The Triangle of Self-Perseverance: Confidence, Self-Esteem and Approval

Confidence, self-esteem and approval are all tied very closely. Combined, I call this the triangle of self-perseverance. They are interwoven and when out of balance, we can't be the best version of ourselves. Like a science project that successfully shows cause-and-effect when elements are evenly poured, so too happens with the proper mixture of confidence, self-esteem and approval. Through building one's confidence we see self-esteem emerge; however, the challenge is where we seek our approval. For many teens, they look to their peers for approval and if they don't receive the acceptance they seek, this can damage their confidence and ultimately their self-esteem. So keeping the triangle of self-perseverance in balance is not easy.

Confidence is that undefinable ability or feeling we have that tells us that we can do it. That we are smart enough or strong enough to take something on, win or lose. It provides us with a sense of self where we are comfortable to try something and not fear failure, but look upon it as a growth opportunity. This builds resilience in all of us which in turn squashes fear and cultivates self-esteem.

Self-esteem is how much you like who you are and how much you accept and respect yourself. Healthy self-esteem can serve much like a shield of armor against the challenges of the world. Self-esteem will change throughout your life, so the key to positive self-esteem is to stay confident in who you are and to surround yourself with good people who give you a healthy dose of reality as well as approval.

Approval or acceptance comes in many forms from interactions with parents, teachers, coaches to friends and colleagues. However, ultimate approval comes from a place deep within that says, "I'm ok with me. I accept me for who I am." Getting to that place can be tough for many of us. During the critical teen years, youth look to their peers more than anyone else for approval. They also need to see this approval reinforced at home and school by caring adults in their lives. This is how the delicate balancing act of confidence, self-esteem and approval come together.

To raise confident kids, we must reinforce their success and failures, give them room to grow and build autonomy. Through this process, confidence will ultimately blossom. Then we must encourage them to take on challenges big or small and praise them for their successes as well as their defeats. This is where their self-esteem will be tested. Remember, valuable life lessons come from failure. As Robert F. Kennedy said, "Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly." Encourage them to keep going, teach them perseverance and resilience will follow. Ultimately, they will grow strong, trust in themselves and look inward for approval. Through this symmetry self-perseverance will ultimately be found.

10 Activities to Build Your Kindergartener's Self-Confidence

Everyone can benefit from more self-confidence.But very young children need some guidance as they learn to believe in themselves. As adults, we can help our children with the important task of developing self-confidence.

To help your kindergartener develop their belief in self, model confident behaviors and tell them how important they are. They’ll begin to realize that everyone has value, regardless of whether they are big or little, old or young. That’s a great lesson for anyone to learn!

Physical Activities to Build Self-Confidence

For kindergarteners, there’s nothing better than the approval of their parents. You can show them that approval by helping them discover their own physical capabilities.

Try these ideas:

1. Encourage a sport - but avoid forcing your child to play something he or she doesn’t enjoy.

2. Make time for you and your child to play together each day.

3. Avoid sheltering a child so much that they don’t get to interact with others. Learning appropriate social interaction behaviors is critical to building their confidence!

4. Encourage a healthy weight by eating right and getting exercise. Make exercise time fun.

5. Set a good example by not smoking, drinking, or overeating.

Your kindergartener will learn a lot from the example that you set, the time you spend together, and the encouragement you give them to try new things and explore the world. As long as you don’t push them too hard, they’ll feel empowered to choose what they like and to learn from those choices.

Mental Activities to Build Self-Confidence

Mental prowess is important for self-confidence, too. Some people have more natural intellectual aptitude than others, but all people can learn. Regardless of where your kindergartener falls on the IQ spectrum, you can help them realize their full potential.

