Article By Artrina Hall // EEW Magazine // Confidence

You should proudly walk in a lane that’s all your own, march to the beat of a different drum, knowing with every step that God made you this way! Your beauty is unique. Your style is different. You don’t fit in—and honestly, you shouldn’t want to.

Even though the world will try to shove you into a mold and tell you who to be, how to look, what to wear and how to behave, make a choice to embrace your own freshness, and be the beautiful, anointed, gifted woman God created you to be. Let God be your guide. As long as you have His approval, that’s enough.

You see, you’re made in the image of God and since He doesn’t make junk, it’s time to start walking, talking and acting like you’re the masterpiece He specially crafted before the universe ever came into existence.

If you embrace this message, you are less likely to tread the dark path of depression millions of women do daily. They are robbed of joy because of feelings of rejection, discouragement, isolation and low self-esteem. To help you get and stay on the path of love, light, security and fulfillment, EEW Online is offering 7 ways to help you be more confident.

1. Get your journal out and write. There are likely unfavorable things you were told about yourself at some point in your youth. It may have been a teacher, relative, so-called friend or absolute stranger that criticized you, thereby teaching you to think less of yourself. So here’s what you do: Grab a pen and a journal and write out the hurtful lies that plague you the most. Once you get them down, cross them out and replace the negativity with something positive. Then pray over those things and ask God to help you overcome the assault on your confidence.

2. Meditate on self-esteem-building scriptures. One of my favorite self-esteem-building scriptures is, “You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you,” found in Song of Solomon 4:7. What are your favorites? If you don’t have any in your arsenal, it’s time to change that! Find verses that confirm how loved, powerful, valued and awesome you are. Don’t just read the passages but meditate on them and confess them over your life. Even try posting affirming scriptures on sticky notes around your house.

3. Clear out your circle as needed. Get rid of non-essential, unfruitful relationships that do not affirm who you are in God. If there are hangers-on in your life that don’t speak positively about you, your dreams and capabilities—and always nitpick and make you feel worse about you— it is time to say goodbye. While you will never be able to disassociate from every negative person, especially because God sometimes allows them into your life to toughen your skin and help you grow, there are seasons when you need to cut ties. Be prayerful about it. God will show you the way.

4. Change your words. This is huge! Don’t curse your own life with what you say. Eliminate words like stupid, failure, ugly, fat, incompetent and other not-so-great self-descriptive adjectives. Say what God says about you, even if you don’t feel it. He calls you royalty, sis! Tell yourself, I am worthy. I am loved. I am anointed. I am God’s chosen. The more you repeat these things in faith, the more your mindset will shift, which will empower you to bear more fruit in your life.

5. Deal with your history. This complements confidence-building tip #1. Were you unpopular and marginalized in your youth? Did you get bullied a lot? Were you most picked on and isolated? Were you abused or traumatized in some way? You have to go back and address the past before you can appropriately dress for your future. Confront any hurts head-on. Discover where the lies that were planted in you originated so you can get free of them. Uncovering the past root helps you understand the present fruit you are producing. Before you can build confidence, make sure the foundation is secure. That way, you won’t be trying to build on top of a toxic waste dump!

6. Stop the comparison game. The most confident people don’t waste time comparing themselves to others. The key to seeing your own worth is realizing that God made you one of a kind. Your beauty is individual. Your path isn’t like anyone else’s. Your journey is special. And your progress will go at a pace best-suited to you, your maturity level, faith-capacity, ability to handle things, and most importantly, the will of God.  Don’t look at your neighbor to see what mold you should fit into, because God doesn’t repeat himself. The individual DNA and fingerprints of every living person on earth is proof of this. He crafted your unique design for His unique purposes.

7. Maximize your strengths. There are some things you can do that no one else can. When you put your special touch and flavor on those things, you get awesome results. So build up your strengths even more, exercise those brain muscles and let those creative juices flow. As you progress, you’ll find that you will feel more confident about who you are and what you do—guaranteed!

Being more confident is an achievable goal if you focus on the right things and put these exceptionally helpful tips to good use. When it’s all said and done, you might as well be you, because as the saying goes, everyone else is taken.