How to Achieve Self-Confidence and Emotional Stability

Five Basic Building Blocks of Personal Empowerment and Self-Esteem

How a person views himself or herself will determine the course of that person's life. Joel Osteen explains: "You will never rise above the image you have of yourself in your mind." Not surprisingly then, building self-confidence is one of the more common goals among people today. In fact, it has been so throughout all of human history.

Fashioning the right amount of confidence and self-esteem requires five very basic, yet fundamental, building blocks of identity and personal character. Without these in place, you will have a difficult time achieving the fulfilled life you desire.

1. A Firm Foundation of Faith

Joel Osteen explains in his first bestselling book Your Best Life Now: Seven Steps to Livingat Your Full Potential that "God wants us to have healthy, positive self-images, to see ourselves as priceless treasures." This will be all the more difficult for you to accomplish if you don't even believe in God.

If you see yourself as a mere accident of random evolution, then you will understand life and your place in it very differently than one who believes in a God that created the universe and all that is in it. The book of Genesis makes this very clear when the Triune God said: "Let us make Man in our image." You and I are created in the image of God.

The psalmist and great king of Israel, David, wrote that he was "fearfully and wonderfully made." And the apostle Paul tells us that we are foreordained "before the foundations of the world."

God created the universe, the human race, and you specifically. You therefore draw your inherent value as well as all your "unalienable rights" (see the U.S. Declaration of Independence) from Him. As such, your value as a human being is not based on the economy, the government, or what other people say or think about you. It is based on God.

Yet if you lack a foundation of faith in your life, you will miss out on this all-important truth.

2. Discipline of the Mind