Feed Your Mind to Increase Confidence

My series, Confident in God's Hands, is designed to help readers increase their self-esteem. So many of us who have experienced abuse or trauma suffer from a complete lack of confidence. Today, I'd like to address the importance of feeding our minds.

Is your mind fully functional?
Have you ever been awakened by the phone ringing in the middle of the night? You slowly come to a state of semi-consciousness and punch the button on your alarm. The ringing continues. You realize that it's the phone, not the alarm, and you fumble around in the dark to pick it up. You manage in a gravelly voice, "He..ll...o," followed by a deep sigh.

If we find ourselves slogging through our days with this feeling of still being half-asleep, it's time to wake up our minds. Here are some tips for feeding our brains to boost self-esteem:

Get plenty of rest.
No one can think straight without sleep. Many people believe they can get by with 6 hours, but researchers have found that most of us need 7 to 9 hours every night. Going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time each day improves our mental alertness.

Eat nutritious foods.
Limit sugar and starches, which make us feel foggy. A diet high in protein and heavy on vegetables provides us with a clearer head and less fatigue throughout the day. A high-protein, low-carb breakfast gives us the mental boost and the confidence we need to start our day off right.

Get adequate exercise.
If we've been couch potatoes for years, we should start out with 10 minutes of stretching, yoga, or gentle walking. Even this minimal amount of movement increases blood flow to the brain. We can work up to 30-60 minutes of exercise daily to keep our minds sharp and our confidence levels high.

Turn off the TV.
As a teacher, I could tell which of my students spent an inordinate amount of time in front of their TV sets. They were slow to respond to questions, couldn't think creatively, and suffered from low self-esteem.

Television viewing is a passive form of mental work, meaning that we simply take in information without having to put in much thought. It dulls our minds so that we lose confidence in our abilities when we turn off the set and try to interact with others.

Pick up a good book.
Unlike TV viewing, reading forces us to use our minds in many creative ways. As we scan the words on the page, our minds form pictures in our heads of how the characters look, what the setting is like, and what all of the thousands of details must be. Reading is a great confidence booster, because it increases our vocabulary, teaches us about new places, and provides opportunities to learn about other people.

Skip the tabloid newspapers and magazines.
Reading the gossipy junk in tabloid newspapers and magazines is, in my opinion, a complete waste of mental power. They are written at a sixth-grade reading level and report all kinds of depressing news. If I look at them, I feel awful afterward. I realize that I've wasted a reading opportunity, and thinking about all those divorces, drug overdoses, and relationship issues drains my confidence. Who could possibly feel refreshed or more confident after reading about so much gloom and doom?

If you want to know what's going on in the world, pick up The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. If you don't have access to them, subscribe online. The National Geographic magazine is full of interesting articles and photographs that will expand your horizons and increase your confidence. Learning about unusual animals and people from other cultures gives us something to talk about when we meet others. And being able to interact with some degree of intelligence boosts our confidence.

Read the Bible.
The Bible is God's living, breathing Word, which brings us refreshment, enlightenment, encouragement, love, and hope each time we pick it up. If we are facing hardships, the Holy Spirit leads us to messages about God's ability to provide for us. When we've reached a success point, the Word gives us plenty of opportunities to praise God for it. If we read the Bible daily, we discover that our confidence increases. There is no problem that is too big for God to handle. We can go out into the world with our heads held high, knowing that the Almighty Creator of the Universe is walking ahead of us.

Romans 12:2a (NIV) tells us about the importance of focusing on God, and not on the tragedies that we find on the TV set or in junk newspapers. It reads, Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Our minds can be renewed each time we open the Bible. And with the renewal of our minds, confidence grows.

Today's Challenge
Choose two things from the tips above to feed your mind. For the next week, write down how those two changes are improving your confidence.