Growing in Confidence + 7 Tips to Help!
A friend told me that I “exuded confidence” and I was surprised because I really didn’t know I came across that way and since I’ve struggled with confidence my whole life I thought I’d take a minute to be transparent with you guys about my journey.
My prayer for 2018 was that I would become more confident. A series of bad friendships and relationships had left me with a low self esteem by the time I was 32. Growing up I remember I liked myself but I never thought I was anything special. I often felt different and like an outsider in my teen years. I tried to look for love and affirmation from people who were pretty wounded themselves and therefore weren’t able to give it.
When I found my soulmate I thought my low self esteem would improve but it only seemed to get worse. My husband is very handsome and sadly we had several instances when hot women would throw themselves at him either completely ignoring the fact that I was right there or knowing full well he was engaged to me. This was REALLY rough and made me feel invisible and like they must not even see me as anything to bat an eye at. Comparison robs you of so much.
Here’s a few times when I felt so insecure:
I became so insecure and jealous. I remember being on the muni and being so sad. I was sad because I hated feeling the way I did. I wanted to celebrate beautiful women and not despise them. So I prayed and I heard “You can’t celebrate other women because you don’t even know how to celebrate yourself”. It was true.
That year I basically came apart and was put back together. I went through a virtual inner healing group with other women and learned so much about processing emotions and trauma and forgiveness. I started my YouTube channel at the same time and strangely enough it helped with my confidence (as did all my inner healing work). When I was editing my videos I got to look at myself objectively the way other people see me and often times I would find myself smiling and thinking how I would want to be my friend if I could. My confidence began growing. A big scary hurdle was when I switched my IG account to a fashion one. I was SO worried about coming off vain if I posted pictures of myself. But I followed fashion accounts that inspired me and I didn’t think those women were vain so I knew I couldn’t let the fear of what people would think stop me.
As I kept making more videos and IG content and experimenting with wearing what made me feel good and the most myself (which funny enough turned out to be very bright colors) eventually my confidence grew. I made a YouTube video about my journey with confidence and even dedicated a week to talking about it with other amazing ladies on this platform (you can watch those conversations on my IGTV).
I still wish I had more confidence and I still struggle at times with my self esteem, but it’s a journey that we are all on. No one has arrived, and we are all here to ENCOURAGE one another and lift each other up. I hope you can learn to celebrate who YOU were made to be and from that place of love and acceptance you can then extend it to everyone you meet. ❤️
7 Tips I Use to Build Self Esteem
Cut off Toxic Relationships
It’s very hard to feel good about yourself when your surrounded by people who put you down.
Ask yourself when you’re around someone how you feel after you hang out. Do you feel amazing? Do you feel put down? Do you feel encouraged? Think about the way that people impact you and make sure that you still feel good and like yourself when you’re around them!
Same thing goes for Social Media. Do you feel hopeful and inspired by the accounts you follow, or do you feel a comparison trap? If you find yourself comparing yourself to someone on social media, maybe it’s time to stop following them for now. Perhaps in the future it won’t effect you in the same way but for right now you need to do what’s best for yourself!
2. Partner With Your Body
Would you talk to your friends the way you talk to yourself? Don’t do or say those things to yourself that you wouldn’t do to someone you love!
A while back I made a vow to partner with my body because I needed to mentally switch on gratitude for my body. After a long walk in San Fransisco, I realized my body is amazing and capable - I made it 7 miles that day! I changed the way I talk to my body, “Thank your body!” “Thank you feet,” My body is doing what it is capable of and for that I am thankful. Your body is amazing so start recognizing it and speaking to it that way. If your body can’t count on you to advocate for it, then who will?
This also applies to listening to your body when it is trying to talk to you. If you start experiencing health issues or feel your body really struggling, take a look at your life and think what you can change to help your body thrive. Maybe it’s getting more sleep, or quitting your stressful job before you completely burn out. That’s what I had to do. I am SO glad I listened to my body's signals to me that I was moving WAY too fast and needed to slow down. Quitting my stressful job was the BEST thing for my health-both mental and physical.
3. Know Your Lies and Break Their Power
For me, I had some really powerful moments when I chose to stop believing some lies that I had held onto my whole life. I had held onto a lie since forever that in romantic relationships there was always another woman. Through being cheated on in past relationships I had carried this lie over into other relationships and it always brought this thought that I had to watch out for this other woman. I needed to break that and realize there’s not always another woman and I am not inferior.
I like to do a visualization exercise to really crystallize the moment of letting go so I can feel confident it was taken care of moving forwards. It helps to verbally OUT LOUD break those lies and visualize the lies power being broken. At the time I visualized a tree with a root sticking up. I was the tree and the root was the lie. I visualized myself severing that root from the tree with a big axe. It was a really powerful moment for me and ever since I haven’t had those same paranoid feelings about “another woman”.
4. Re-Parent Yourself
This is such a powerful tool. It’s best explained in this video I did covering these 7 tips. Skip ahead to 12:12 in the video to try this exercise.
5.Do Something You are Afraid of
Challenge yourself to do something that is uncomfortable, hard, or out of your comfort zone. This is a great way to feel self confidence because when you try something new, even if you fail, you can feel proud of yourself for stepping out! It can even be something as little as wearing a color you’ve never worn.
Here are some other ideas:
Take a job opportunity
Take a long walk across your city
Cut all your hair off
Take a dance class
Wear a thong to the beach
Post that video
You’ll be so proud of yourself for trying something new. You’ll be surprised at the confidence boost it will give you!
6. Get Comfortable in Your Own Skin
Here we go.. super practical. Get Naked. Yep!
Get Naked and DANCE. Move around and let your body move and shake. Get comfortable being in your own skin without any shame. You might laugh or cry, but just let yourself feel those emotions and get it all out. Your body is your home, at least for now. It’s only right that you feel at home in it.
7. Make Choices out of Love and Acceptance
Yes, there are so many goals and things we want to accomplish -a workout goal, or a way of eating, a sleep pattern, a job goal, but hear me out… We need to make choices for ourselves out of radical love and acceptance by saying “body, I accept you, even if you never change.” “I love you, even if you never change.”
You can do external things which is fun and great, but if you don’t radically accept yourself even when you hit those goals you wont be happy.
I really hope you found some of these tips helpful. If you ever want to reach out to chat about your confidence journey please don’t hesitate! Send me a DM on Instagram and I’ll get back to you!
Remember YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL JUST THE WAY YOU ARE!