Do you regularly struggle with feelings of self-doubt or insecurity? If you answered yes, then I hope you know that you’re not alone. We all struggle with feelings of self-doubt. But you can easily overcome self-doubt by learning to take your thoughts captive. Here’s how!

Resources Mentioned:

Walking in Confidence: https://ashleyvarner.com/confidence
Confidence Affirmations: https://ashleyvarner.com/affirmations

Highlights From the Episode

Do you regularly struggle with feelings of self-doubt or insecurity? If you answered, yes, then the first thing I want you to know is that you’re not alone. The second thing I want you to know is that while we all struggle with feelings of self-doubt, you can easily overcome them by learning how to take your thoughts captive. That’s what this episode is all about. So, let’s get started.

Hi there, my friends and welcome back to The Renewed Mind. I am your host, Ashley Varner. I am so thankful to be here with you. And I wanted to jump on today and really talk to you about how to overcome feelings of self-doubt.

Now, this is something that comes up over and over whenever I am teaching women and speaking in different areas. And women come up and they ask me, how am I supposed to walk in confidence if I’m struggling so much with insecurity and self-doubt?

Let’s really just talk a little bit about insecurity and self-doubt. And I hope that this comes across the way that my heart is wanting to say it. I really love you and want to help you. And I believe that confidence is something that every woman of God should be walking in. But we have to get honest with where we’re at in order to get there.

So, I am gonna be sharing some things that might be a little hard to hear but it is really coming from a place of love and truly wanting to help you to grow in your confidence. As we talk about taking our thoughts captive, I really want you to think about the thoughts that are driving these feelings of insecurity and self-doubt.

Insecurity and Self-Doubt

With emotions this is something I teach in the mindset reset, I teach that emotions are usually one word. Now, sometimes we have like a hyphenated word like self-doubt, but really emotions, you can boil them down to one single word. So, a word like insecurity or self-doubt. And what we sometimes think are our emotions are actually our thoughts. And so, whenever you boil down the thought that is behind that emotion, so, you have the one-word emotion, maybe it’s insecurity, I want you to think about the thought that is behind that emotion.

It could be that you feel insecure because you doubt your abilities. It could be that the thought that you’re thinking is, I really doubt my abilities. Maybe another thought that you have is, I’m never going to be good enough. I want you to start looking at the sentences in your mind, the thoughts that you are thinking about yourself that are leading to the emotions of self-doubt or the emotion of insecurity.

But what I really want you to realize is that, as we’re talking about this idea of self-doubt, like not being able to do things on our own, wanting to be independent, I want you to realize that God’s Word says something exactly opposite of independence. Because really, we can do nothing on our own.

That might be hard to hear but I want you to start to embrace that truth, that I on my own, I really can do nothing. Now you might think that that is not a comforting thought but the truth is we are not on our own. If you have accepted Christ, it is comforting to remember that while I can do nothing on my own, I’m not on my own. And the Bible says that I can do anything through Christ who is the one who’s giving me strength.

And so, whenever we start to change our thinking around this idea that I have to do it all, I have to be perfect, I have to accomplish all of these things, once we stop and realize, hey, on my own, I really can’t accomplish any of this. It actually takes away self-doubt and insecurity.

And don’t knock it till you tried it, because I have seen this happen in my life, I’ve seen this happen in the lives of clients that I coach where as soon as they realize, they kind of take that pressure off of themselves to say, on my own, I can’t do it on my own. And thankfully, I’m not on my own.

See really insecurity has the same root thoughts as pride. Some people think that pride is the opposite of insecurity or that confidence is the opposite of insecurity. When really, they sometimes think that insecurity is really just being someone who isn’t prideful or doesn’t think highly of themselves. When really, if you are insecure you can attest to this yourself. That if you are insecure you are thinking about yourself all the time, right. If you’re feeling feelings of self-doubt, you are thinking about yourself all the time.

If you are constantly focused on who God is and what He’s doing through you, your focus begins to be upward and not inward. And I think that so often, we can take insecurity as almost like a badge of honor to say, well, I’m not prideful. I’m not, you know, thinking more highly of myself than I should. But really humility is not the same as insecurity.

Humility is that phrase like I said, it’s realizing, hey I can’t do anything on my own, but I’m so thankful I’m not on my own. That’s humility. That’s saying, I can’t do anything on my own. I realize that I need to depend on the Lord versus I can never do anything right, I never am gonna measure up to anything. See how the two different thoughts are very distinct?

Where Does Your Assurance and Confidence Come From?

One is insecurity rearing its ugly head and one is humility saying, I am gonna do my best through the strength that Christ has given me. If you are struggling with feelings of self-doubt, I just wanna ask you, where does your assurance and confidence come from? Where are you looking to get that confidence? Where are you looking to get that assurance?

Because if you’re looking to yourself, you are not ever going to measure up. That confidence, that self-confidence or self-assurance is only gonna be good as long as you don’t mess up. And we know that we all mess up, right.

