Sometimes we just don’t feel like we measure up, and lack a personal sense of confidence. Where does confidence come from, and how can we become more confident? In this podcast episode, I talk about personal confidence, how we can grow in confidence, and where confidence can be found when we face unknown situations in life.
Confidence is born out of humility. It comes from learning to take your first steps, falling, getting back up again, and repeating the process. Eventually over time, you will learn a thing or two about walking, and eventually it becomes second nature.
True confidence comes from a character that’s been forged through the school of hard knocks, and your ability to trust yourself because of where you’ve been, and what you’ve been through. As a result, you can boldly move forward, as you face new situations in life, you can leverage what you’ve endured in the past.
This is different than the false confidence that comes from being cocky and pig headed about one’s abilities. False confidence is based on blindness, a false imagination, and is ultimately a hollow echo, lacking in substance.
True confidence comes from learning the stuff you are made of, and being able to dig deep into who you are. It’s about doing the hard work, and being forged, so you can take a step into the unknown.
This is why an athlete trains and practices over and over and over again. They do all the drills, and practice their skills over and over again, so that when game time comes, everything they’ve done in practice a thousand times is something they can do instinctively, and without thinking, under even the most difficult of game time scenarios.
Of course, there will always be scenarios in life where we are in unchartered territory, where we have little to know prior experience, and don’t know what to do next.
In such situations where we can no longer trust in ourselves, we must ultimately learn to trust in the Lord. In Proverbs 3:5-6 it says:
“Trust In the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”
