When Your Confidence Stops Shifting Every Time Someone Enters the Room
No matter how beautiful we perceive ourselves to be in our own worlds, there is always going to be someone who someone else considers more attractive than us. There may even be someone that we personally consider more attractive than ourselves. And at some point, that has to be okay with us.
Because if my confidence depends on being the prettiest woman in the room, then my confidence will constantly be shifting. If my value depends on being the best dressed, then my value can change the moment someone walks in wearing something I think looks better. If my identity depends on being the most qualified, successful, talented, intelligent, or attractive person in the room, then I will spend my entire life competing with people who may not even know that I am competing with them.
There will always be someone who has something you don’t have.
Someone may be considered more attractive. Someone may dress better. Someone may have more money. Someone may be more educated. Someone may have more experience. Someone may be more talented in a particular area. Someone may receive more attention.
And if we continue using these things to measure our value, there will always be something outside of us that has the ability to make us feel less than.
That is why I had to ask myself, What happens to my confidence when someone I consider prettier than me enters the room?
Does my confidence leave? Do I suddenly become more aware of myself? Do I begin comparing my body, face, hair, clothes, or personality to hers? Do I suddenly feel average? Do I become quieter? Do I feel like I need to compete?
Do I begin questioning things about myself that I was completely comfortable with five minutes ago?
Because if someone else can walk into a room and change the way I see myself without ever speaking to me, then maybe my confidence was never truly rooted in who I was.
Maybe it was rooted in comparison. And comparison is a shaky foundation to build an identity on.
Because the truth is, there is no permanent position at the top of worldly standards. You can be considered the most beautiful person in one room and average in another. You can be the best dressed person somewhere today and see someone tomorrow whose style you admire more than your own. You can be the most qualified person in one environment and the least experienced person in another.
So who are you when you are no longer at the top of the scale?
Who are you when someone else is considered more beautiful? Who are you when someone else receives more attention? Who are you when you aren’t the best dressed? Who are you when someone else knows more than you? Who are you when someone else has something that you don’t?
If our identity is built on being better than someone else, eventually someone else’s presence will make us question who we are. And I don’t want my confidence to be that fragile.
I don’t want to feel beautiful only when I believe I am the prettiest woman around. I don’t want to feel intelligent only when I know more than everyone else.
I don’t want to feel successful only when someone else is failing.I don’t want to feel valuable only when I am receiving attention. I don’t want my confidence to rise and fall based on who is standing next to me.
Because those are worldly measurements. They are temporary. They are subjective. And they can change depending on who is looking.
The person one person considers beautiful may not be the person another person is attracted to. The person one person thinks is the best dressed may not appeal to someone else’s style. The person one group considers successful may not meet another group’s definition of success.
So if people’s eyes are constantly changing, why would I build my identity on what their eyes see?
The Bible says in 1 Samuel 16:7, “People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
That Scripture makes me stop and think.How much of my value have I been measuring by things that God does not use to measure me?
How much time have I spent worrying about how I compare externally while ignoring what God has placed internally?
Because there is something about me that cannot be measured by a mirror. There are things about me that no one can see by looking at my face.
My character. My heart. My wisdom. My experiences. My ability to love. My relationship with God.
My gifts. My purpose. My perspective. My healing. My growth. The things God placed inside of me. Those things have value too.
In fact, I am beginning to understand that it is often the unseen things that give my life its deepest value.
And when I know that, something begins to change. I no longer need to be the prettiest woman in the room to feel beautiful.
I can acknowledge that someone else is beautiful without feeling like I have become less beautiful.
I can see a woman who may be more attractive to other people than I am and remain completely comfortable with myself.
I can admire someone without competing with them. I can appreciate beauty without allowing beauty to become the measurement of my worth.
Because I am not valuable because I won some invisible competition. I am valuable because God created me.
My identity does not come from being the best. My identity does not come from being the most attractive. My identity does not come from receiving the most attention. My identity comes from who Christ says I am.
And when I truly begin understanding that, I have something deeper than confidence based on appearance. I have intrinsic value.
My value exists because of who I am in Christ, not because I have successfully convinced everyone around me that I am more beautiful, more talented, or better than someone else. And there is freedom in that.Because I don’t have to keep winning.
