You Are Enough: Overcoming Low Self-Esteem with Truth & Grace

Have you ever struggled with feeling like you’re not enough? 

In this episode of The Higher Pursuit Podcast, Cecily Lachapelle dives deep into the battle of low self-esteem—where it comes from, how it shapes our lives, and most importantly, how to break free from its grip.

What if your self-worth wasn’t tied to comparison, achievements, or the opinions of others?

Cecily shares personal experiences, powerful insights from her book Repurpose Your Pain, and the key to finding unshakable confidence in who God says you are.

If you’re ready to trade self-doubt for godly acceptance, grab your copy of Repurpose Your Pain on Amazon  or through Cecily’s website here: https://bit.ly/repurposeyourpainbookpurchase.

🎧 After listening, take a moment to reflect: What’s one lie you’ve believed about yourself that God is calling you to let go of? Share your thoughts with a friend who needs encouragement!

Takeaways: 

• Low self-esteem often stems from comparison and societal standards.
• Personal experiences of bullying can deeply affect self-esteem.
• Self-esteem is about valuing oneself and believing in one's worth.
• Repurposing low self-esteem involves recognizing one's identity in Christ.
• Building self-esteem on God's truth provides a solid foundation.
• False humility and self-hatred undermine the value of Christ's sacrifice.
• Daily engagement with scripture is essential for renewing the mind.
• Understanding God's love is key to overcoming low self-esteem.
• The value of a person is determined by what someone is willing to pay for them.
• Transformation takes time and requires consistent effort in faith.

Chapters

00:00 Understanding Low Self-Esteem

01:48 The Impact of Bullying on Self-Perception

08:51 The Lies of Low Self-Esteem

11:12 Building Self-Esteem on a Solid Foundation

19:29 The Value of God’s Acceptance

22:47 Practical Steps to Renew Self-Esteem

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Low Self-Esteem
• 1:46 The Impact of Bullying on Self-Perception
• 8:51 The Lies of Low Self-Esteem
• 11:12 Building Self-Esteem on a Solid Foundation
• 19:29 The Value of God’s Acceptance
• 22:47 Practical Steps to Renew Self-Esteem

Transcript

Cecily Lachapelle (00:04.568)
Hi, I'm Cecily Lachapelle. I'm an author and a speaker and a blogger, and this is the Higher Pursuit podcast. Thanks so much for joining with me today. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about a subject that I cover in my book, Repurpose Your Pain, and it is the subject of low self-esteem. There's a chapter that I've written called Repurpose Your Low Self-Esteem. So before we talk about how to repurpose low self-esteem, let me ask you these questions. Have you ever struggled with comparison? In today's day and age of social media content and all of the perfectly edited posts that we see people create, it's hard not to struggle with comparison. But that really is so detrimental to our self-esteem.

So we'll get to that in a minute. Another question for you. Do you always feel like you're trying to live up to someone's standards or some invisible unspoken standard and you come up short? Or what about this? Do you feel like you have to be the est of everything, the thin est, the rich est, the kind est, the friendly est? The pretties - whatever, do you feel like you have to be the est of everything in any room that you enter into? That is a sign of low self-esteem when we're not comfortable in our own skin and we find our worth and value in comparison to other people, in comparison to an invisible standard.

So, now let's talk about.

Cecily Lachapelle (02:09.856)
If any of these describe you, you might be struggling with low self-esteem. I want to read you a quote by Stormy Omartian, who wrote an amazing book called, Finding Peace for Your Heart. And she said this about her struggle with low self-esteem. "Since I believed I was nobody, I became desperate to prove I was somebody. I grabbed for things instead of letting them happen.

I demanded approval. I had to be noticed. Starved for love, I became involved in one destructive relationship after another. No amount of love, approval, or recognition ever filled the endless void of my being because I believed lies about myself." 

Does any of that ring true for you? Can you see yourself in any of that? 

So let's answer this question. What is low self-esteem? Well, I was doing research for the book. I, of course, read a lot of journals and articles and listened to a lot of teaching on self-esteem. And I found this really great definition by verywellmind.com. This is what they say.  Self-esteem is about more than just generally liking yourself. It also means believing you deserve love and valuing your own thoughts, feelings, opinions, interests, and goals. Having self-esteem not only impacts how you feel about and treat yourself, it can also
play a role in how you allow others to treat you. It can affect your motivation to go after things you want in life and your ability to develop healthy, supportive relationships." quote. That is a powerful quote. 

