Self-Love: Help Teens & Adolescents Embrace Self-Acceptance, Practice Mindfulness, Manage Stress & Overcome Insecurity Through Practical Daily Self-Love Techniques

By V.S.L. MUMUNI

Inspire your teen to discover the power of self-love, beat impostor syndrome, and unlock their inner confidence.

Beautifully written with a heartfelt and authentic tone, this practical handbook for self-love seeks to provide teens and adolescents with the support, guidance, and encouragement they need to finally learn to embrace themselves. With honest guidance and meaningful strategies designed to help you elevate your self-image, teenagers will learn how to embark on a journey to self-confidence and ignite a new fire of self-esteem.

No matter your age or what challenges you're currently struggling with, these lessons provide actionable ways to cultivate your inner world, let go of harmful emotions and self-sabotaging thoughts, and stop letting the opinions of other people hold you back. This book is an essential guide for any teen who is going through a rough time at school, as well as for parents or educators who want to raise happy, emotionally healthy adolescents.

Here's just a little of what you'll discover inside:

Why It's So Hard To Be Young: How You Can Succeed In School and Beyond

Powerful Strategies For Developing Emotional Intelligence and Deeper Awareness

A Practical Path To Self-Acceptance: How You Can Stop Undervaluing Yourself and Defeat Limiting Mindsets

The Truth Behind Impostor Syndrome – How To Finally Feel Like You're Good Enough

Tips, Tricks, and Self-Affirmations For Driving Positive Change at Home, School, In Your Social Life, and More

If you've been struggling to love yourself, or if you're grappling with feelings of constant insecurity and doubt, this book provides a much-needed breath of fresh air. It gently reminds you of your positive qualities, inspires you to implement self-love strategies, and provides you with a roadmap to an enriched self-image.

Are you ready to begin your path to self-love? Then scroll up and grab your copy today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: V.S.L. MUMUNI
• Release date: Oct 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9788293968108

V.S.L. MUMUNI

V.S.L. Mumuni is a life-long learner who champions education as a powerful means of effecting social change. With a wealth of experience across the global sector, she has dedicated her time as a devoted teacher, held a Teaching Assistant position at a university, and worked as a Senior Research Assistant. She now works as a special consultant  Armed with a degree in Developmental Studies, master’s degrees in both Sociology and Peace and Conflict Transformation, and a PhD in Public Health, her hope as a dedicated mentor and author is to inspire young readers to make intelligent choices. The author of a wide range of thought-leading self-help books, and captivating fictional stories that tug at the hearts and minds of readers, V.S.L. Mumuni strives to inspire budding visionaries to become a force for good and make a positive mark on the world.

Book preview

Introduction

Oh, to be young. What an interesting journey that is. Now, I can already imagine what you’re thinking: What a cliché way to start a book. Or, if you weren’t thinking it, then maybe now that I have mentioned that it is cliché, you’re thinking that it might really be cliché after all. Worry not—this book doesn’t aim to be a cliché repetition of everything you already know. Being young and loving yourself is a tough job. It’s one that requires a lot of effort, a lot of eye-rolling, and a lot of self-awareness. Regardless of how tough it may be, it’s still a task that needs to get done. To love others, be successful, and enjoy life, you need to learn to love yourself for who you are.

Before I go any further, let me tell you a story a friend of mine shared with me about her own story of self-development and finding love and appreciation for herself. When she was in high school, she truly struggled. She wasn’t the popular kid, and she certainly wasn’t the person everyone wanted at their party. She was that weird kid with a parent who was a teacher at the school, so any sight of her meant the things that would happen behind closed doors on Friday and Saturday nights could end up being heard in the headmaster’s office. As you can imagine, it made her life quite difficult. I’ll spare you the talk of the childhood traumas she went through, but this is just to give you an idea: my friend had it rough! She struggled to love herself because, truly, she struggled to find anything to love. She hated how she looked—and that’s normal in high school because we all go through a tough time figuring out who we are when our bodies begin to change—and she felt like she annoyed everyone. She also had a bad case of an inferiority complex, because even though she had good grades and wasn’t hated by her teachers, she somehow positioned herself as someone who had no clue of what she was doing in life. Her other friends were off to university, and in the meantime, she was lost. She didn’t have a clue. All she knew was that she didn’t like who she was, who she was becoming, and that something needed to change.