The Bible says, we all fall short. And so, I want you to get to the point where you realize that your assurance and your confidence needs to be based on something that is immovable. If you want to have unshakeable confidence then you have to base your confidence on someone who is unshakeable. And that’s not you. That’s God, right.

We can only have this strong immovable confidence if we’re basing our confidence on who he is. So remember, as I said, emotions are one word. If you feel insecure and you are thinking a thought like, I’m doubting my abilities, what you have to do is, you have to replace your thought with God’s thought.

So, you can change your emotions by changing your thoughts. That’s what makes your thoughts, like making your thoughts be obedient to Christ. That’s what it’s all about.

Sometimes we hear pastors preach about taking your thoughts captive and making your thoughts obedient to Christ, and that’s important and that’s in the Bible but there’s not a lot of practical teaching behind it. And so, this is how you do this.

This is how you take your thoughts captive. You look at the thought that’s in your mind, you first have to be aware of what your thought is, right. And I recommend sometimes just writing it out because when you get it on paper, it becomes less biased, right. You become more just focused on that particular sentence instead of all the emotions that are coming up behind the thought.

If you look at the thought that you are having, that just being aware of it, looking at it, then you have to line it up to God’s word. So you have your thought and then you look at God’s Word and you say, are these thoughts lining up to what God’s Word says? Do they match? Is the truth of God’s Word what’s really coming through my thought life right now.

And if it is, great. If it’s not, then that’s whenever you have to replace that thought with something that does line up with God’s Word. That’s what it means to make your thoughts obedient to Christ.

So you have a thought, you look at it to say, is this obedient to Christ? Is this lining up with God’s word? And if it’s not, you have to let the thought go.

Now, we’ve been so conditioned to go to the easiest thought. And so, if you’ve been thinking a thought over and over like I’m never gonna measure up and God’s Word says that you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you because you’ve been thinking that negative thought for so long your brain is naturally gonna wanna go down that road.

What you have to do is be really intentional and self-disciplined to say, no. I know that that’s what the enemy wants me to think. I know that that’s how I’ve conditioned myself to think but I’m going to take this thought captive. And I instead, am going to believe the truth about what God says about me.

That’s where you get your confidence from God’s Word the truth of His Word versus just the things that come into your mind on a regular basis. Now, if you change your thoughts to say things like, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” or “The one who called me to do this is faithful to follow through with what he called me to do.” Those are both verses.

So, if you are struggling with knowing what to replace your thoughts with go to ashleyvarner.com/affirmations. I have a free downloadable resource that you can look at, I give you tons of verses for you to swap out. If you are having thoughts of insecurity and self-doubt and you wanna overcome those, grab that worksheet. You can print it off. You can just download it. And you can have those verses at the ready to replace those thoughts that you’re taking captive.

Confidence Affirmations: https://ashleyvarner.com/affirmations

Knowing Your True Identity in Christ

So, you’re taking a thought captive but you need to replace it with another thought that is lined up with God’s Word. Really at the end of the day, God’s thoughts are always the best thoughts to have. And if you’re not sure what He thinks, go to your Bible. Know what he’s saying about you. Know the truths that are in His Word.

I really want you to stop basing your confidence on yourself. This assurance of self, that’s where self-doubt comes in, right? If you don’t want self-doubt, then you have to start resting your confidence on Jesus. You have to start resting your confidence on who He says that you are on the value that He says that you are.

This all really boils down to knowing your true identity in Christ. And as you begin to take your thoughts captive and really build that spiritual muscle, you begin to determine who is really forming your identity. Who is determining your identity? Is it Christ, the one who died for you, the one who is leading you, teaching you, and growing you in Him? Or are you letting your identity be formed by Pinterest or Instagram?

I want you to really look at the things that you’re putting into your minds, the YouTube videos that you’re watching are they leading you to Christ or away from Him. I want you to figure out what you have been allowing your identity to be determined by. And then at the end of the day, it’s all about learning how to replace your thoughts with God’s thoughts.

So, that is all that I have for you today. Remember to grab that free worksheet. It’s a bunch of confidence affirmations but they are all biblically based. If you haven’t seen my video about affirmations and if they’re even really biblical, make sure to check it out. But what I share in there is that, it depends on what you are meditating your mind on; what affirmations you’re putting your mind on. And if you are using affirmations that are straight from God’s Word, they are going to be powerful in your life because God’s word is powerful. So make sure that you go to grab that.

Confidence Affirmations: https://ashleyvarner.com/affirmations

I’m also gonna leave a link to my walking-in confidence Bible study. It’s a 21-day Bible study where we take a bunch of those verses and really dig deep into what they mean about your identity.

Walking in Confidence: https://ashleyvarner.com/confidence

So, I hope that you enjoyed this whole series on taking your thoughts captive. If you haven’t watched the other videos in the series, make sure to check them out. And I will see you guys next time.