Well, here's how my self-esteem got broken when I was a kid. I don't know how many of you have experienced bullying.

Cecily Lachapelle (04:36.148)
in your lives. But I had had a pretty sheltered life until sixth grade. And when I got to sixth grade, I experienced bullying for the first time and I was completely blindsided. I didn't have any siblings to fight with and I didn't have a neighborhood that had a lot of kids in it. So I didn't witness this. I didn't witness a lot of

kids being mean to each other. So when this happened in my life, I was completely unprepared on how to deal with any of it. These two girls in my class hated me, or at least they acted like they hated me. And they made it their point to make every day a living hell for me. And they managed to turn the entire class against me till I only had one friend. And that one friend was only a friend on the weekends, not in school, because she didn't want the tables to turn on her and for the bullies to turn on her. So at school, I was completely alone. And my mom noticed a change in me. I mean, one day I came home from school and I ran upstairs. didn't normally do that. I was normally very food motivated.

And I really wanted to have a snack before I went in and did my homework or did any of the things. But on this day, I ran straight upstairs and closed my door and that was very unusual. My mom could hear me crying. So she came in and she asked what was going on. And initially I didn't wanna tell her. And then I just spilled my guts about everything that was happening. And she wanted to talk to the teacher and I begged her, don't do this. That will make it things so much worse for me.

And if any of you have experienced bullying as a kid, you know that. You know your parents want to jump in and help. They probably are about to do the right thing, but as a kid, you just think, you're not going to be in school with me. You're not going to protect me when these kids get called into the principal or whatever. And then they're going to come after me even harder. It's going to be worse if you say something. And so for months, this went on. And my mom tried to coach me in different ways I could have a snappy reply to something that they'd say, but I was horrible at defending myself. I was just really bad and I only made things worse. And so I just eventually went into a shell. I just retreated. I became very small inside. And you'd think that a bullying experience like that, once it was over and it did eventually stop the following year.

But you'd think that that kind of experience when it was over would just evaporate. That that messaging is so obviously external and the bullies are so obviously mean and maybe unhappy or insecure or dealing with their own issues at home like you never know. But the bullying should not have penetrated my self-esteem and changed my opinion of myself.

or my internal dialogue, but it did. It did. So when the bullying stopped, I still continued this internal dialogue of I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough, I'm ugly, I'm fat. know, my pimples make me ugly. I have ugly hair. My clothes aren't nice enough. So I continued all of these really mean dialogues within my head. And that set me up then when I got to high school to make some really bad decisions that spiraled my self-esteem ever lower. I was circling the drain when the Lord found me when I was 17 years old. So I say all that to say that
the dialogue of criticism, comparison, perfectionism, morphing into other personas, using the world's standard to determine my worth and value continued. And it may be that has happened with you as well. Maybe you harken back to a situation where your self-esteem got broken. Because none of us as children, I don't think, start off with a broken self-esteem.

Cecily Lachapelle (09:29.076)
I feel like we come into this world believing that we have worth and value. But then when the world sends us those horrible messages, our self-esteem breaks and those messages become our internal monologue. In the book, I write this quote, low self-esteem is a snake oil salesman.

It snares us with the lie that because we sin, make mistakes, let people down, do things that we regret and disappoint ourselves, that we are hopelessly flawed and defective. The second part of the lie tells us that if we try and try to fix ourselves, craft a highly effective false persona. Craft a highly effective false persona.

and erect massive defenses against attack. We will eventually be able to live the happy and content life that everyone else around us seems to be living. Having swallowed that lie whole early on in my life, even after becoming a Christian, I still struggled to stay away from the well-worn mental paths that those thoughts had dug deep in my psyche.

That's the bad news. The good news is that we can repurpose our low self-esteem into a godly acceptance. But in order for that to happen, we have to root our self-esteem. We have to plant it firmly upon an unshakable rock. There's a scripture that Jesus says that a foolish man builds his house on a, on the sand.

