act confident. feel confident.

how you carry yourself is everything.

do you focus on your posture when walking and sitting? do you style yourself each day in a way that makes you feel good? are you comfortable? do you have interests that play a big part of who you are? do you have any interests that help build your confidence?

living the majority of our growing years surrounded by the same people makes the word feel very small. for some, it’s where confidence is found and for others it’s where confidence is lost. in the minuscule world of grade school we create the habit of how we choose to carry ourselves. we create our image. and for some, this carries through their entire life while others try to grow beyond it.

from personal experience and analyzing others, i found that high school is the time the we feel most obligated to define who we are within a specific crowd. we believe that who we are defined to be in these four years is who we have to be throughout the following years to come. this stress comes from the thought that we are going to be surrounded by this minuscule world of people forever. and why wouldn’t we think that, right? it’s all we’ve known for the previous x-amount of years of our lives. how can we see beyond to things that we have yet to experience?

the moment of self discovery is just one way to shine a more positive light on how we carry ourselves. for some this happens young and for others later in life. i would say that 6th grade grade was when i began my self discovery process. i didn’t have many friends. maybe 1 or 2. so i had a lot of time just to get to know myself. it wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that i really started to take the reins on trying to be who i desired to be perceived as. my first initiative was with clothing. i dressed very outside the box to say the least. this came with both positive and negative feedback. all that i was sure of, was that i wanted to define myself through my clothing. so, i accepted both with an open mind and as lessons for growth. the rest would take its course with time. i built up a larger friend group over that period and within time i started to become known for the way that i dressed. as i met new people over time my clothing was an initial thing that was noticed about me. my out of the box style, my excitement for putting on clothing in a creative way, and my eagerness to dress others was something that became engraved in who i was/ am.

with this, i am not telling you that clothing is the only way to find yourself. for me, it was an entrance way for finding who i am and an area that helped me carry myself with confidence. it was where i felt most comfortable breaking the ice and breaking out of the shell that i was molded into years prior. what i want is for you to get to know yourself. find things that interest you and keep your attention. from there, apply it to who you are. get to know those interests with more detail. use your natural knowledge to your advantage and continue to learn more. apply it to your life and use it as an area of confidence.

so i am going to leave you with this:

we all participate in daily routines such as shopping through supermarket aisles, walking the street, cruising in a car, tanning at the beach, going about an exercise routine, and so one and so forth. moving through these routines we encounter a number of strangers. these strangers know nothing about us and most likely haven’t ever seen us before. this is our opportunity to be our most confident selves. now, most of us usually get shy and/ or insecure around strangers simply for the reason of them knowing nothing about us. so what i want to have you do is switch that. why make it a disadvantage when it could be an advantage? every new person we meet is an opportunity to re-create ourselves. think about every time that there is a new person in school, a new person in the workplace or we’re brought around a new set of friends through another friend and/ or any other situations that comes to mind that involve meeting a new person. we usually get excited. i’m not talking about the jumping around celebration type of excitement. it’s that subconscious excitement. this is our opportunity to have a new set of eyes on us that could see us in a way that we have been trying to be perceived as or desire to be perceived as. so run with it.