The greatest prison that ever confines most people is fear of what other people think.
Our fear of other people’s opinions and rejection keeps us in a shell of ourselves, a half-rate version of the person that God created us to be.
We take things too personally. The rejection of our ideas and interests enters our minds and gets twisted into a rejection of us as individuals, of our identity. As if by disagreeing with our love of cheeseburgers and party-theme ideas and desire to climb rock walls every Saturday morning, the people around us are somehow telling us that we are unworthy of love.
We compare ourselves to others. We believe that someone else’s beautiful eyes or flawless skin affects our own beauty. Others’ ability to hit a note that does not even register on our scale or to say words that hit people in the depths of their souls or to lead a team or to tell a joke somehow changes the fact that we can paint, can write well, that we can love well. As if it even affects the fact that we can sing, that we can encourage people, that we can lead, that we can make people laugh. As though what other people have changes what we have. As though what other people are changes what we are.
It has been said, “A tiger doesn’t need to lose sleep over the opinion of sheep,” but I would like to change that a bit to take away our affinity for comparison—Am I a tiger or a sheep?
“A sheep doesn’t need to lose sleep over the opinion of other sheep.”
-Charmagne
People are just people.
They make mistakes. They have bad hair days. Their skin breaks out. They gain weight. They oversleep. They misspell words. They spit Coke all over their seventh-grade crush. They spend too much money and buy the wrong size shirt and overreact and fall off of their bikes and sweat and get lost and miss their turn. They fart. They fear rejection. They overanalyze the actions and words of others. They are people. We are people. People are just people, and we give them too much power.
Your worth does not depend on other people, on whether or not other people can see your value. The fact that someone does not recognize your value does not mean it does not exist. It does not increase or decrease based on other people. It does not change when someone breaks up with you. It does not change when someone chooses to spend time with someone else. It does not change when the people you love do not love you the way in which you want them to love you.
“Hurt people hurt people,” right? What other people think or say, even what they think or say about you, or do to you is a reflection of who they are, not who you are. The moods and insecurities of others do not dictate your identity. The wounds of others do not have to manifest in your own wounds.
Your own wounds do not have to manifest in the wounds of others.
That is how we are going to get out of this. That is how we are going to turn this around, this idea that our identities have a price tag that other people, who are just people, get to create.
We have to change our focus. We have to stop focusing on the things that we lack, the ways we have failed. We have to stop focusing on ourselves. We have to focus outward.
“I need to care less about what other people think about me and care more about being thoughtful towards them.”
-Renee Swope
Encourage people. Build others up. Be to others what you want them to be to you. Not because you want them to be anything to you. Do it out of a place of genuineness and real care for other people. Not out of a place of covetousness, speaking words of encouragement about another’s ability to sing, wishing you could sing that way. Or pointing out someone’s beautiful hair because you are disgusted with your own.
Stop comparing yourself to other people. Noticing the good in others and undermining the good in yourself are two separate things. Who other people are does not change who you are. The value of others does not change your own.
We have been given gifts. We have been given the ability to make people laugh and make people think. We have been given the ability to sing or speak or write or pray or encourage. We have been given the characteristics that we have. Brown hair, blue eyes, sturdy legs, strong arms. If we accept those things, if we see the beauty of those things, if we can see their value, we can shift our focus from the things and abilities that other people have and can do to a focus on the way that the things and abilities we have can create or become a part of something greater than ourselves today and tomorrow.
Let go of yesterday. Yesterday is over. The past is gone. Just because you could not do something yesterday does not mean that you cannot do it today. Yesterday’s failures belong to yesterday. And yesterday’s successes belong to yesterday. If you are still hanging on to what you did or did not do in the past, good or bad, it is taking away from what could be. We have been given opportunities in the past that may or may not have worked out the way that we would have wanted, the way we thought they should, the way they were supposed to work out in our plans and ideas of things. All of those things are part of who we are. They have shaped who we are, but they do not define us.
“It’s hard to change the way you lose if you think you’ve never won…”
-Matt Nathanson, “All We Are”
Do things that scare you. Say things that make you uncomfortable. Tell people the things they need to be told. Hang out with people who are different than you. Do things that other people challenge you to do. Challenge others to do what you want to do. Heights and sermons and performances and trips and conversations. Doing the things you may not have the confidence to do builds confidence.
Figure out who you are. Focus on the abilities you have, the characteristics you have been given. Figure out the things that you do well. Know yourself. Know who you are without the input of those around you, without the things that other people say about you.
“Decide what to be, and go be it.”
-Mumford & Sons
Follow your passions. What do you love? What are you passionate about? What do you want? Go after it. Fail. Get up. Chase things. Do not chase the approval of others. Chase dreams. Because you want to.
Because you want to.
Because you want to.
We have been given those passions. We have been given the opportunity and ability to push ourselves. We have been given the opportunities and the things those opportunities taught us. We have been given those gifts. We have been given the people in our lives.
We are created in the image of God. It says so in the Bible.
“So God created humankind in His image, in the likeness of God He created him, male and female, He created them.”
-Genesis 1:27
Being made in the image of God sets us apart from the rest of creation. It is not something that we manifest in ourselves. It is not something that we create. It is not something that we earn with our own worthiness. It is not something for which we wait or gradually gain. It is inherent in humanity. Just being human, just being created by the Almighty God distinguishes us from everything else, gives us worth, gives us identity.
It makes us who we are.
It gives us an identity.
And if we are created in the image of God, if He created us as we are, then being that person, owning that identity is an act of worship.
We worship with our confidence.
“And God saw everything He had made and, behold, it was very good…”
-Genesis 1:31
God approved of the totality of the things He had created. Believing in ourselves, using the gifts that we have personally been given to use by our Father, is a form of pointing others to His glory, of worshiping the One who created those giftts. Our voices, our arms and legs and face and hair, our thoughts and paintings and stories and calculations and solutions. All of these things have been given to us to use for a purpose. We have to use them in the confidence that they have been given to us to use for a purpose. That none of that is an accident.
“People are just people.”
-Charmagne
Of course, we make mistakes. We make poor choices. We overreact. We fart. We are people. We are human. We have room to grow in who we are. We can get too focused on ourselves and even surpass confidence for pride. We have qualities that may need to be fine-tuned in order to do their best work for the Kingdom, but focusing on the perceived insufficiency of those qualities, basking in our own insecurities, and campaigning for our own inadequacies is actually detracting from the work we can be doing and impact we can be making.
Living a life of freedom from the constant fear of what people think usually causes them to think of you positively. Ironic, I know.
Worshiping with our confidence, with the acceptance of the identities we have been given, with who we have been created to be, can point people toward the glory of God, can bring people into the Kingdom.
“We are who we are.”
-Ke$ha
