Are You Not Good Enough?

 “No, I won’t raise my hand everyone will laugh at me.”

 “Why couldn’t I just be beautiful?”

 “I am not good enough!” “I hate myself!”

 “Sometimes I just want to hide somewhere”

 Ali, 19 dreaded the day he entered the gate to his institution where he will be going for the next four years. He didn’t want to study social science; he wanted to be an engineer.

He and his parents had been planning his life and his career since he was 11.He couldn’t bear the look of disappointment on his father’s face when his letter of rejection stared at him mockingly from his father’s hands. 

”Why couldn’t you score like your friends?” 

“My sister’s son is more intelligent than you; he got excellent result in ECAT”.

 Ali suffers from low self-esteem and almost half of the teen population around the world, too. Remember all the time when you know the answer to the question your teacher asks in class but you don’t raise your hand afraid you might be wrong or the fear that your classmates might laugh at you? Or the times when you couldn’t grasp a point but you didn’t ask questions in class and hesitated because you might be ridiculed afterwards.

Such mundane habits what harm could it cause? 

The reasonable answer to that question can simply be explained by a set of researches done by psychologists: 

 • We grow up in a predominant world where self-esteem embeds in ourselves and it like a pestilence that feasts on self-image AKA comparing you to others or being compared. So word of advice: Stop comparing yourselves to others because it effects your self-esteem and you deem yourself as an under achiever.

As the example stated above in the start of the article shows Ali’s parents remarking about and comparing how his peers and cousins scored better than him. That led Ali to think that he cannot and never will be able to do better than them. Hence the thought “I am not good enough”. • Say No to self-affirmations and positive pep talk: Before that surprised look on the reader’s face comes into my mind I would encourage you to read further.

You have always heard about how one should walk up in the morning and chant “I am beautiful” with their heads hung low and still in bed. You would reckon you’d actually stop caring if you wear size 6 instead of 2. Psychological studies done in 90’s in attempt to cure low self-esteem among students have shown that those who wrote down positive thoughts about themselves had a sky rocketed advance in their mood towards sadness and delinquency.

That doesn’t mean that you should deny the positivity and affirmative prospect of life from the root. The conclusive argument presented at this aforementioned study was that it would be better for the person to come to terms with his Inner Critic and point out the “could’s” and “couldn’t”s

 • Inflated praise (yay or nay?) : Don’t expect a person suffering from low self -esteem to chirp up at the sound of lengthy and gawky praises.

Judgment on the account of sentimental regarding parents or well-wishers is untouched. Parents wish well for their kids and think they are helping their child when they say “Excellent job” on a B grade test. It usually backfires because the child (who needs it the most due to low self-esteem) would feel that he always has to do an excellent job on his test and feel pressured for it. So much written above defies our common knowledge about self-image and esteem that this ignorance has lead us to improbable and incomprehensible dilemma every teen of our age has to go through every day.

Some suggestions would not be enough if the layman does not take initiative: 

 • Social media promotes exhibitionism and such interactive interface that can keep you hooked up from the first time can cause stress from constant viewing of model-eque and thin selfies of their peers or how they scored high in their exams. One must control the hours they spend around on social networking sites and engage themselves in healthy and positive activities.

 • Search areas of interest and help others: Many psychologists suggest that engaging themselves in serving the community helps to get away from self-imposed misery that a person shuffles themselves into. Help your friend do her homework or you could teach your brother how to play cricket next time and see the results! In a nutshell, we are our own hero. Loving one’s own skin and feeling the need to put ourselves first sometimes in not vanity.

Preach individuality, self-love with exclusion of narcissism and self-assurance that can only come by if we take our inner demons,stop self-sabotaging and start taking the hardest but the first step in our lives before it’s too late and yes you are as good as you will ever be.