Consider these activities:

1. Involve your child in age-appropriate games that stimulate the mind.

2. Talk with them in an intelligent manner, instead of using baby talk.

3. Encourage your child to ask questions, and answer those questions honestly.

4. Set the example: engage in your own intellectual pursuits.

5. Allow your child to explore the world and be curious about life.

These may sound like simple things to do, but many parents aren’t aware of the impact they have on children. Creating good habits and building confidence at a very early age is a great way to give a child the best possible start in life. As an added bonus, you just might discover more confidence in yourself at the same time!

Kindergarten is a vulnerable time for children because they are being exposed to more people, the structure of a school day, and to new social dynamics. It can be an overwhelming experience! If they have confidence in themselves, they will go farther, be happier, and be less likely to be targeted by others who might not want to treat them fairly.

While you can’t protect your kindergartener from everything, you can equip them with the tools they need to stand up for themselves. By teaching them self-confidence, you give them hope and strength for the future.

Strategies for Dealing With Stress

Identify the stressors in your life. As simple as it sounds, many people aren't even aware of what stresses them out, nor does everyone find the same things stressful. One person's stress can be another's challenge or motivation. Similarly, few people realize how much their own thoughts, feelings and behaviors contribute to their stress. We are each in charge of how we interpret events in our lives. We are also in charge of behaviors such as procrastination, lack of organization, and inattention that lead to deadline worries, not paying bills on time and inability to accomplish important tasks which, in turn, cause stress. Therefore, the first import step is to identify the stressors in your life and the ways you might be contributing to them.

Simplify Your Life. If you are burning yourself out by doing too much, start cutting back on some of your unproductive, yet time consuming and energy draining activities. No one can do everything. Set your priorities and make room for doing what you value and find most important. Equally important is learning to say NO! Delegate and redistribute tasks if you have to, but don't try to do it all. Hire a cleaning service one day a week, get a baby sitter to pick up the kids after school, have a lawn service do the landscaping. Feeling stressed and overburdened comes from taking on too much and not balancing it with relaxation and down time.

Reduce effects of stress by eating well, exercising regularly and getting enough sleep. I don't know about you, but when I'm hungry, sluggish (from inactivity) or tired, I am very stressed and grumpy! Not getting the nutrients your body needs to stay healthy causes both mental and physical stress; so does not getting enough sleep. And regular exercise not only releases tension and stress while you're doing it, it builds stamina and endurance enabling you to handle stress better. Most people totally underestimate the importance of maintaining good physical health to ward off stress and anxiety.

The 8-Point Plan to Increase Patience When the Going Gets Tough

Right here are eight techniques you'll be able to increase your patience whenever you are turning out to be discouraged.

1. Do one thing else. A surfer can curse the ocean due to the fact there is certainly no waves or he can "take a vacation" and go to a film, read a book, discover to whittle till the waves return.

2.Operate on elements of one's aim you'll be able to do. Typically you will find a ton of tiny tasks we by no means get to simply because we don't have time. Now you might have the time, so care for them.

3. Be still - often impatience is something else functioning on you. You might have had an excessive amount of coffee, you might possess a headache.

4.Rewrite your ambitions - commence from the beginning. write down your objective, write down every little thing about it, especially focus on stressing the advantages of reaching it.

5. Do deep goal visualization - If you've got your purpose re-clarified, then be nonetheless (again) and do some visualization of it coming into currently being.

6. Quit…may sound strange..but do a swift exercising in which you list out each of the pros and cons of quitting. Quitting for the day offers you some distance and viewpoint that items actually aren't that poor.

7. Be simple on your self - every now and yet again someone will phone with a issue. They are going to be impatient and contact themselves stupid or moronic on the mobile phone.

8. Pigeonhole your difficulty - what exactly is really finding inside the way? Is it lack of research? Lack of funds? Time? If it's just patience, apply these tactics to deal with it.

The setbacks aren't fun whilst you're having them. But once you make it towards the other side and time viewpoint has set in, you start off to value these setbacks. You might even brag about them! I've mentioned it before, nobody desires to hear a story where you accomplished a goal with no effort. Can you picture individuals sitting and listening with absolute concentrate to hear about about how you employed your millionaire uncle's money to get a new 5000 square ft. residence? Probably not.

