What If You Believed In Yourself As Much As We Believe In You?

Self-doubt is a curse. Self-confidence is a bad word. In today's culture, phrases like “shameless self-promoter,” and words like “arrogant,” “cocky,” and “know-it-all” taint our vocabulary on a regular basis. Yet, almost every day I come across someone who needs to spit those words out of their mouth, and believe in herself. In today's What If Wednesday, I wanted to ask you, “What if you believed in yourself as much as we believe in you?”

Photo credit: FUNKYAH / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

In the recently released movie Man of Steel, we watched as Clark Kent grew from a child, began developing his special abilities, and then left home to live a life of solitude, not acknowledging who he really was. If you're hiding your true nature under a cloud of self-doubt, you're essentially doing the same thing.

If Clark Kent never flexed his muscles and put on his suit, he would have never been what we needed him to be. If you don't flex your muscles and put on your suit, you won't be what we need you to be either.

What if you believed in yourself as much as we believe in you?

In this article, we learned that success is up to each of us. I also shared with you a story about St. Peter standing at the pearly gates. He motioned to a man who “if he had been a general, he would have been the greatest of them all.” But that man never reached his God-given potential. I don't want that to happen to either of us.

To help you believe in yourself as much as we believe in you, I wanted to give you three things to think about.

There is a difference between cocky and confident.

Many people mistake confidence for being cocky. If you're confident in your knowledge, skills, or abilities, you may have been called cocky in the past. But there is a big difference. If you can back it up with results, it's not cocky, it's confidence (Tweet that?).

But today's culture is geared to make us feel as if confident automatically equates to arrogant. That is simply not true. We have swung the pendulum too far. We are now so afraid of of being called cocky that we hang our heads and slump our shoulders. We hide our expertise, our experiences and our passions in fear of being characterized as cocky, when we're actually justified in being confident.

If you don't believe in yourself, it will be harder for us to believe in you.

Have you ever met someone who didn't even know how smart they were? I have. We can get so caught up in what the world thinks about us that we start to believe the negative press. If you haven't heard of “The critic's math,” this could be eye opening.

The Critic's Math states that “1 insult + 1,000 compliments = 1 insult.”

That teacher that told you you were just no good at math in third grade, or the dance instructor that said you had two left feet, or the coach who cut you from the team…

We all have a criticism that sticks with us, doing it's best to prevent us from seeing all of the compliments we've received and successes we've had. You simply have to ignore it. If you dwell on the one insult, if you don't believe in yourself, it won't be impossible, but it will be harder for us to believe in you.

You're not meant to have a spirit of timidity.

We have over-corrected. We've become so afraid of being called a “know-it-all” that we play dumb. We're so afraid of being called a “self-promoter” that we don't try and sell the book we've written, the songs we've recorded, or the picture we've painted that could change someone's life. We even find it difficult to talk about our accomplishments when we're being interviewed for a job.

When did that start? I don't know.

What I do know is “God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline” – 2 Timothy 1:7. (Definitely Tweet that!)

Confident is not cocky. Belief in yourself, your abilities and your knowledge is not something to be embarrassed about. Self-doubt is not something you should allow into your life. You deserve to believe in yourself as much as we believe in you.

Thank you to all of the readers and commenters on my guest post on DanBlackOnLeadership.net. You inspired me to write this and I thought of you while doing so.

Question: Who do you believe in? Who can you share this article with who needs to know you believe in them? If someone believed in you enough to share this article with you, say thank you in the comments below!