And when the storms of life come, obviously that house washes out to sea. But the man who builds his life upon a rock can withstand those storms. The house that he builds can withstand the strongest storms. And this is exactly what happens with our self-esteem. When we build our self-esteem on anything other than who God created us to be and who he says we are and what he has done for us,

Cecily Lachapelle (11:55.998)
and where he has positioned us. If we root our self-esteem on anything else, it's sinking sand and it is going to fail us every time. No matter whether we're crafting this false persona or whether someone else broke our self-esteem and we're sitting in the wreckage and the aftermath of that. Whether it's our fault, whether it's not our fault, whether we're sinning,

or doing everything right. Any self-esteem that is not built on the truth of who God is and who he says we are is gonna fall apart. So the principle rock of truth that we need to build our self-esteem on is the fact that we stand in the righteousness of Christ. Because when we feel guilty,

When we look at ourselves, we look at our failures, we look at our mistakes, we look at all the things that we have done wrong and maybe we don't weigh what we want to weigh or we do have temples on our face or we are making tons of mistakes or we're not the best in the class or the prettiest or the richest or the smartest. That does not matter when we know how we are loved.

When we know that our Maker created us exactly as we are, that He has a plan and a purpose for us that is completely external to whether we have earned it or deserved it. In fact, the way we repurpose our self-esteem is to realize that nothing that we've done gives us our worth or value, that Jesus did it for us.

in his death on the cross and in his resurrection to new life. The Bible tells us in Galatians and it tells us in Romans that when Jesus died, we died with him. So everything that we do not like about ourselves, everything that we think is a failure and it's a black mark on our identity, that died with Christ. And then when he was raised to new life,

Cecily Lachapelle (14:22.716)
we were raised with him. And what does that mean for us in our everyday life? It means that every single thing that we need to feel confident, to feel secure, to feel worthy, to feel like we have a purpose, that our life has meaning, is found in Jesus. It isn't found in us.

We're going to succeed one day and fail the next. We're going to do great one day and mess up the next. And so if our self-esteem is dependent upon that, we're going to be a yo-yo. And that's no self-esteem at all. So we repurpose a broken self-esteem, a low self-esteem into a godly acceptance based on the fact that Jesus hung on that cross.

for you. He would have done it if it was only for you. And therefore, you can know that you stand before the Father in the righteousness of Christ, that He will never leave you or forsake you. He will never disown you. He already saw every mistake you were going to make. He already saw every area that you were going to feel less than. And He already paid the price for you to be his, to buy you back so that you could be his long lost beloved, reunited to him again in love, in fellowship, in communion. And then once you are reunited in that fellowship and in that love and in that communion, now you can go into his presence moment by moment, hour by hour if you need to, and you can become reaffirmed and reestablished in confidence, security, love, acceptance, value. You know, I write in the book about how I had an antique cup and it was made out of jade. It was beautiful, actually. And it had been my grandmother's. And so I had this cup and it was in this pretty

Cecily Lachapelle (16:46.23)
box lined in silk. was obviously an antique. And I had no use for this. But what I did need was some money. I needed some money for some equipment that I needed to buy. And I decided to sell my antique Chinese cup on eBay. So initially I did a little research and I looked to see if there were other things similar to that on eBay so I could determine what the value was.

of my cup based on what I saw because I'm not an antiques dealer. I'm certainly not an Asian antiques dealer. I didn't know what I was dealing with. So I based my price, my asking price on similar things that were being sold. Well, the response to my price was unbelievable. I had people fighting for it, buying for it, all of that.

And after I sold it...

I had this horrible feeling that I probably sold it for way less than I could have because I determined its value compared to other items similar to it. And that's the mistake we make when we judge our value against other people, whether we think we're priced

lower than them or were priced higher than them? Are we less valuable than this one because that person's got a chip or are we more valuable or less valuable than this person because we've got the chip? However we determine our value by comparison, it's completely faulty. The only standard we can compare ourselves to, the only standard that gives us worth and value.

Cecily Lachapelle (18:50.226)
eternal value is God's and we could never meet that, but because we are in Christ, we have met that standard. I hope you understand that you have now been given a value that is priceless. I have heard preachers say, who could put a price on the blood of Christ, on the life of God?

of God poured out on the cross, His blood spilling down onto this earth, this dust. The life of God spilled out for you, purchasing you. That's what it cost God the Father to buy you back, to redeem you. And so that's your value.

The value of an item is what someone is willing to pay for it. And that's what the father says you're worth. He was willing to pay for you with the blood of his son, the life of his son. That's your value now. So your self-esteem can be based, can be rooted in that godly foundation, the godly acceptance that the Lord not only delights to give you, but he paid the highest price. And if you live in any other esteem of yourself that is below that, then you negate the value of the blood of Christ. I don't know if you've ever thought about it that way, because false humility is not the truth. False humility and and self-hatred and low self-esteem are not what the Lord paid such a high price to give you. So how do we become established in this truth? Because it's all well and good for me to say, you know, to explain what Jesus did for you and that now you are seated with Christ in heavenly places and you are accepted in the beloved and all these things. It's all well and good for me to say this to you.