At first—and remember, this all happened when apps like Instagram were just starting to emerge—you start asking yourself: What do I need to do to become like this cool person I see on Instagram? Why does she have pictures of Hawaii with the pretty background, the hot boyfriend, and the seemingly endless budget? Why does this other person seem to have it all together at university when I barely know what I’m going to make for breakfast? And, importantly, Why am I so good at seeing how amazing others’ lives are, but so terrible at seeing my own positive traits?

See, self-love isn’t about journaling and having a vision board or saying your affirmations. Yes, of course, it can be reinforced by these kinds of activities, but self-love is something that first has to be developed within you. You need to believe in the fact that you should love yourself before you can start making any kind of progress. If you are sitting there asking yourself, What is there to love? Start here: you have chosen to read this book, so you are clearly dedicated to making progress and establishing a version of yourself that you do, indeed, love. You have the agency to make that decision today.

Yes, it’s hard to be young. Yes, you end up questioning everything. Your friends start talking about marriage when you haven’t even had a long-term relationship yet, and then some of them get pregnant. Then, you ask yourself: Am I on the right track? Should I be doing something else? Why are they doing all of this while I can’t seem to have it all together? Am I the only one who honestly has no idea of where I am headed?

The answer is simple: you aren’t alone. The key to being young and enjoying it is realizing that other people are just as lost, confused, and uncertain as you are. Even the older adults will tell you—they never really know what they’re doing. But, I also know that reading this may make you think, Cool, but that doesn’t help. I still want to get my sh*t together. Okay, so let’s do it. This is why this book was written!

Throughout our time together, it is my aim to help you find some self-love. Yes, it’s hard to be young and to love yourself when you see people succeeding all around you. It is even harder to do so when all you see online are pictures and videos of these same people, celebrating and showcasing the best, happiest versions of themselves. As young people, we need to remind ourselves that the versions of ourselves we showcase to others are also the ones we want them to see. In the same way, you do not share the hard days you have had on your social media; others also do not share their hardships. This concept is crucial to developing self-love: once you see how your own view of the world is crooked to fit what others choose to see, you may start feeling a lot less pressured to live up to such unattainable expectations.

With this in mind, we are now ready to start. Throughout this book, you will find concrete tips and tricks to limit negative emotions and complexes from affecting your experience while being young. Similarly, this book was written with the intent of helping new young adults like you navigate the difficult times they may be facing, such as feeling like an imposter at university or work, and how to regain the control you so direly need. Throughout this book, you will be prompted to introduce new routines that help you feel more in control, and evaluation techniques that can be used to measure your progress. This is a book for all young people, from teenagers to grad students to someone who is just young and a bit lost in life; it was created to help people just like you finally feel at peace, gain control, and get some well-deserved relief from the stressors of life.

Chapter One

It’s Hard to Be Young!

In the beginning of this book, I mentioned a few times how hard it is to be young. That’s because it is! Whoever said that high school years were the best years of our lives probably never actually went to high school (or was part of the troop of popular kids). Being young is a difficult challenge, and the number of stressors we face can truly be overwhelming. So, this chapter will take a look at the various stressors you may be facing. Perhaps you are struggling at the moment because you fear how others perceive you, or maybe because you’re being bullied at school or at work. Perhaps you feel lost in life and it’s making you question your life decisions thus far. Whatever it is, let’s discuss it.

Others’ Opinions of Us

We have all been told that we should not give others’ opinions of us any attention. For example, when we are young, our parents often say, Others do not matter, as long as you are happy. And while that is true to a certain extent, the fact that we are expected not to care about what others think of us is, quite frankly, utter bollocks. We are human beings: it is programmed within us to care about what others think of us because we feel the need to belong. We crave that feeling that tells us we are trusted by others and our input is valued. We want to be a part of the community, because in the past, not having this community meant we would perhaps not survive as we would have no team to back us up in combat. While it’s true that we do not have to go off to war anymore or have to fend off wild animals at night (and hence need that community to protect us), this innate need to have people like us is not going anywhere. Maslow explains it as well in his Hierarchy of Needs: belonging is right there, at the very bottom of the pyramid (and hence a core need!). So, what can we do about it if it makes us unhappy? We can learn to be more mindful of it. When we find ourselves being affected by how others see us—such as by changing our actions to avoid feeling like we’re being judged—we can be more self-aware of this reaction. We can ask ourselves: What does it matter if they judge me? While the need to fit in might remain, ‘fitting in’ is very relative to the environment you find yourself in. You can fit in just fine with a group