I've had a lot of different people ask me in my lifetime, "How did you get so confident?" Although it's hard to pinpoint one specific thing that makes me the way that I am, I'm going to try and give a few reasons about how I'm confident in myself.
First of all, I'm not confident in my looks, abilities, or even God's plans for my life 24/7. There are days where I wish that I looked different; when I feel like my singing voice is average at best or that I'll never be able to write another article that actually means something to someone; when I'm positive that God has used me as much as He ever will.
There are times where I feel so discouraged within myself that I don't see much point in setting any kind of goals. Just because I have confidence doesn't mean that it's not attacked- sometimes heavily. Confidence is a personality trait, not an unmovable characteristic that's never compromised.
Happy people get sad sometimes.
Outgoing people want to be alone every once in awhile. Confident people get insecure too. So I would be lying if I said that I'm never insecure, but I think confidence depends on what you do with those insecurities.
I've nixed a list full of toxic habits that fuel my insecurities. For example, on the days when I feel less pretty, I'm not going to post a picture of myself so that I can depend on the likes that the post gets for my security.
When I feel like my talents are off, I won't look up people who share the same talents to compare myself to. If I'm not sure about where God has me, I'm not going to entertain other options as a possibility for me to move. Instead, I fake my confidence until it becomes real.
You heard me: I will genuinely pretend that I believe in myself so much more than I actually do in order to give my confidence a false boost that eventually turns into a real one.
I think a lot of insecurity manifests and grows when we wallow in it. If your confidence depends on other people, you will find yourself very hurt when you're alone. If your confidence depends on your past successes, insecurity will overwhelm you when you make the tiniest of mistakes.
Confidence isn't something that "some people are just born with." Confidence is a conscious decision to look your insecurity dead in the face and declare the opposite of it over yourself. Confidence is remembering all of the good that you are and that you've done when insecurity tries catching you on a bad day.
The difference between a confident person and an insecure person is not what they think about themselves; it's the thoughts that they allow themselves to entertain.
Like I said before, there are days when I wrongfully question who God has created me to be and why He made me like I am. Human nature pulls us to search for the negative in all that God has created.
I encourage you today not try and tell yourself that you'll never think badly of yourself again. That would be relatively impossible (at least for me). I'm encouraging you to combat those negative thoughts with false confidence until it becomes real.
If you're constantly uplifting yourself even when you feel like garbage, it'll be harder for you to feed your insecurities. You're God's masterpiece; you've done well. Rest in peace knowing that.