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How To Overcome Negativity

How To Overcome Negativity

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Do you struggle with negativity? That can happen when too many difficult events take place without enough positive ones to overcome them.

Think back to a significant, life-changing moment–one that filled you with hope and purpose. What made it so transformational? Chances are, it had something to do with accepting yourself the way God made you. Seeing yourself through God’s wise, loving eyes changes everything.

These moments don’t happen every day, but you can take steps toward one today. How do you know when you are ready for growth?

You might notice negativity building up—feeling weighed down, discouraged, or emotionally disconnected. Being unable to experience joy is a sign of spiritual sickness. Are you often pessimistic? Do you feel unwanted or rejected? Does it seem like a cloud of gloom follows you wherever you go?

Negativity Should Not Be Normal

Negativity becomes a serious problem when it starts to feel like your default state. While you won’t feel amazing every day, it’s important not to accept negativity as part of your identity. You don’t “just have a negative personality”—negativity isn’t permanent. It’s a weight you weren’t meant to carry.

People have blind spots, and that’s normal—only God sees everything. But just because you don’t notice certain harmful thought patterns doesn’t mean you have to stay stuck in them. You can develop greater self-awareness.

Could you be so familiar with negativity that you don’t even realize it’s affecting you? When a negative bias goes unchecked, it can distort your perspective, making discouragement feel normal. I’ve done it, and I’m guessing you have too.

Jesus wants you to be free from unnecessary burdens. If you’re carrying something that serves no purpose—something blocking you from the life He intends—you need to let it go.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30 ESV

Jesus offers rest, but often we continue carrying weights He never asked us to bear. Immediately after these verses, Matthew 12 describes how the Pharisees burdened people with unnecessary rules. Jesus made it clear—He doesn’t want you weighed down by man-made expectations.

Ask yourself: What rules, requirements, and burdens am I carrying unnecessarily?

God wants us to be anxious for nothing. Acceptance is the antidote to worry. When you accept God for who He is and yourself for who He made you to be, you unlock the ability to love others the way He calls you to.

Self-acceptance is twofold—it means rejecting who you aren’t while embracing who you are.

Practical Steps to Heal Negativity

To break free from negativity, start by interrupting harmful thought cycles with truth. Negativity thrives when it goes unchallenged, so speak affirmations rooted in Scripture, such as “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).

Engage in activities that bring joy and renewal—whether it’s taking a walk, connecting with a supportive friend, or journaling about God’s faithfulness. Most importantly, surrender your burdens through prayer, asking God to reveal and lift the weight you’ve been carrying.

Transformation doesn’t happen overnight—it begins with small, intentional choices that gradually shift your mindset. When you align your thoughts with faith, hope, and God’s unconditional love, negativity loses its grip.

If you want to dig deeper into this, work through my book Confident Identity: Christian Strategies to Forget Who You Aren’t and Discover Who You Really Are. Or, see below for another post about self-acceptance.

Learn more about self-acceptance
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Last updated 20250504

Living with Eternal Purpose

Living With Eternal Purpose: No Guts No Glory

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Do you ever feel like just being yourself is too risky? The cost of authenticity might be rejection, but the rewards lead to a life full of purpose. When you embrace who God created you to be, challenges will come—but so will deep joy and meaning. When we live in alignment with God’s design, we experience a glimpse of heaven—a foretaste of the eternal—shaping our journey with divine purpose.

Yet, too often fear holds us back. We hesitate to be vulnerable, to speak honestly, to pursue what truly matters. Why? Because rejection and failure seem unbearable. But what if we could shift our focus, seeing beyond temporary discomfort to the eternal reality that awaits us? Living with this perspective changes everything.

In another post, I wrote about the benefits of imagining what heaven will be like. I asked, “How would seeing the most optimistic vision impact how you live today?” One person’s response perfectly captures the shift from despair to hope that I aimed for. He gave me permission to share his answer:

I enjoyed the post you wrote on Heaven. Thanks for posing the question. It gave me a chance to think about what the rest of my life could look like and how it could begin to move in that direction even now. Knowing what heaven is like and who I am as God’s finished product would change how I live the rest of my days on earth.

During a recent checkup, my doctor said, “You look pretty good for someone who almost died a year ago.” Coming face-to-face with death has me thinking more about how I want to be remembered.

