Self-Esteem and Your Teen

Would you like your teen to listen to you? Would you like to trust that your teen is making good decisions? Would you like to know how to help your teen break old bad habits and establish healthy new ones—for life? Get unusual perspective from Dawn Jones, a former “troubled teen” herself who turned her life around to become a best-selling author by applying these techniques of self-esteem.

Dawn Jones has had an exemplary career as a high powered professional. She is an international speaker, corporate trainer and business leader. After more than 19 years of corporate and entrepreneurial experience, she knows the secrets to success inside and out. As a professional speaker, Dawn is passionate about helping people reach their goals and live their dreams as well as helping them discover the essentials of communicating for results, building self-esteem and unlocking the past to success. Her recent corporate travels have taken her to Australia, New Zealand and across North America. Her recently published recordings include taking control of time and priorities in organizing your work and life as well as conflict management skills for women. In her free time Dawn travels with her husband to east Africa where they volunteer with non-profit groups to help build a hope and a future for the next generation. Now, join me as we welcome our featured speaker, Dawn Jones.

When it comes to self-esteem and your teen, what do you think about? What comes to your mind? Do you think of your teen and think of someone who has great potential, is kind and thoughtful and has an amazing ability to do great things with their life? Or do you think of someone who seems to be in the doldrums, maybe defiant, or even lying, or lazy – even worthless at times? Perhaps you see someone who is smart, influential, with limitless possibility before them? Or do think of someone who won’t amount to much and must not have come from your side of the family?

My name is Dawn Jones and during our time together we will go over three segments that directly impact self-esteem and your teen along with some steps you can take to raise your teen’s self-esteem. The first segment is what is self-esteem? The second segment, step-by-step technique for improving your teen’s selfesteem for life and then the third segment will be an action plan that you can take to help your teen break bad habits and make healthy lifelong decisions for themselves.

WHAT IS SELF-ESTEEM?

Let’s begin by defining what self-esteem is and what it isn’t, starting with what it isn’t. Now, self-esteem is not a feeling or an emotion; it’s not something that some people have while others don’t have it; in fact it’s not even confidence or ability; as there are many people who seem confident or have great ability, yet their view of themselves can be very low as confidence can be faked and ability can mask insecurity. Self-esteem is simply a neutral tool for measuring what a person thinks and feels about themselves, much like a weighing scale— in a similar fashion, the weighing scale of self-esteem is impartial and unbiased. What a person puts onto this scale will weigh and measure whether they have high self-esteem or low self-esteem.

Two Components of Self Esteem

Let’s take a look at the two components being measured on the weighing scale of self- esteem. Now the first component is “what do I think of myself”? The second component is “what do I think other people think of me?” The reason this is important is because your teen is going through some major life changes. During the teen years, questions of self-awareness swarm around teens amidst a whirl-wind of hormones, individualism and peer-pressure. Now, hormones are the obvious ones, both externally and internally, the body and mind are moving from childhood into adulthood, changing physically, mentally and emotionally. Then, individualism kicks in where your teen is searching out to understand the meaning of life, their purpose in this life and ultimately their place in this world. Follow that up with the constraints of peer-pressure which can collide with the boundaries of culture, community and even their upbringing. What you pour into your teen’s life and their self-esteem during these unpredictable times can greatly influence the type of adult your teen becomes.