Cecily Lachapelle (21:13.996)
but it doesn't become your truth until you dig for it. Unfortunately, somebody else's truth can be just that. It's their truth, but it doesn't become the truth that sets us free until we take it in. Jesus is the bread of life, and you don't just let bread sit on the counter and get stale.

You want to eat that bread while it's fresh. So eating the bread of life, the word of God, every single day, like the Israelites had to eat that manna when it fell from heaven, they couldn't let it go one day because otherwise it would be all full of worms. We need to be eating the word of God, the truth of who Jesus is every single day. And that's how we reestablish

our self-esteem on the truth of who God says we are. So we need to search for scriptures. We need to study the scriptures. We need to understand who we are in Christ and what He has done for us. Here's one example. I love this scripture from 1 John 3. It says, look with wonder at the depth of the Father's marvelous love that He's lavished on us. He called us.

and He made us His very own beloved children. The reason the world doesn't recognize who we are is that they didn't recognize Him. Beloved, we are God's children right now. However, it isn't yet apparent what we will become, but we do know that when is fully made visible, we will be just like Him and we will see Him as He truly is. So again, we need to search the scripture.

to find out what God says about us so that we can be established on the truth and of godly acceptance. So how do we really come to understand the love and the acceptance of God? So we can extricate ourselves from that cycle of people pleasing and of living up to our own crazy standards. First of all, we go to the Father in prayer.

Cecily Lachapelle (23:37.525)
asking Him for help to renew our mind. And then second of all, we find scriptures that speak to our needs and that will become seeds of faith in our hearts. And third, we meditate on those scriptures. And what does that mean? We think about those scriptures. Maybe you write them down in a journal or on note cards, committing them to memory.

going over them and over them in your mind, maybe using a Greek or a Hebrew lexicon to study the scripture, going into a strong concordance and looking up the original language, the depth and the richness of the words that that scripture was written in originally. Maybe you read commentary by saints of old or men and women who have studied the Bible in depth. Maybe you read their commentary or their thoughts.

but we meditate on this truth so that we can make it our own, so that it becomes, it uproots and it kicks out all the lies. And then number four, we declare those scriptures over our lives. So what I do to declare scripture is I will turn it into a prayer. So I will insert my own name. I'll say, you know, I, me, or you instead of the Lord.

And I will declare this scripture over my life so that the word can go out into the atmosphere. It becomes a seed that is planted in my life and it will bring a harvest. And then lastly, we pray continually, pray in the spirit, watering the seeds until we see that harvest come forth and we trust God for that transformation.

And we know one thing we know about seeds is that you're not going to put seeds in the ground and come out the next day expecting to see the full plant. You know you're going to have to water that seed. You're going to have to protect it from predators. You're going to have to care for it. And then eventually you're going to see the little sprout and then the full plant. But when you put that seed in the ground, it starts to germinate.

Cecily Lachapelle (26:00.993)
even though you can't see anything, it's working. It's germinating. It's taking a nutrients from the soil and from the water. It's allowing the rays of the sun to make it full inside until that seed has to burst open and rootlets start to come out and the sprout starts to come out. So don't get discouraged when you plant the seed of God's word of who you are in Christ into your heart.

and you begin to declare it over yourself. Don't get discouraged if you don't see fruit right away. If you have to keep going back and back and back for a while, repeating those scriptures over out loud, meditating on them, declaring them, that seed will not fail. There's a scripture that says that God's word will never return to him void, meaning empty, without having accomplished what he sent it forth to do.

The power of the word is in the seed. You don't have to do anything except connect your faith to what God has said about you and he'll do the rest. Well, I hope this episode of the Higher Pursuit podcast has blessed you today. I hope you are able to take some truths away and some practical things that can help you run your race as you pursue the heart of the Lord.

It's the best and the highest pursuit of all. Well, this has been, this has been Cecily LaChapelle.

So thank you for joining me and make sure to like and subscribe and follow this podcast so you can get updated when I post new content. You can also find me on Facebook and Instagram. So until next time, run your race well. God bless.