If I knew what God plans for me in heaven, I could risk being that person more on earth, no matter what others thought of me, because I would know it pleased God. I should be doing that anyway, but I struggle to be the best version of me. I want to:

  • be more unselfish, putting others’ needs before my own.
  • be more transparent about my feelings and not be concerned about how that would look to others.
  • speak what is in my heart; I wouldn’t be unkind, but I would be free to disagree with others and risk being rejected and isolated from others.
  • be more vulnerable to love others and help them, no matter what it costs me emotionally or materially.
  • be more humble, living out my purpose of bringing glory to God and doing things that have eternal value, not just what has meaning for my time on earth.

Acting in this way would bring more meaning to my remaining time here, leave an eternal mark, and make something in my life worth remembering to those I leave behind.

Imagining heaven’s best helps me trust God more (I can see why He led me through what He did) and value what He values. I want to see with a better perspective what is important in this life, and what matters so little because it won’t be coming with me into heaven.

This perspective has the power to transform how we live. What if, instead of fearing failure or rejection, we boldly stepped into the identity God designed for us?

How to Step Boldly into Purpose—Without Regrets

It’s easy to get stuck in hesitation, waiting for the “right time” to start living boldly. But if you knew heaven was ahead, what would you risk today to embrace the person God designed you to be?

  • Maybe you need counseling to heal from past wounds that keep you from fully stepping into your purpose.
  • Maybe it’s time to invest in a book that guides you toward deeper faith and self-awareness.
  • Maybe you need to start small, choosing one area of your life to surrender fear and embrace authenticity.

The challenge is real, the risk feels great—but the reward is eternal.

How about you? What will your life look like if you live with no regrets? No guts, no glory. When you risk being who God made you to be, God is glorified.

And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.

Romans 8:17 NLT

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Last Updated 20250420

Find and Accept Your Authentic Self

Find And Accept Your Authentic Self

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If you’re unable to accept yourself, you’re likely missing out on joy. To maximize joy you must appreciate both God and yourself. How can a person worship God but hate himself? How can a person like herself but hate God? The two must go together to maximize enjoyment of life.

How to Reject Your Authentic Self

God created you as you are for a specific reason. Life’s bumps and bruises can deceive you into believing you are someone more or less than you are. If you are not gifted athletically (or some other enviable ability) but compare yourself to those who are, you’ll always come up short and feel less than.

Have you ever tried something and felt inadequate? Or maybe someone told you that you didn’t measure up? If you can walk away understanding, “this isn’t for me,” then you have a healthy perspective. If you conclude that you are defective, you are making it personal, which isn’t helpful.

Are you measuring yourself with the right ruler? God measures you by His original design. Everything else will give you a faulty or inaccurate measurement. But more than that, you’ll feel miserable because there is no way for you to win.

Proverbs 11:1 declares that God detests deception in dealings with others. How can you deal honestly with others if you don’t first deal honestly with your value?

The Lord detests the use of dishonest scales, but he delights in accurate weights.

Proverbs 11:1 NLT

Are you weighing your value with honest scales? Romans 12:3 communicates the same idea.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Romans 12:3 ESV

It’s possible to think you accept yourself when you don’t. It’s possible to live with the heavy burden of trying to be who you think God wants you to be. But that can be different than who God knows you to be.

Are you living with an uncomfortable tension of always pushing yourself to reach some ever-elusive goal? If so, you’re never going to reach self-acceptance. You can’t perform your way to acceptance.

How to Discover Your Authentic Self

God’s acceptance is free for His children. Even though we don’t have to work for our value, we must learn our value by who God made us to be.

Below are 7 questions to help you assess how well you know yourself and how consistently you present yourself. Answer the first 3 questions to determine your self-image (how you see and value yourself), the second 3 questions to define how you feel obligated to act to fulfill life’s demands (how others see and value you), and the seventh question to consider God’s perspective (how He sees and values you).

  1. The thing I like most about myself is…
  2. I’m at my best when I contribute…
  3. I feel most connected to God when I…
  4. Others appreciate me for…
  5. My job requires me to…
  6. I feel like a fish out of water when I…

The final seventh question is this: Describe yourself as God sees you through His loving, creative eyes. Be specific. Generate your answer from your heart. Provide a detailed answer related to how uniquely God created you. Now, compare your answers between all the questions. How consistent (or inconsistent) are you?

How to Accept Your Authentic Self

Imagine what it would be like if your self-image, your presented-image, and God’s-image all described the same person. You would act the same way across all different areas of your life, according to God’s design for you. That’s self-acceptance.

