You know, what are you saying to yourself? There's always something going on in there. Do you make positive statements about yourself to yourself or are you beating yourself up with your own words?"Know thyself" is a statement that comes to mind. Know what it's going to take to get and keep you moving onward and upward.
You know one of
most telling things about Jesus was that he knew he had to keep himself motivated and ready at any instant to do miracles. He knew that his 'coach' might call on him at any given moment to pull
team out of
fire. He knew that he couldn't afford not to be up and ready mentally to take on and over come whatever challenge was laid out before him.
One of
ways he did this was by hearing himself talk positively about himself. Sometimes with all that goes on your own voice may be
only "friendly" voice you hear. This being
case you'd better make sure it's uplifting and not helping
other voices tear you down.
Never in a bragging way of course, but do you realize that in all of
statements Jesus made about himself he never once spoke in negative terms. Not once. He never even one time hinted that he might be out matched. Jesus’ competition knew that they were facing a supremely confident opponent because he made sure of it. He was bold about it. He put it right out there for them to see and hear.
Jesus was E.F. Hutton before E.F. Hutton was. When he said, "I am..." people listened. It didn't matter what
situation Jesus never forgot who he was. And he never let anyone else forget it either.
At this point you may be thinking "Well sure it was easy for Jesus to be confident and positive. Look at who his coach was." Yes, look at who his coach was. (Hey wait a minute, Isn't his coach... your coach?)
One of my simple joys is listening to world class athlete’s talk about themselves. The Mohamed Ali's or Chris Everett's in their primes. These guys and girls know themselves. It doesn't come across to me as bragging when a Michael Jordan comes out and says after a tough game that he knows he had a pretty good game but he could have and should have played better. That's confidence.