One of the greatest lessons fighting cancer taught me is that there’s not enough time to waste it worrying about what others think about me. Letting others speak into your life so you can learn and grow is healthy, but life is just too short to seek external opinions for your sense of worth. That’s a disabling mindset which can never be satisfied no matter how hard you work to please people.
It’s deceptive, because though you may be tirelessly serving people with a smile, anything you do for others from which you are expecting recognition or needing validation isn’t rooted in love, but in fear of rejection. If it’s not satisfied, you can get lost in that rejection, as well as self-pity, isolation, and depression. In that pain, you judge that nothing you do is ever good enough, and usually judge others the same way.
God has made you unique, and so is your journey with Him. When you spend more time judging or envying someone else’s life than you do learning to thrive in your own, you can inhibit blessing because you are cursing their identity and despising yours.
You don’t need to get cancer to stop comparing and judging yourself. But you do need to renew your thinking to see your truest sense of worth comes from hearing God speak to your heart. He is so passionate, excited, joyful, and confident about who you are. Let yourself feel that. Stop fixating on what everyone else might think, and ask Him to show you how incredibly valuable you are to Him, and who He wants to be in your life right now to grow into the person He sees you as.
Equip Your Spirit 