Is self-acceptance clear to you? Are you amazed by God’s goodness that He created you to enjoy Him and enjoy who He made you to be? If not, what seems to be holding you back from the joy of authenticity?

Learn more about worship and joy.
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Last updated 2025/03/02

Why Rejection Means You Belong

Why Rejection Means You Belong

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Rejection can be extremely painful or even life-threatening. However, for the Christian, for the child of God, rejection is an attack without merit. It doesn’t feel like it at the time, but rejection can be good. Would you rather be accepted by God or by Satan? Would you rather be rejected by God or by Satan?

Rejection is Related to Belonging

If you’re excluded from one group, you automatically belong to another.

If someone hates you, then someone else loves you.

If one person forgets you, you’re remembered by another.

If someone goes out of their way to reject you, that means you’re significant.

How can these statements be true? Belonging is conserved. No one can “unbelong” themselves from everyone everywhere. All believers have a built-in community. We have an identity made in God’s image meaning we’re somebody even when we feel like a nobody.

Rejection can be Temporary, Bad, or Good

Rejection is not always bad. Understanding its different types will help you focus on the good.

Temporary

When you reject yourself, you deceive yourself. When others reject you and you agree with it, you are likewise deceived. This is temporary rejection (God accepts you, man rejects you, and you reject you). It’s temporary because it comes from an incorrect belief. God will help you know the truth.

Bad

If you reject God and God rejects you, you have nothing. This is bad rejection (God rejects you, man might reject you, and you reject you). It’s bad because there is nothing worse in life than being rejected by God. God fully accepts His spiritual children, so this only applies to non-believers.

Good

If you’re rejected by the people who reject God, then you belong with God. When you’re enemy rejects you, you only gain. This is good rejection (God accepts you, man rejects you, but you accept you). It’s good because it solidifies that you truly belong to God.

The Lord is on my side; I will not fear.
What can man do to me?

The Lord is on my side as my helper;
I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.

It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in man.

The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.

Psalm 118:6-8, 22 ESV

Jesus, the cornerstone, had much to say about belonging and rejection.

The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.

Luke 10:16 ESV

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

Luke 11:23 ESV

For the one who is not against us is for us.

Mark 9:40 ESV

Turn Your Rejection Into Belonging

Those who do not know who they truly are in God’s eyes are vulnerable to rejection from the world. We are born with the desperate need for acceptance. Without any connection or guidance from God, we will believe whatever we experience. The less you know yourself, the more rejection stings because you need others to help you learn how to accept yourself.

Think about the worst rejection you’ve ever had to face. Perhaps you craved the attention of so-and-so, but they poured contempt on you. Or you trusted so-and-so and they betrayed you. That’s the worst feeling ever.

What happens when you’re rejected? You just figured out where you don’t belong, which means you also found where you belong. For example:

  • If someone tells you he no longer wants to date you because you’re too quiet, then you belong with people who appreciate you being soft-spoken.
  • If someone excludes you because you are “too competitive”, then you belong with people who value being ambitious.
  • If someone persecutes you because of your unwavering faith in Jesus, then you belong with people who know and value the true God.

Review times of rejection and allow these experiences to strengthen (instead of weaken) the sense of who you are.

Learn more about love, suffering, and rejection.
Last updated 2025/02/09

God Will Deliver You From Failure

God Will Deliver You From Failure

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Failure would be a death sentence if it were not for God’s mercy. Many people struggle with believing that their failure leaves a fatal mark that limits their potential. If you think you’ve failed, you might believe something like:

  • I’ll always mess up God’s plans.
  • There’s no hope for me now.
  • I’ll wear this scar for the rest of my life.
  • That was my last chance.
  • God will never forgive me.
  • My best will never be good enough.
  • God is going to send me to hell.
  • I’ll never recover from this.
  • There’s no use trying again.

For Christians to believe any of these statements, they must be deceived. Every one of them has something false about it. What Jesus has done for believers removes the permanence of these statements and breathes hope into the hopeless, life into the lifeless.

Failure From the World’s Perspective

A worldly definition of failure distorts God by emphasizing two extreme responses. People are forever condemned or always excused without consequence. These miss God’s heart because they throw out His mercy or justice.

