Once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl who had very little confidence. She spent her days getting teased and laughed at and wondering why she kept getting her heart broken. Until one day she had enough of that shit, went out on her own and conquered the world… well at least HER world. The End!

Congratulations on reading the worlds shortest fairy tale. Notice there was no handsome prince who swooped in and saved the day? Wait, what? Every fairy tale has a handsome prince, right? Wrong! I know that because this little girl grew up to become a strong, independent woman who took charge of her own life and her own happiness and realised that her handsome prince was probably stuck up a tree waiting for her to come along and save his day. Well wait he could… because she had shit to do.

I don’t mean to come across as an arrogant, pompous twat right now, but confidence is something that I have had to work hard at achieving and something that I still work on every day. Some days are easier than others and some days I get hit down so hard I wonder how I will get back up; but I do, because I’ve worked too damn hard not to. To put it into context, for most of my childhood I had low self-esteem (mostly from being bullied) and found it challenging to engage in anything outside of my comfort zone. I was by no means an introvert; I was quite the opposite actually. That didn’t mean I had the confidence to match my outgoing personality. It meant that I was really good at putting on a brave face when needed. For a really long time I cared too much about what people thought about me (I’d be lying if I said I still didn’t sometimes) and I think this was the reason why finding my confidence was such a struggle. But, as soon as I taught myself that confidence is not ‘they will like me’, but more ‘I’ll be fine if they don’t’, my perspective changed. This way of thinking may not be for everyone and I learnt quickly that not everyone agreed with me; but it is what it is. I’m the only one who has to live my life so I am going to do it my way, and if that is in a way that people don’t like than that’s fine. Madonna summed that one up perfectly:

“I’m tough, I’m ambitious and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.”

At the end of the day we shouldn’t apologise for what we want, for our successes or how confident we feel. We need to own them and we need to celebrate them. Every day we should walk out the front door with our heads held high knowing we can achieve whatever we set our minds too, that we are the boss of our own life and our happiness sits in the hands of no one else but ourselves. And also having the strength and confidence to accept that we all have set backs and we all have days when we feel less than we want too; and that’s ok.

So, the first step to having the confidence you want is believing you can, and until that day arrives you’ll be fighting a losing battle. So my tip to you is, start every day be inhaling confidence and exhaling doubt and believing in yourself; before too long you will be walking down the street screaming “f*ck you, I’m the shit” without even opening your mouth. It’s not easy, but the good things in life rarely are.

Now go and show up for every single moment like you’re meant to be there (even if you’re in the wrong room).

Love from J x