be the best decision for you.
How I Developed the Habit of Praising Myself?
I discovered my love for writing at 18 during college. Before I gathered the courage to talk about this with my parents or have a career in this field, I practiced the skill a lot.
Sometimes it was for my Instagram poetry page, sometimes it was for my college projects.
During school as well, I was good at writing essays and speeches. I remember my English teacher often praising me for my writing.
But, it was my lack of awareness and self-education that kept me away from pursuing writing as a career.
However, once I understood that I started spending more time practicing my skill.
2. Praise Yourself for the Good Things you do
Expecting people around you to praise you for every good thing that you do is quite unrealistic. You cannot be praiseworthy in everyone’s eyes for everything you do.
Sometimes, it is better to praise yourself and take charge of making yourself feel happy. There are many different ways to do it.
This includes giving yourself positive affirmations or treating yourself with an awaited reward after your milestones.
In the end, it is important to realize that your self-worth does not lie in what other people say about you. It lies in how you feel about yourself.
How have I developed a habit of giving myself a pat on my back?
I knew from the very beginning that I had good writing skills.
But as soon as we say writing, people connect it with writing novels, poems, stories, and all the fictional stuff.
Very few people understood what blog writing was and how good I was at doing that.
I am fortunate to have a partner who understood this and appreciated me for it from the very beginning. I also discussed it with my parents and they let me do it too.
But should I expect it to become a topic of discussion in family gatherings? No.
I know how good I am at it and I will appreciate myself for every good post I write irrespective of the reach it gets.
This is how you can build the foundation of your self-worth as a teenager, by acknowledging and appreciating yourself for who you are.
Expecting people to applaud your every little achievement is degrading yourself. Because, it all begins with self-respect.
3. Don’t be Afraid to Try New Things
When you are a teenager your parents tend to protect you because you lack awareness of good and bad deeds.
Sometimes, this can cause you to stay confined to your comfort zone which is the worst place to be in.
While it is comforting to be in your comfort zone, as your life goes on you realize that it has only damaged your growth.
Finding your self-worth lies in acquiring the skills that develop your personality.
The present age is probably the best time ever to be alive. You have all the resources and materials you could need to learn new skills at your fingertips.
Use your devices to the best of your potential to support your curiosity and nurture your inquisitiveness.
What if my family doesn’t allow me to do the things that I like?
Some of you may argue that you have a strict family. You might complain that they may stop you from trying new things.
But the truth is: Your family doesn’t hate you, they restrict you only to save you from the mishappening in the world.
But if you do the right things and show them that you are responsible, they will believe you.
There will be some situations where you have to come to common ground with them.
There will be some things that they will understand about you and make peace with it. The key is to begin doing those things.
For example, at 18, I was confused and frightened that my parents would approve of my choice to pursue a writing career. Years down the line, they have not only accepted it but also encouraged me to be a writer and continue this blog as my full-time job.
4. Stay Close to People Who Want the Best For You
When you are young it is hard to spot people who genuinely care about you. The people closest to you are sometimes the people who never want the best for you.
Thus, it is very important to spot people who always want to see you growing.
Such people will always teach you about the things that will help you grow. The unnecessary chatter will disappear when you are around them. They will always motivate you, push you to do your best, and never tell you that it is enough.
Most importantly, these are the people you make feel like yourself without compromising your personality and traits.
Building your self-worth gets so much easier when you have such people in your small circle. Also, it is not necessary that such people have to be close to you, they could be anyone around you
It could be your relatives, neighbors, teachers, friends or colleagues. Anyone.
The task is to keep your eyes open, spot such people, and embrace their feedback or constructive criticism.
5. Vibe Alone
Being alone is not equal to being lonely. To understand yourself and your self-worth, it is important to sit with yourself and make peace with it.
This is possible only if you shut the noise of the outer world and focus on your internal self.
The more time you spend with yourself the easier it is to understand your strengths and weaknesses.
The right actions will help you overcome your weaknesses which will directly increase your self-worth.
Now, vibing alone does not mean that you isolate yourself from the world. It can look like journaling your thoughts in a diary, spending more time in nature, meditating in silence, or having a daily workout routine.
It is about being your own best friend and choosing what works the best for you to vibe alone
6. Taking Care of Yourself
Remember, how as a child you always took care of your most expensive toys?