Without God’s mercy, we would all be perpetually caught in shame. The unbearable feelings of self-condemnation and self-loathing weigh heavily without any way of escape. People attempt to cope by utilizing perfectionism or apathy to avoid the feelings of falling short.

Without God’s justice, we can become lulled into a false sense of security. The prideful presumption that there will never be a reckoning for our attitudes and choices might soothe the conscience today but does nothing to prevent the condemnation tomorrow. People attempt to cope by utilizing relativism to discount the seriousness of God’s absolute standards.

    Sin is probably the best definition of failure. It completely misses what God wants for us. Without God, we are defective because of sin. However, God, because of His love, has stripped sin of its power and permanent consequences. So it does not have a significant lasting effect for believers.

    Failure From God’s Perspective

    Let’s reconsider the definition of failure, but include God this time. A worst-case definition of failure considers it to be a temporary setback. That’s because God works for our ultimate good. We are on the same side.

    Failure implies finality. But because God is an eternal being, endings do not exist for Him. Any moment in time is not the final word on your situation.

    Failure implies hopelessness. But God is an endless supply of hope. Nothing can defeat God. Nothing can defeat God’s plans. Nothing can defeat God’s people.

    Failure implies permanent loss. But God restores and heals, often while we are yet in this life. That’s possible because knowing Him means knowing boundless hope.

    Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

    Lamentations 3:21-23

    We can always learn from our experiences, even if they seem like abysmal failures. God is ready to give us another chance. We can start again in a stronger position.

    I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called, and the Lord heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.

    Psalm 34:4-7 NIV

    So you can see that you will have trouble, but God will deliver you. He will deliver you from evil. He looks beyond failure to your eternal potential in Jesus Christ. For other verses that support God’s grace and hope, see Isaiah 40:31, Romans 5:5, Psalm 33:18, and Jeremiah 29:11.

    May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

    Romans 15:13 NIV

    Learn more about Shame.
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    Last updated 2025/02/02

    escape a chained reality

    Find God’s Beautiful Reality

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    How much of your life do you spend in reality? How much do you spend in a fantasy world whether that is of your making or another’s creative fiction?

    Taking a break from reality is healthy up to a point. But what starts as innocent can become harmful. Taking a break can eventually become escaping reality. Then what if you reach the point where you begin to prefer to escape more than you like to be present? You could then become chained (addicted) to a false reality that you find difficult to escape.

    Don’t Deny Reality

    We are only aware of a fraction of who we are at any given time. Sometimes this denial of who we are is normal and healthy. But at other times, we become stuck denying important information.

    If you’re in denial, you could be:

    1. Believing you are better than you are (you are pridefully protecting your ego).
    2. Believing you are worse than you are (you are making a negative experience more important than it is).

    Try to become more aware right now. Think through the past couple of weeks. What has been the focus of your thoughts? Is there anything resting just below the surface? What are you half-aware of? What could be buried deep? What is nagging at you in the back of your mind, but you haven’t admitted or verbalized it?

    Denying the truth is usually not good. But you must escape what you can’t fully handle in the moment. On the other hand, denying something false is usually good. God wants us to die to (deny) sin and be alive to Him.

    So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

    Romans 6:11 ESV

    Focus on God’s Reality

    Is there such a place as heaven on earth? How hard should Christians be trying to manufacture a utopia?

    We can make the effort to embrace the reality of God’s truth. But this includes the truth that this life, in its present form, is passing away (1 Corinthians 7:31). We can make our lives somewhat better, but we might lose everything if we focus more on present reality over future reality. What is coming next is far greater than what we have today. Jesus said if we focus on keeping our (present) life we might lose our (future) life, but if we focus away from our present life, we will keep our future life (Matthew 16:25).

    For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.

    Philippians 1:21-24

    The only true reality is the one God says is real. You might lean into other less-than-true realities when the pain is too much and you think you have no other options. But as soon as you’re ready, you should run toward God and His reality.

    In what ways are you in denial? Consider how aware you are of your emotions and memories. Put together these determine the worldview you carry around in your heart. Are you avoiding these significant experience by being stuck in a rut of unchanging routine? Ask God for the strength to endure the harshness of reality, but also for the spiritual insight to behold the beauty of His reality.

    God is merciful; He allows and even provides for a healthy escape. He provides moments that transcend the difficulties of life (see 1 Corinthians 10:13). When God provides the opportunity for you to enjoy life, be sure to take full advantage.

    Learn more about identity and reality.
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    Last updated 2024/11/24