We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Andrea Polnaszek. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Andrea below.
Andrea, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
I think this is a great question because I have been doing a lot of thinking about self-esteem and how it relates to confidence in my life. Over the course of my lifetime, I have had specific low points in my self-esteem. For most of my school years, especially middle and high school, I had a pretty low self-concept. I felt ugly and didn’t really fit in. When I went to college, things got better and I had more friends but I still didn’t feel great about myself. I didn’t ever really feel pretty. Early in my career I felt like everyone knew more than me (which they did) and I never really felt good at my job. I always wanted to be a mom but once I became one, I felt like I didn’t measure up to other mothers. I looked over my shoulder comparing my efforts at being a mom with others. I felt like I was fighting an invisible battle against my desire to be perfect but never achieving what I had in my imagination.
Fast forward in my journey to about two years ago. In my role as a therapist, I was reading a book to a client. The story was about confidence and described the coping skill of looking into the mirror and speaking out lines like: “I am confident. I am brave. I am kind.” I actually read this book many times with many kids and every time I would feel empty afterwards. I felt like there was something off in the prescription. This experience led me to drill back into God’s word and really study what it means to be confident in Him. To my surprise, I was reminded that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, The Bible teaches that the key is through Christ and not just me powering through the act of being strong.
I have come to a new found confidence in my life because of being grounded in Christ. All the characteristics I desire to have in myself – bravery, kindness, gentleness, self-control and peace – I can find through Christ. The truth of my life in God is that He created me in His image and He loves me. Believing this truth, I have tweaked my self talk and the result has impacted my self-esteem in a dramatic way. I now try to speak to myself with gentleness and my self-talk sounds more like this: The I AM is strong, so I can be be brave. The I AM is the Prince of Peace so I can be at peace. and The I AM is perfect, so I am enough. What we think on influences who we become. Meditating and memorizing God’s word will increase your confidence and positively influence your self-esteem. For more of these I Am Statements – www.andreapolnaszek.com
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
One of the reasons I have been thinking so much about self-esteem and confidence is because my sister, Alexandra Boylan and I wrote and produced a movie called, Identity Crisis this year. The movie is about a college freshman struggling with her self-confidence. She ends up cloning herself to perfect her imperfections but when her clone takes over her life, she realizes that God created her with everything she needed, she just needed to try. The movie, Identity Crisis, is available on Amazon, Apple, Spectrum and anywhere you can rent or buy movies. This is the sixth movie my sister and I have written and created. You can find a list of our movies at: www.theboylansisters.com
We are passionate about creating content that Mom’s can trust and kids will love. We hope our movies will help start meaningful conversations within families, youth groups and more. My sister and I also have written a novel based on the movie that goes deeper into the mind of Madison Montgomery. It’s a fun book and great for older elementary and middle school readers.
I also has the honor of writing the Identity Crisis Bible Study and meditation book, both available on Amazon. We are excited to announce that YouVersion has a video/daily devotion called: God’s Answer to an Identity Crisis. This partnership with YouVersion is a dream come true.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
My latest learning is this: Nothing is wasted in the waiting. I have struggled throughout my whole life with wanting to be on the next point of my journey rather than enjoying where I was on the path. When I was a teen, babysitting – I wanted to be a mom. When I became a mom – I wanted my kids to sleep through the night. When my kids left home for college – I wanted them back home again. I really struggle with living in the moment. God has been drawing me close to Him in the idea of waiting. There are many stories in the Bible when God’s plan was not fulfilled in the moment or even in the existing generation. I have learned that my waiting can give God the most glory. As much as I hate it sometimes, our Lord fulfills His plan in His way and not mine. I think the idea that “nothing is wasted in the waiting” produces the following qualities in my life: patience, resilience, and peace. While I still don’t like waiting, I have lived long enough to see that God does grow the seeds He has planted and He does fulfill His plan. Sometime the waiting is painful, the longing in my heart for an answer or fulfillment actually can ache at times, but He will finish what He started. And so far the dreams He has fulfilled in my life have been better than what I could have hoped for or imagined on my own.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
I know the Christian answer to this question is, The Bible. While, I absolutely love the Bible and have developed a genuine passion to read it, the other book I most often recommend is Boundaries by Dr. Cloud and Dr. Townsend. One of the many nuggets I have taken away from this book is the idea of opening and closing my gate. The principle is this: we have an opportunity to have a fence around our lives. A slatted picket fence unlike a brick wall, which one can not see out of, a fence provides a safe boundary to see who is coming in or who we are keeping out. The fence also has a gate, that swings on hinges. We have the power to open and close it at will. God has given us discernment to let life-giving people in and keep dangerous people out. This is a principle that I live by. I often ask myself: Do you need to close the gate, Andrea?
Contact Info:
- Website: www.theboylansisters.com
- Instagram: The Boylan Sisters
- Facebook: Andrea M. Polnaszek
- Linkedin: Andrea Polnaszek
- Twitter: @apolnaszek
- Youtube: @Boylansisters
- Other: Youtube: Boylan Sisters Entertainment
Image Credits
All pictures are candid except the headshot in read shirt. Photo credit: Andrea Kott Photography