These occasions of drama are just as critical because the smooth instances. It's best you've some setbacks along the way and apply patience to them so you are able to handle setbacks later on. Patience during the setbacks helps make you more skilled, more powerful and much better equipped to handle greater setbacks inside the long term.

Setting Goals To Maximize Performance

Coaching "smart" is a lot more crucial than the quantity of daily practice. Also frequently an athlete believes that the much more he or she practices, the a lot more proficient he/she will turn into. Nevertheless, this plan just isn't only ineffective, nonetheless it may also be detrimental to achieving the desired outcome. An athlete who practices regularly and difficult with no an all round strategy will probably be a lot more likely to suffer the effects of overtraining such as burn-out, exhaustion, and increased injuries as opposed to truly bettering functionality. By developing a set of distinct ambitions along with a strategy for reaching these objectives, athletes can much more proficiently use their practice time and even lessen the time required in practice to attain their ambitions. Clearly, this isn't going to imply that the martial artist can attain rank or win tournaments with tiny practice; it means that the athlete doesn't must waste time by means of ineffective practice and by way of the dangerous effects of overtraining.

This matter of goal-setting is especially essential when creating complicated skills this kind of as needed by sparring. Sparring is among the most complicated of athletic endeavors since it requires the improvement of several abilities that should be smoothly integrated with each other to achieve a productive overall performance. In addition, it truly is a person sport so there exists no reliance on other team members. The martial artist needs to become entirely committed for the outcome and in a position to find out him/herself as capable of reaching that outcome. If each of the intermediate goals can be viewed as leading progressively towards the last outcome, the martial artist can feel not simply the possibility, but of the probability of achievement.

The way to Set Objectives

1) To set successful goals, the big difference in between performance-oriented ambitions and outcome-oriented goals must be understood. Performance-oriented goals which focus on achieving particular skills are much more efficient than outcome-oriented goals which concentrate on winning or achieving an outcome. Such targets are far more useful since they are below the control with the athlete which improves problem-solving ability and increases persistence. Furthermore, the athlete becomes far more most likely to value studying more than the danger of generating mistakes. The outcome-oriented martial artist will attempt just tough enough to or attain rank although trying to stay away from the risk of error or loss. This prevents martial artists from really tough themselves to achieve their greatest likely. Outcome-oriented targets do have their spot, even so, in identifying what the martial artist in the end desires to achieve such as acquiring the black belt or winning a tournament. Nonetheless, the performance-oriented targets give him/her the actions to reach that purpose.

2) The following step in objective setting is always to assess the martial artist's current ability degree and to identify what certain skills must be developed further to attain the desired outcome. As an illustration, in the event the martial artist's outcome-oriented objective is usually to win at a point-sparring tournament, he needs to figure out what efficiency elements should be improved. By means of observing his efficiency of tape and acquiring feedback from other people, he may possibly establish that that he wants to throw more rapidly, higher kicks.

3) The moment the specific purpose has been identified, the purpose should then be stated in a optimistic, measurable way that is certainly realistic, but tough. For instance: "My goal would be to boost the height of my kicks by six inches."

4) Target dates are then identified: "My goal would be to increase the height of my kicks by six inches inside the following six months. To do so, I'll have to boost the height of my kicks by one inch a month.

5) The martial artist really should then figure out what would be the techniques to attain this aim. For the above illustration, she might make a decision to increase flexibility teaching and to practice increased kicks on a target bag which permits her to measure the height.

6) Because the martial artist functions toward his aim, he ought to record his progress and share it with other folks. The approach of sharing the goal and progress with other individuals increases his commitment and makes it possible for others to offer him encouragement.

7) Ultimately, the martial artist really should have a reward system in spot when objectives are accomplished. This encourages comply with by way of and also the development of future targets.