Well, now it is time to take care of yourself in the same way. While your parents are there for you, you are out in the world to learn, explore, and grow.
Maintaining basic hygiene, looking well-groomed, and wearing clean clothes are the basic healthy habits to inculcate in your daily life.
Physical activities that indulge you in daily movement are a must.
Not just the outer but taking care of your inner peace is equally important. Practicing deep breathing techniques and mindfulness also makes your mind stronger.
How to Stay Away from Things that Degrade Your Self-Worth?
While you indulge in activities that build high self-worth, you will find yourself distracted by incidents or matters that will trigger thoughts.
There will always be people or things around you that will try to bring you down. The key is to become so mentally strong that you let these overpower your thought process and your self-worth
The sooner you recognize them. The easier it is for you to distance yourself from them.
Remember some triggers will be straightforward, and some will be tricky. The important step is to overcome them and never let them affect how you feel about yourself.
Here 5 agents in your surroundings that you should not allow to impact your self-worth:
1. Toxic family members
No matter how good you are they are always there to put you down. They make certain remarks about your appearance, your academic choices, or just about your life decisions in general.
I don’t need to explain how you will feel around them. You are smart enough to catch those vibes.
Such people are bad for your self-worth. These toxic relationships only make you feel degraded. Thus, it is better to maintain a distance from them.
2. Toxic friends
When you are a teenager, friends play the most important role in your life. They are the people you hang out with most of the time.
These are the people who know better than your mom and dad. They know you more than your siblings.
A true friend is not the one who supports you in everything you do, they are the one who differentiates and educates you between what’s right and wrong.
So choose your friends wisely. Because they can make or break your self-worth in the best or worst ways possible.
3. Negative self-talk
Sometimes, you have the best people around you but the negative self-talk within you never stops. Sometimes your perspective about yourself becomes your biggest enemy.
As a teenager, you will experience many physical and mental changes within yourself. This can easily drive you to become a lot more self-critical of your appearance and mental quotient. Instead of being self-critical try accepting yourself more.
For instance, a lot of girls are insecure about their facial hair while growing up. This mindset comes from the unrealistic beauty standards sold by the beauty industry that only men are supposed to have hair on their faces.
Girls try to shave, thread, and wax them because it is embarrassing for them. Sometimes these methods work out but other times it gets worse.
Instead of being embarrassed about facial hair, it is better to learn about it and accept it as a natural part of your physical existence
Talk to a trusted family member before trying new methods, especially when it comes to how you look. That is the best option. Attaching your self-worth to your body image is never a good idea.
4. Comparison
You must have heard it often, comparison is the thief of joy But very few can apply it in reality.
Comparing yourself to other people is the loudest and probably the easiest way to break your self-worth.
Comparison is one thing that sprouts from your insecurities that are usually sown by social media in the present world.
She is such a good-looking girl, why can’t I have such features?
But did you ever appreciate the things that god gave you?
You might not even know but someone could be secretly admiring you.
5. Academics
Being good in academics is a plus. But relying on it for your self-worth is a big ‘no’.
Unfortunately, so many of you might be dealing with academic pressure from your peers, parents, or teachers. But, the truth is not everyone is an academic wizard.
Glorification of my good academic results in my teenage led me to pursue an MBBS degree. But, my high-school report cards recited a completely different story of my inability to study medicine in college. It was just not my cup of tea.
Here’s the full story:
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Hence, please know that following a conventional career or only doing “what people feel is right for you” is not the only way to achieve professional success in life.
Real success comes from enjoying what you do and pursuing those skills every day to polish them. Thus, find your passion.
Your teenage years are the time for you to experiment and let your imagination run wild. Don’t let societal standards define who you are, find yourself, one day at a time.
Conclusion
All this information might get a little too heavy for you, but it’s coming from someone who has had a tough teenage discovering herself.
So, you may want to take it seriously.
That being said, don’t let the quest to find your self-worth, suppress the kid inside you. Keep them alive and have as much fun as you can.
This is the time of life that will never come back. Only when you are happy from the inside, do good things happen to you naturally.
Finding your self-worth is a lifelong journey. It never happens overnight and it never stays the same throughout your life Taking small steps towards it every day is the only way to feel it.
Never try to be someone else, be yourself unapologetically. You might think that your peers are cool but believe me they are admiring you for who you are.
So, worry less and live more. Because no matter how hard it gets, there will always be a bright side to it.
