The Secret of Being Confident

Many of us do not love ourselves.

Why not?

For me I had this voice in my head saying I wasn’t good enough.  I’ve found it’s so easy when admiring others to get in the thought pattern of, “man, I could never be as pretty as *blank*” or “I just can’t sing as well as *blank*.”  I believed in myself to know I was “good.” I knew the Lord had blessed my life but feelings of inadequacy creep in all too easily.

I think this is something a lot of us struggle with, particularly women, but also men.

These thoughts inhibit us and are a recipe for lack of confidence.

I got to thinking, where does confidence come from? How can I be confident all the time?

Confidence comes from a belief that you are good enough.  It is knowing that an Almighty God created you for a unique purpose and no one can fulfill your purpose better than you.  Even in our weaknesses, we are told that Christ is made strong (2 Cor. 12:9)

 Confidence comes when you’re living for an audience of One.  When you are looking up to the God of love and mercy, you never need to fear rejection or inadequacy. (Psalm 18:32)

Confidence comes from within.  A person can be the smartest person in the world but if they don’t believe it, does it matter?  Will they ever use their intelligence to help others unless they are willing to recognize their intelligence?

This brings me to my next point: no one can have confidence for you.

I would hope that we’ve all strived towards a goal and had friends and family cheering us on whether that be in academics, sports, music, etc..  The funny thing is, your entire family – let’s go bigger – EVERY FACEBOOK FRIEND YOU HAVE can be convinced that you are the best at something yet if you don’t believe it you will not act like it and therefore  you will not perform like it.

Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, either way you’re right.”

The line “believe in yourself” seems cliché, but I wonder if everyone believed in themselves what we would be capable of.

For some of us, we ironically get caught up in striving towards humility that we diminish ourselves and forget how great God made us to be.  For example, many of us deflect compliments.

C.S. Lewis’ quote “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less” reminds me that God intends for us to love ourselves.

It is impossible to love other people if you do not love yourself or are continually discontent with your life.

Here is where you have to be careful between loving yourself in a Biblical way and loving yourself in a narcissistic way.  There is a fine line between confidence and conceit.  This blog should not inspire you to post a bunch of selfies with the tagline “God made me beautiful.” But it is important that we recognize our worth as masterpieces of the God of the universe.

Humility is Biblical. Diminishing yourself is not.

Do you want to make a difference? Do you believe you were designed for a purpose? Live like it.