“Believe in yourself. Have faith in your abilities. Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy.” Norman Vincent Peale

Peale’s quote and others like it sounded foreign to me and still do some days. I read his book The Power of Positive Thinking a long time ago, but doubted it’d work because I tried hard to overcome self-doubt, but couldn’t. 

Instead of believing in myself, I tiptoed around who I was. I tried hard to balance others’ happiness and who I thought they wanted me to be with who I wanted to be. Because I paid more attention to people’s opinions than God’s, it ended up being difficult and painful to be me. 

It seemed obvious to me that people who posted lots of selfies on social obvious wanted their friends to like their photos and make pretty comments. I didn’t recognize how obvious it was that I looked to others for the same kind of accolades about my okayness. I thought if I heard “you’re okay” often enough and from someone convincing enough, it’d come true and I’d be happy.   

I walked a fine line trying to balance what God wanted from me alongside the likes and comments I wanted from my posts on Facebook and on my blog. 

I believed God called me to share humor and holiness and to write my story about how He saved me. He didn’t call me to base my happiness on the number of people impressed by what I wrote. 

Determined to overcome my self-doubt, I tried harder to be confident. It wasn’t until I heard this in a sermon (where I get a lot of my writing material lately), “He’s not going to take away all of your weaknesses because they keep you relying on Him.” 

Finally, I had reason to be happy about the one thing I doubted I’d ever be happy about – my self-doubt. “Happy to be me” means I’m happy to rely on Him.

In This Together,
Kim

FYI: I’m blogging my book titled On The Other Side of Trying Hard: Healing, Happiness, and Holiness. Because the blog posts will eventually be an entire manuscript instead of stand-alone stories, some posts may leave you hanging. I hope you’ll hang in here with us anyway ‘cause a happy ending is coming. Each blog post title includes the chapter title first. The phrase in parentheses is one subheading within the chapter. I’d love to hear your reflections, questions, and suggestions. I’m over-the-top grateful you’re here.