Confidence: the good kind.

I’ve been thinking some lately about self confidence. Where does mine come from? What about everyone else’s? How can I better teach and foster it in my students? How can I encourage it in my friends, or my coworkers? Is it a skill that can be taught and practiced, or is it some inherent gift?

I believe confidence, forged from self-love, is a skill. I think self-compassion and self-kindness are skills that can be honed. Since there is an insane epidemic in our society of body-hating, I think loving yourself (the way you are right now, not 15 pounds from now or a college degree from now, or a healthy relationship from now) is one of the first steps on the journey to a successful (and fulfilling) life.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. 31 The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”

It's not just happenstance that the Bible admonishes, in more than one place, that our first commandment in living for God is to love Him; following on the heels of that verse is the second, the one that many times is misinterpreted. "Love your neighbor as yourself." 

We intrinsically know we are to treat others kindly and with compassion for their circumstances, understanding for their shortcomings, and forgiveness for their mistakes. Yet most of us fail to grant these same concessions to ourselves. Instead, we are our own worst critic, constantly second-guessing, seeing the glass as half-empty, and finding it difficult to embrace our flaws as willingly as we embrace our strengths.

It’s hard to love all of myself, all of the time. But when I’m spending time alone with my reflection, I’m consciously seeing myself through the eyes of someone who loves and accepts me fully and completely… my imaginary “biggest fan,” if you will. But it’s not just physical. To me, external beauty is such a reflection of internal beauty. So while I’m loving my body and my face, I’m also loving my heart and my spirit and my whole history as a person.

I don’t compare myself to anyone. That would rob the experience of joy. I even try not to compare myself to myself, although there are certainly some thoughts, some memories. I remember how my body looked and felt in high school, how it felt after losing 50 pounds all those years ago... But it’s always done through this filter, this point of view of an imaginary fan who loves me the most right now, as I am in this moment. I don’t say mean things or think about stuff I want to change. I just admire. I just love. And for that time, through the imaginary eyes of my biggest fan, I am my biggest fan. I am the one who loves me the most. And you guys… I think people need this.

Because the thing is, you walk around making up what people think of you anyway. You can never really know. I mean, you hope your parents are proud of you, and you suspect that mean girl might just be jealous of you. But you can never KNOW. Your interpretation of what people think of you is essentially made up. And for some reason most people, most of the time, make up mean and negative things. They see themselves from the POV of an imaginary enemy. They imagine how they must come across to someone who doesn’t like them, who doubts them, who think they’re ugly, fat, dumb, or just not good enough. They spend their entire day hanging out with this judgey imaginary person who makes them feel insecure, and their entire life suffers for it. When you constantly see yourself from the POV of someone who judges you unkindly, the world feels like a harsh and dangerous place, so you shut down, take less risks, and find ways to live smaller.

The complete opposite, in fact, is true. We all deserve to be seen, loved, and admired for exactly who we are.