How to Maintain Self Confidence

self confidence, how to find your self confidence, how to be confident, how to be a confident person

There’s plenty out there about how to find your confidence, but once you find it, how do you maintain self confidence?

I did a quick internet browse on how to find confidence. In doing so I found that more sleep helps, finding a “power pose” and tapping into your “inner strength” can help. But what happens if your sleep fails, your power pose turns into a pouty pile and your inner strength doesn’t show up to work? Those things may help for a hot minute, but one things that will never fail, will never weaken and will never not show up – God’s Word.

God’s Word. God’s Word. God’s Word. Drill it down deep into your heart and mind and it. will. never. fail.

When I say drill it down deep I mean, think about it all the time. I wrote about being aware of what you’re thinking here. I wanted to call attention to what it is you’re thinking about. Are you meditating on your flaws? Thinking about what people have that is better than yours? If so, stop! Fill your mind with what the Word says. Why? BECAUE IT WILL NEVER FAIL YOU (tired of hearing that yet?)

To make it as easy as possible for you I found some verses on confidence for you to meditate on. They’re from the Passion translation (TPT) which I’ve been loving lately. And just so we don’t leave anything up to question I’d like to walk you through how I mediate on a verse so you can do the same.

Let’s start with this one in Psalms…

“He’s the hope that holds me and the stronghold to shelter me, the only God for me, and my great confidence.” – Psalm 91:2

Who is the hope that holds me? Jesus.

What does His hope do? It holds me.

When do you need to be held? Touchy people would say, “ALWAYS!” But for the rest of us, it’s usually when we’re not feeling our best, or we’re sad, or need encouragement.

What else does He do? He’s the stronghold to shelter me.

When do you need a shelter? When things are coming against you. When fiery darts are being aimed at your mind such as: “You’re not loved.” “You’re not good at what you do.” “You look old.” “You don’t look as good as she does.” “You’re fat so you mine as well give up looking nice.” “You’ve messed up too much, God doesn’t love you.” If literal fiery darts were being shot at you, what would you need? A shelter! God is your shelter!

He is your safe place to run to whenever you need Him. In fact, He longs for you to run to Him making Him the only God for you. It’s a declaration you can make! We can easily put other things up in the “god spot.” It really can be anyone or anything that we give our love/attention to. But by saying this, we are saying He – capital H – is the only God for me.

He is my confidence. No, I missed a word: GREAT. He is my great confidence.

All I did was pick apart the verse and think about each group of words bit by bit. Then I’ll mull it over and over in my mind till it’s automatically where my brain goes when something starts to flare up. That, my friends, is how you put your confidence in God. You mediate and ground yourself in His Word.

Here are a couple more scriptures for your collection. I find the end of this first one very interesting…

“Yes, it is so much better to trust in the Lord to save me than to put my confidence in celebrities.” – Psalm 118:9

“Fear and intimidation is a trap that holds you back. But when you place your confidence in the Lord, you will be seated in the high place.” – Proverbs 29:25

“Confidence and strength flood the hearts of the lovers of God who live in awe of him, and their devotion provides their children with a place of shelter and security.” – Proverbs 14:26

Plug your confidence chord into the only power outlet that will never loose power: God’s Word (fancy way of saying IT NEVER FAILS). If you put this in to practice and answer those self-depreciating thoughts with “No, that’s not my thought.” Then fill your mouth and mind with His Word. Because guess what? IT NEVER FAILS.

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Finding Your Confidence

finding your confidence, confidence, confidence in God,

Finding your confidence in God.

There was once a good while where I made people call me “The Kite Master.”

Had I flown a lot of kites? No.

Had I flown a kite for a long time? Nope.

Had I flown anything up in the air for longer than 10 seconds within, let’s say, a month of this moment in time? Nah.

But I had the confidence for it and I succeeded. That day I flew a kite and later that year I became the owner of a kite shop.

Sorry, not an actual shop, one that goes in a Christmas village.

The point is, it’s important to find your confidence. Let’s talk about where that starts.

We have a lot of opportunities to fill our heads with other people’s lives. I just finished reading the first book in the Little House on the Prairie series and in it Laura writes how her and Mary have never seen two houses next to each other. Fast forward to today and we know intimate details about the inside of someone’s house…whom we’ve never met…across the country. Thanks to our phones and social media we have plenty of images to fill our minds. Images that are oftentimes just the highlight reel of someone’s life. But you know this, you’ve heard this along with a really quippy quote about “highlight reels” already.

You want to know where to start if your confidence has taken a hit. Or if you’re not happy with what you see in the mirror, or how to stop comparing your life/body/hair/skin/clothes to someone else’s. Or maybe you’re not comparing, you’re just wanting to love being you. The good news is, the first step is easy…

Change what you think about.

What are you meditating on? I know we use the word “meditating” a lot when it comes to Bible verses, but you can be meditating on something and it not be a scripture. I’ve caught myself meditating on negative situations with people: what happened, what I would have done differently, what I would have said to really DRIVE HOME A POINT. But it’s not doing me any good. In fact it’s doing me harm because it’s keeping me out of love.