I don’t have to keep proving myself. I don’t have to be the best in order to belong. I don’t have to make someone else look smaller in order to feel valuable. I don’t have to compare myself to everyone I meet. I can simply be who God created me to be.
The Bible says in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
I love that because I am God’s workmanship. So are you. There is something unique about what God created in me. There is something unique about my story. Something unique about the way I see things.
Something unique about what I have survived. Something unique about the gifts God has placed inside of me. Something unique about my beauty. And no one can copy that.
Someone can have features that other people consider more beautiful than mine, but they cannot be me.
Someone can wear clothes better than me according to someone else’s standards, but they cannot be me. Someone can be more qualified in an area, but they cannot be me.
Someone can receive more attention, but they cannot take away what God placed inside of me. What God gave me is mine to steward. And what God gave you is yours.
We can spend our entire lives looking at what God gave someone else and miss what He placed inside of us. Sometimes we are so busy wishing we looked like someone else that we don’t take the time to discover the beauty of who we actually are.
Sometimes we want someone else’s gifts because we haven’t learned how to use our own. Sometimes we want their confidence because we haven’t discovered what makes us confident.
Sometimes we want to be seen the way they are seen because we haven’t. I learned to see ourselves through God’s eyes.
But I am learning that God did not create me to compete with His creation. He created me to become who He created me to be.And that means I don’t have to look like anyone else.
I don’t have to have what they have. I don’t have to be what they are. I don’t have to compete for a position that God never asked me to compete for.
I just have to know who I am. And maybe that is where my confidence truly comes from.
My confidence comes from knowing that my value is not up for negotiation every time someone else enters the room.
My worth does not decrease because someone else is beautiful. My identity does not disappear because someone else is talented.
My gifts do not become less important because someone else is gifted differently. My purpose does not become smaller because someone else is successful.
Nothing about another person’s existence takes away from what God placed in me. And I think we have to become comfortable with the fact that we will not be everything to everyone.
You may be the most beautiful woman in one person’s eyes and completely average in someone else’s.
And that has to be okay. You may be someone’s type and not someone else’s.
And that has to be okay. You may walk into one room and receive a lot of attention and walk into another where no one notices you. And that has to be okay too.
Because if I need everyone to see me as beautiful in order to believe that I am beautiful, then I have given everyone else authority over how I see myself.
And I don’t want to live like that.I want my value to be rooted deeper.
I want to know that whether I am the prettiest woman in the room or not, I am still valuable. Whether I am considered attractive or average by other people, I am still valuable.
Whether people notice me or overlook me, I am still valuable.Whether someone thinks I am beautiful or doesn’t, I am still valuable.
Because my value is not created by their eyes. My value was established before they ever saw me. And there is something else I am learning. I have a unique beauty that God gave me. Not just physically, but as a whole person.
The way I think. The way I love. The things I notice. The experiences that shaped me. The gifts He placed inside of me. The person I am becoming. There are things about me that someone else cannot copy or take away.
And maybe they cannot even see all of it. Because God did not give everyone the eyes to see what He placed in me.
Not everyone will understand me. Not everyone will recognize my gifts. Not everyone will see my beauty. Not everyone will value what I have to offer.
But that does not mean it isn’t there. A person’s inability to see my value does not remove it. Their inability to recognize what God placed in me does not mean He didn’t place it there.
Their standards do not have the authority to redefine me. And that is where I want my confidence to come from.
I want to be able to walk into a room full of beautiful women and remain connected to myself.
Not because I think I am better than them. Not because I have to convince myself that I am prettier. Not because I am competing. But because I know who I am. I know where my value comes from. I know that I am more than what I look like.
I know that my identity is deeper than what people see when I first walk into a room. And I know that nothing about another woman’s beauty can take away what God gave me.
So whether I am the prettiest woman in the room or the most average woman in the room according to everyone else’s standards, I am still the most valuable person in my world.
I am still beautiful to me. I am still worthy to me. I am still valuable to me.
Because my confidence is no longer based on whether I am winning against someone else.
My confidence is based on the fact that God created me intentionally. And nothing can shift that. Not another woman’s beauty. Not someone’s opinion. Not attention. Not comparison. Not a mirror.
Not a room full of people who may or may not see what God placed inside of me. Because what God placed inside of me was never meant to be measured by worldly standards.
I don’t have to be the most beautiful person in the room when I know that my greatest value was never based on what the room could see.
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