The Confidence Wall
Categories: Secondary, Other, Extra Curricular, Therapeutic Resource
We call this ‘the confidence wall’ and it works really well in helping young people to see the positives in their lives where sometimes they can see only negatives.
Start off with the ‘confidence wall’ sheet and encourage the young people to think of positive aspects of these different areas of their lives: FAMILY, FRIENDS, SCHOOL, WHAT YOU’RE GOOD AT, WHAT YOU ENJOY, WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH.
So for example in the top row, family, you might ask ‘what are some good things about being in your family?’, and answers might include ‘feeling cared for’, ‘provided with somewhere to live’, ‘having brothers/sisters to play with…’ The young person writes each one of these in a different brick along that row. Then allow them to fill in the rest of the wall, leaving spaces blank if they can’t think of anything else.
Once they have their wall, you can now illustrate that even if one thing were to go wrong, there are still so many positive bricks in their life that they can choose to focus on. To do this, we use a Jenga set. Building the tower together, we pick up one brick each, naming what it represents (i.e. one brick from the sheet they just wrote), and keep going round the circle until the tower is complete. This is a sturdy structure, however what would happen if we took out some of the bricks? One by one, take it in turns to actually take a brick out, thinking about how sometimes that thing may go wrong in their lives, but even with that brick gone, the structure still stands. It’s a powerful image that stays with young people about not having to ‘fall apart’ when one thing in their lives goes wrong.
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I would highly reccommend this resource. I have used it in one-to-one mentoring that I do in a local secondary school, and it evolved into different and positive conversations with every young person it was used with.
Quite often, the brick missing is Dad but the number of positives pouring out from the youngsters I saw was humbling and astonishing.
Praise the ultimate Father!
This resource looks excellent. We will be using it in school and at a youth group, I expect it will be good enlarged and put on a wall so young people can write on it. Bless!