So when it comes to yourself, what do you think about? If you’re only meditating on your flaws, what you look like in comparison to someone else, or where you have failed in life STOP! That’s not walking in love either! It’s just as much not walking in love as it is to sit around and think about how you’d like to tell off Sister Sandpaper! The Bible tells us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. How can we extend love to someone when we’ve not even worked on how we love ourselves?

“Jesus replied, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” -Matthew 22:37-40 (TPT)

It’s like the facemask in an airplane: you’ve got to first put the facemask on you before you can save others. So in order to fulfill the second greatest commandment, which Jesus points out is equally important as the first, we’ve got to love ourselves.

It’s unrealistic to think you’ll never look at social media again. So instead of swearing it off, take the baby step of paying attention to your thoughts when you’re on it or right after you get off it. Are they positive or negative about yourself? If they’re at all negative, put a stop to them immediately. Say, “that’s not my thought.” Then find a scripture about yourself and the area you need the biggest boost in and speak it out.

I’ll touch more on that next time. But for now, work on identifying what’s going on in your thought life and putting a stop to it.

“But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.” -Jeremiah 17:7

God has put it on my heart to write about this subject. Obviously it’s been a minute since I’ve posted and there is definitely some dust flying around this blog as I type. But I want to share about this because I believe it’s part of my calling. I have such a desire to see women be confident in who God made them to be. I hope you’ll check back in for more. :)

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Four Months Later…

Well hello there.

Sitting down to write this, I realized it’s been four months almost to the day since I last posted. There’s been nothing happening specifically to keep me from posting – no major world events or complete life shifts that have taken up my time. Just living like a lady of leisure (pronounced “Lay-Zure” with hand coifed in the air).

Looking at that last post, it’s funny to me to see anything that took place earlier this year. We had no idea what was coming down the pike. But you know who did know? God. God can throw down in a game of who knew it first because He knew as He FORMED US IN OUR MOM’S BELLY that we were going to live during this time. And because He knew that, He equipped us with all the tools we need to not just survive through it, but to thrive.

I made this video for our church towards the end of March. What I say in it is true then and true now. It’s all about the carefree life God wants us living. Take two minutes to watch because it can really change your life.

I promise to be back regularly (again) to make every day a spiffy day!

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A Benefit to Giving Thanks

family photo, taryn yager photography

“Thank yur ladies and gentlemen.”

If you know that the above quote comes from You’ve Got Mail, then we’re going to remain friends.

There is so much we have to be thankful for. And I love writing this post every year because it forces me to stop and think about thankfulness.

My Pastor did a message this past Sunday on thankfulness and how it really brings God’s favor on your life. God will always love you no matter what, but when you’re thankful, He wants to bless you even more. I’ve seen that first hand with my own child – when he says thank you or is especially appreciative without any prompting, I want to buy him the WORLD.

It would make sense that it’s the same between us and God.

So let’s be thankful this week for all of our blessings! Even if your life isn’t where you think it should be, or your closet isn’t much bigger than a shoe box – we can be thankful that we have a God that loves us and placed us in a country that still recognizes the need to stop and give thanks.

Happy Thanksgibing Back everybody!

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Why I Brag About Myself (and not just because it’s my birthday)

Let’s chat about loving ourselves.

If you have followed any of my content for any amount of time, you know that I’m not afraid to brag about myself. It’s done in a joking manner and the thought behind that is you don’t find many people who brag about themselves. Most often people are putting themselves down (especially women) – something I noticed a long time ago and wanted to change about myself.

You may think it’s funny, you may think it’s annoying, but I want to share the main reason behind why I do it…

I love getting to be who God created me to be. When I look in the mirror, I’m happy with what I see and thankful for the way God made me.

My first thought in writing that is how cocky it makes me sound (at first I wasn’t comfortable putting it in bold letters but I want it to grab your attention). Trust me, I can list off my flaws faster than you can say shoe sale. I didn’t get to being thankful for who I am overnight. It’s something I’ve worked at, studied scriptures on and pressed into for a good chunk of my life. And it pays off!

No the journey is not over. There are still days where I have to work at changing my thoughts about myself. But because the foundation of God’s word has been sewn into my spirit with verses such as, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14) or “God is the health of my countenance” (Psalm 42:5), it’s easier to shoot down those darts of self depreciation.

So I’m sharing this because I want to encourage you.

A birthday doesn’t have to be a dreaded thing – “He renews your youth like the eagles” (Psalm 103:5). It’s another year that you get to be you. The person that God uniquely created to reflect an aspect of His Being. Someone with particular attributes He wanted to show off in the form of YOU. Since we’re all created in His image and we’re all so different it only makes sense that He uses people to show off different aspects of Himself. So celebrate what He put together in you!

Don’t fear or dread growing older, but look forward to the wisdom and experience of another year that you bring to the table.

And if for no other reason – enjoy being you because of this verse. This particular verse The Spiff is founded on because helping women love who God created them to be is the passion that drives my efforts…

Luke 14:11, “…if you are content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself,”

I want to be more than myself because that means I’m tapping into the supernatural “me” God had in mind all along. Let’s do it together!

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