Riding a roller coaster can be exciting. There’s great big hills, drops and turns that keep your heart racing and you screaming at the top of your lungs. Roller coasters are a great mix of terror and fun.
Self-esteem can be like a roller coaster sometimes. One minute you’re having fun because someone popular thought something you did was funny. Later that day, you feel the terror of embarrassment because your mom came to pick you up from school wearing fuzzy bunny slippers.
Sometimes when it comes to how you feel about yourself, its like a roller coaster. You feel great one moment and down in the dumps about yourself the next.
With that in mind, we’re going to give you some tips to keep the roller coaster ride of self-esteem fun.
- Base your self-esteem on what God says – its easy to look only at others for finding your self-esteem. If your friends like you, your self esteem is good. If your boyfriend or girlfriend likes you, then you have good self-esteem. But what happens if your friends decide they don’t like you? Or what if you break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend? What happens then? Determine to base how you feel about yourself on what God says about you. God won’t ever break up with you or ditch you for someone better to hang out with. He thinks you’re the best!
- Focus on strengths – its easy to start comparing yourself to others. You can see someone who is better at something that you are and get down on yourself. If you decide to focus on your strengths rather than the areas you are weak, you’ll find you’ll like yourself better!
- Realize that a healthy self esteem takes work – Developing a self-esteem based on how God feels about you rather than what your emotions say takes time and work. Its a process of changing your thinking to line up with what God says about you. Don’t become discouraged if you don’t get it perfectly at first. Spend time reading good books to help you in this area and realize that it will take time to develop a healthy self-esteem.
God thinks you’re the best. Learning to rely on what he says about you, rather than how you feel about yourself will help you grow in developing a healthy self-esteem.