Confidence

I have ideas floating around in my head that I want to share. I’m not sure how they will come together, but I’m going to give it a try! It is something about confidence, boundaries, and how we treat others. Over the last couple of months I feel like I have been changing. It is still a work in progress, but I have realized that I let myself believe that I wasn’t good enough. That if I was better certain things wouldn’t happen, things wouldn’t be said in my marriage. Even with others, I sometimes let myself believe that no one would want to be around me or be friends with me. I have spent a lot of time comparing myself to who others were, what they were accomplishing, how they looked, etc. I knew I shouldn’t, but it was hard not too.

I have since learned the importance of confidence in establishing healthy boundaries in life and the role it plays in how we treat other people. Because I lacked confidence in my marriage, I didn’t have clear boundaries. But this can happen with families, co-workers, friends or any relationship we have. As my ex-husband and I go back and forth in trying to establish new boundaries I am realizing that I can define my own needs and not just accept what others place on me.

As I wrote about before, a week before my ex-husband left, I had an amazing experience when I felt God’s love for me so strongly that it changed me. I felt His sense of my worth and His approval of me. From there, my confidence has continued to grow. I have explored who I am, who I want to be and what path I am on. And I am doing the things I need to do to be who I want to be. I’m not perfect at it and I have a list of things to work on. But I am trying my best. And with that knowledge, I can feel happy about who I am. I think I am actually the most confident I have been in my life and my husband just left me!

We all know confidence is important, but I’m realizing it is more far-reaching than I understood. Now, just to clarify, I’m not talking about arrogance or its big brother narcissism. Those are not good or healthy. Those attitudes hurt others. But confidence breeds healthy self-esteem and good relationships with others. This second part was what I didn’t understand. I knew that to have good self-esteem – to value myself and feel worthy – I needed to be confident and feel good about who I was. But I have learned that confidence is just as important to developing healthy, good relationships with others.

Throughout my marriage and since I have been treated like emotion isn’t okay – that I could not or cannot be upset or unhappy, and as soon as I am my opinions and thoughts are invalid. The only relevant point is the fact that I am emotional and that is wrong. This hasn’t always been the case, but it was often enough to feel like my feelings and opinions were wrong and that I didn’t know how to deal with life. Unfortunately, this led to me becoming more emotional and things just getting worse. As things progressed in the last six months, I was critiqued to the point that I was afraid to even be seen or to interact with others. And maybe I was too sensitive, I don’t know. But there I was, stuck in a pit of low self-esteem.

Now that I have found more confidence in who I am, the choices I make, the things I value and more I see things differently. I know that it is normal to feel hurt, or frustrated or upset. And because I know those emotions are okay I don’t allow them to grow more than the situation itself. In other words, I can have appropriate reactions. And further more, I can communicate that I expect to be able to have and express those appropriate reactions. I can also set an expectation of how I will be treated – because I believe I deserve to be treated that way.

It is interesting as I write this that I realize we try to teach these ideas to our kids and don’t even see that we are struggling with the same things. Last year my daughter used to come home so often upset or even crying because of things her friends did. I tried to teach her that she can speak up and tell the other girls that she wanted to play too, that she had an idea, that she didn’t need to be talked to rudely. I tried to teach her to tell them to stop if they were hurting her feelings or telling her what she could or couldn’t do. That she was just as important as those girls and she could act like. Or, she didn’t need to let what they said affect her if she believed that they weren’t right. But all along I didn’t believe those things for myself in any relationship in my life.

So, what I am I trying to say? Good question! First, having confidence allows us to set boundaries with people in our lives. This means that we set expectations about how we will be treated and what we will accept. In return, we allow others to set their boundaries and respect them. We won’t be threatened by other’s boundaries. Right now I am trying to find the line between respecting boundaries when they conflict. For example, I want to be able to express my feelings when I don’t agree with something my ex-husband does. He doesn’t want to have those conversations. So, there is some work to do. But my new-found confidence helps me not take it personally and get more emotional than the situation calls for…most of the time. I am still happy with who I am even if he doesn’t accept it.

Second, confidence can help us focus more on others. When we feel bad about ourselves, that feeling can take over. We become lost in ourselves and our negative feelings. We are afraid to reach out to others. We don’t feel good enough to do something for someone else. Or we may not even think of others because we are too wrapped up in our own lives. But when we are okay with ourselves it opens up our attention to look outward. We are more aware of others and less afraid to be involved in their lives.

I’ve been writing about the importance of confidence and mostly that has been the confidence we find in ourselves. But I am learning more and more about the confidence we can find from God when we are living our lives the way He would like us to. That confidence is stronger than anything we can self-generate. Consider this:

“When we give our heart to the Father and the Son, we change our world – even if circumstances around us do not change. We draw closer to Heavenly Father and feel His tender acceptance of our efforts to be true disciples of Christ. Our discernment, confidence, and faith increase.”

Neill F. Marriott

Confidence isn’t a permanent thing, that once you have it you keep it. Life is hard, people are hurtful, trials happen. Comparing is so easy to do. It takes constant work I am finding. But I am also learning that living my life in a way that I am happy with and that I know God is happy with definitely makes it easier. Tell me, what ways have you learned to foster confidence and healthy self-esteem?