New Children’s Book I Am Awesome! Teaches the Power of Embracing Our God-Given Confidence
A recent study by University of Washington researchers shows that by age five children have a sense of self-esteem comparable in strength to that of adults. That’s a significant finding given that self-esteem then tends to remain relatively stable throughout a person’s life.
Ryan Maule, motivational speaker and host of the popular Expect Awesome Podcast, is taking that seriously. He wants to make sure that all children get the positive self-esteem they need early so they can be the type of adults that live up to their God-given potential.
Explains Ryan, “I was brought up in churches where confidence was seen as a prideful thing that needed to be discarded and exchanged for humility. I don’t think that’s what God intended at all. We were created by an awesome God who created an ever-evolving awesome creation that needs to live up to the potential that God intended for us. How can we fully believe in God’s awesome power if we can’t believe in ourselves while living according to his power?”
After helping his own daughter overcome issues of poor self-esteem, Ryan wanted to create a way to improve children’s self-esteem in a format that is understandable and relatable to them. The result is his new children’s book, I Am Awesome! (ISBN: 978-1-9736-8105-2), which helps kids build confidence by teaching them just how awesome they truly are.
I Am Awesome! tells the story of two robots named Grace and Zeal who live in Goodland, a land created by an Inventor where everyone and everything is Good. When Grace and Zeal meet a new invention who claims to be Awesome and not just Good they set off for the Inventor’s workshop to get some answers. There they discover the truth – that they are worth more than they ever realized.
“Ultimately with I Am Awesome! I want to teach children that it’s not just a good thing to have confidence, it’s what God wants!” adds Ryan. “He wants you to live an awesome life with Him by your side through it all.”
Guest Post
3 Secrets to Teaching Your Kids to Choose Confidence Over Fear
By Ryan Maule, author of the children’s book I Am Awesome!
Being a parent of a child in grade school means constantly sitting on the edge of your seat. Changes are happening all the time that affect the way your child reacts and responds to everyday life situations. This makes parenting overwhelming, feeling like you’re just sitting around waiting to come up with answers to issues you didn’t realize would come up in the first place.
One of those changes seen regularly is a loss in self-esteem or confidence. Many parents face the dilemma of seeing confidence deplete with little to no understanding of what’s going on or how it happened. Most of the time we don’t even notice until the confidence has dropped so far that we wonder how it will ever recover!
So, what happened? If you’re like me, it’s easy to remember the moments where your child looked like they were absolutely unstoppable. I’ve seen my daughter take on roller coasters that made me nauseas, introduce herself to a group of strangers where I hoped to just blend in and get ignored, and perform, sing, and dance in front of crowds that make even the most confident of parents wonder “where did this kid come from?!” For a while it seemed like the only thing that scared her was Santa Claus.
But then, without notice or warning, she doesn’t have that confidence anymore. She doesn’t want to perform, she’s withdrawn, she doesn’t want to go on even simple child rides, or stand out at school or in small groups.
Where did the confidence go?
The reality is that these depletions in confidence are normal and common throughout not only the growing up process, but throughout your child’s entire life. These life tests never go away. The trick is to be able to recognize and label the problem that is always getting in the way. It can be called many things and summed up into one word: fear.
Fear is the main reason your children lose some or most of their self-confidence. It can be discovering the fear of death, the fear of judgement, the fear of disapproval, the fear of disappointment, the fear of embarrassment, or even the fear of simply failing. They could even just be scared in general. Fear is always present and will never fully go away. Fear is the amplifier of all the negative outcomes in every situation that we hold in the back of our mind.
The secret is to teach our children how to react to fear in order to maintain and build their confidence. To do this, I have three easy secrets to help your kids choose confidence over fear.
1. Teach Your Children to Recognize and Admit Their Fears
Most situations where confidence is attacked are never recognized because we allow ourselves to get away with lying to each other. Instead of properly saying “I’m afraid of” or “I’m scared to,” we allow bad excuses and “I just don’t want to’s” to be acceptable answers. Teaching your kids to identify the thoughts and feelings that are fear-related helps them to create the potential for a stronger, more confident response.
2. Make A Rule of No Hypotheticals
This secret is one that all families should use and applies to both adults and children. Hypotheticals are imaginary negative outcomes and more commonly, fantasy worst-case scenarios. It’s so easy to think up disasters and failures and play them out like a movie in your mind. The answer is to not allow them. No hypotheticals means basing your decision on only the things that are facts and that you already know. By not allowing your worst-case scenario to impact your decision, you create opportunities where positive outcomes are truly possible.
3. Discuss Past Successes!
When you’re in the moment, it’s hard to remember past experience. Sometimes all you need is a little reminder of great moments of past confidence to inspire more instances of future confidence!
“Do you remember that time you did this same thing and it went perfectly?!”
“Mom and I were so proud of you the last time you handled a situation like this!”
“You are awesome at this!”
“This is nothing for you!”
“You could do this in your sleep!”
By drawing on past successes, your children will start to see beyond the fear and see themselves conquering the world!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RYAN MAULE is a nationally recognized and highly sought-after motivational speaker, host of the popular Expect Awesome Podcast, and the president of Integrity Doctors, the world’s largest chiropractic business organization. Over the last 15 years Ryan has traveled the world spreading the message of expecting awesome and building a stronger self-image in order to gain a God-powered confidence. Ryan is happily married to his awesome wife Amber and they live in Florida with their two awesome kids, Summer Grace and Nolan Zeal.
Learn more about Ryan and I Am Awesome! at www.ryankmaule.comand on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
I Am Awesome! is available on Amazon.
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John Spear
First time reading this kind of things.. and they are really good.. thanks for sharing 🙂