Improving Your Child's Lackluster Grades

Parents all around the world can attest to the difficulty of raising children - especially the challenges of unsatisfactory grades on a child's report card. Do you find yourself wishing there was a way to help your child get better grades? Are you concerned that your child isn't performing to the best of his or her ability?

You can't spend every day at school analyzing what is preventing them from doing better on tests and exams. However, you can make some adjustments at home to better prepare them to succeed in school.

These suggestions may be exactly what your child needs to ensure he or she has better grades on the next report card:

1. Cut down, rather than eliminate, playtime. Poor grades on your child's report card could be an indication that not enough time is put into studies or that too much time is spent recreationally. However, the answer isn't to eliminate playtime altogether. It's important that there is balance in your child's life.

· Increase the time spent on studies and homework if your child tends to neglect them. However, more effective use of the time spent may be the better technique if your child is spending time on his studies. Reduce distractions and help explain important concepts.

· Allow more recreation on the weekend so your child can take a real break from the books.

2. Encourage reading. Reading is one of the core subjects that aids in a child's development and progress. However, not all kids like to read the books required by their school because they may not be interesting to them. Try to find more interesting reading formats that will likely catch the attention of your young one:

· Get books that use more illustration than normal; pictures help break the monotony of reading that usually turns kids off.

· Outside of the books that are required for school, choose books with subject matter that will appeal to your child's interests.

3. Provide games that strengthen their weaknesses. If math and problem solving are weak areas for your child, buy games that require more logic and reasoning than normal.

4. Keep meals consistent. Often, if there's too much time in between meals, it becomes very easy for the brain to shut down and lose focus. This happens to children as well. You can prevent this scenario by ensuring meal times are consistent so the brain is always adequately fed.

5. Consider a tutor. Some children learn better one-on-one. It's possible that your child isn't doing well in class because there's not enough attention being paid to his or her needs. Extra classes outside of school will give your child the attention needed to truly grasp concepts and understand a subject.

These tips will help you steer your child toward better grades and develop the skills necessary to excel in school. Every child is different, and their needs may change from time to time, so you must remain diligent about finding solutions that work for them. The sooner you're able to pinpoint their specific weaknesses, the faster you can take steps to correct them.

At the end of the day, the more time spent addressing the educational needs of your child, the greater the likelihood they will do well in school! Did you know that martial arts, because of its structure and focus building skills actually helps kids do better in school? Call us today and find out how our martial arts program can help your child reach his/her potential.

Monthly Reflection

I alter the course of my life by changing the way I think.

I am in charge of my destiny. It is up to me to arrive at my desired destination. The choices and attitudes I display today are shaping the future ahead of me. Success is mine because I only allow my mind to envision triumph.

My actions are like seeds planted in the ground; if I want to reap a harvest of blessing, I must sow accordingly. In my past, I may have sown negative seeds, but I choose to weed out my garden and start fresh.

At times, life sends unexpected challenges my way, but I have the ability to turn those challenges into opportunities. I train my mind to think of dead ends as new beginnings.

I refuse to take on the negative image others try to put on me. Instead of thinking of myself as inadequate, I see myself as someone who is creative and full of passion. Instead of giving up on my dreams, I find new ways to make them happen.

Daily, I reflect upon my life and ask myself if my actions are yielding the results I want. Through honest soul searching, I am able to identify the true feelings of my heart. Only when I am honest with myself about how I feel can I enact change within me.

I filter my thoughts because the greatest predictor of my future is the current state of my thoughts. A positive mindset takes me to the place of success. I remain positive because negativity destroys dreams.

Today, I choose to align my thoughts with the picture of the future I hope for. Where I find fear, I pray for courage. In the place of bitterness, I seek joy. I trade selfishness for compassion.

Self-Reflection Questions:
1. Is my attitude hindering me from success?

2. Why do I need to makeover my thoughts?

3. What does my dream future look like?