Why Pride Kills Confidence

There’s a vital step to becoming truly confident, which most people assume is obvious. Yet, time and time again, I see women fall into the trap of mixing up confidence and pride. If you’re making this mistake, you’ll never feel genuinely secure in who you are. In this video, you’ll learn the difference between pride and confidence, how pride actually makes you more insecure, and  why humility is the key to confidence. Stay tuned!

Picture two athletes taking a water break during a tough workout. Athlete A has a water bottle that’s always full and never seems to run out. He drinks whenever he needs to, and it completely quenches his thirst. Athlete B also has a bottle, but there’s a tiny hole at the bottom—every time he fills it up, it quickly drains, leaving him thirsty and scrambling to refill over and over.

That’s exactly what it’s like when we place our confidence in things that can’t satisfy us for long, versus anchoring ourselves in an unending source—God’s acceptance. One athlete can focus on the game, knowing he’ll stay hydrated, while the other never stops worrying about where his next drink is coming from. When our “water bottle” is God’s love, we never run dry. When there’s a hole—like chasing status or approval—we’re stuck in a cycle of always needing more and never feeling truly confident.

This truth is particularly important to me, and most likely you too, as we live in this social media society where we are constantly encouraged to look out at ourselves, compare ourselves to one another, and still come out on top with this bad boss attitude. But inside, we feel insecure, lonely, and unsure of ourselves. 

But I read a book a few weeks ago that completely changed my perspective of what it means to be a confident woman., It’s called The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Timothy Keller. It’s one of the shortest books I’ve ever read—I finished it in just two or three hours on Audible—and it was also one of the most life-changing. The main idea is that instead of trying to think more highly of ourselves to achieve a sense of confidence, we actually find more freedom in thinking about ourselves less. Because when we’re striving for self-confidence, we’re constantly comparing ourselves to others, and it’s never enough. We keep reaching for more and more. But if we could truly escape that need, we’d experience real peace, and calm, and still have confidence—one that doesn’t rely on something we must chase every day.

A lot of us also think confidence equals pride, and that to be confident, we have to feel superior or appear better than other people. But pride isn’t confidence at all. In fact, pride does the exact opposite. If you’ve noticed, the most prideful individuals are often the most insecure, because they can’t stop thinking about themselves. The truth is humility is the real key to confidence. Many people—especially Christians—get hung up here, because they confuse humility with low self-esteem. They think humility means viewing themselves in a negative light. But C.S. Lewis offers a great definition: humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.

This means we’re not constantly obsessing about ourselves because that’s what’s feeding all our insecurity and low self-esteem. We become so worried about what others are thinking of us and how we come across, but I love this truth once shared by Rick Warren: no one thinks about you because they are too busy thinking about themselves. Everyone is self-obsessed in a vain pursuit to become more confident, and that’s the very thing that’s robbing them of true confidence. 

On the other hand, humility frees us from that never-ending cycle of low self-esteem and prideful thoughts. The irony is whether you feel prideful or insecure, you’re still thinking about yourself—and that’s the real barrier to genuine confidence. In Keller’s book, he shows us that we find true freedom by not fixating on ourselves so much. It’s not because we aren’t good people, or that we don’t have admirable qualities, or even because we’re sinners—though we are. It’s because it distracts us from a deeper truth. He explains that every day, we’re barraged by thoughts judging whether we’re good or bad, doing right or wrong, and all of it makes us focus on ourselves.

Keller zeroes in on 1 Corinthians 3:21 through 4:7, examining Paul’s approach to pride, humility, and self-forgetfulness. The conclusion is that when we focus on God and His judgment of us as believers, we’re free from having to measure up in our own eyes or in anyone else’s. Because, as Keller says, “the verdict is already in.” God’s pleased with us, has forgiven our past, and when our identity is rooted in Christ, we don’t need to fret about our track record or even our current appearance.

One of the key points Keller raises is how pride operates. He writes that pride takes no joy in simply having something—only in having more of it than the next person. He says:

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next person. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about.” Timothy Keller

So real confidence can only emerge when we detach ourselves from what we do—good or bad—and from what others do, from comparison to other people. So what do we connect ourselves to then? We connect ourselves to God. Not to what we’ve done, but to what He’s already done.

Keller poses this question: “Do you realize that it is only the gospel of Jesus Christ that gives you the verdict before the performance?” 

That means once we put our faith in Jesus, God’s verdict is our sins are forgiven. He’s fully pleased with us. We don’t have to keep proving ourselves to anyone, trying to be better than anyone, or frantically making up for our past. We simply accept that God accepts us, and no one can ever undo that. It doesn’t run out, it doesn’t fade, and that’s the true source of lasting confidence. And when our confidence is rooted in the gospel’s truth, we truly feel it. But that also means we’re not obsessing about ourselves; we’re thinking about who God is and what He’s done. That is humility—and that’s why humility unlocks real confidence. If we’re too busy focusing on ourselves, we’re missing out on focusing on God, who is the actual foundation of our confidence.

If you’d like to dive deeper into The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, you can actually listen to the audiobook for free by starting a 30-day trial at AudibleTrial.com/beloved. This is an affiliate link, which means I may earn a small commission if you decide to sign up, at no extra cost to you. As part of the trial, you can grab this life-changing book or choose from millions of other titles to enjoy during your free month. It’s a great way to explore audiobooks if you haven’t tried them before, and you can cancel anytime with no obligation.

To learn more about confidence, I invite you to watch this video to learn two practical steps you can take today to become a confident Proverbs 31 woman. For more encouragement, download my free Bible Study, “Worry-Free,” to learn the three lies feeding your worry and the truth to set you free at belovedwomen.org. Thanks for watching, and until next time, be beautiful, blessed, and beloved.