What If You’re Using Affirmations Wrong?

Affirmations can be powerful. But many people are using them in a way that creates more inner conflict than confidence.

If you’ve ever repeated:

I am confident, I am powerful, I am worthy

…only to freeze in the moment that your power and confidence was actually needed, you’re not broken. Your body is simply telling the truth.

I know this firsthand.

There were moments in my dance career when I knew I was talented. I knew the choreography. I knew I belonged in the room.

Yet I would walk into auditions and suddenly feel shaky, intimidated, small.

My heart would race. My mind would scramble. The confidence I had been trying to “think” into existence all morning in the mirror had disappeared.

Why?

Because I was saying confidence with my mind, but I had not embodied confidence in my nervous system.

There were deeper layers present and part of myself still in hiding. Comparison. Sister wounds. Fear of being judged. Believing those deep early rooted messages of unworthiness. The feeling of other women in the room seeming powerful while I disconnected from my own power, my true source of Self confidence.

So no amount of repeating “I am confident” could override what my body was experiencing.

A Better Way to Use Affirmations

Instead of using affirmations to force belief, use them as a doorway into the present experience. Note: do this exercise

Try this:

Say: I am confident.

Close your eyes.

Ask your body:

Do I already feel confidence and if so where in my body is it? Where do I feel steady and calm? Where do I feel capable? This is your Self. Your true nature.

But what if I don't feel those things you may ask, well we are not done yet...

Then ask:

Where do I feel the absence of confidence?

Where do I feel small, tight, shut down, intimidated?

Now you’ve found something real. I path into what's true for you.

Now you’re not performing confidence.You’re discovering what is in the way of it.

This is where healing begins and true confidence can emerge with sustainability.

With curiosity you can discover all kinds of blocks that live deep in the body. Because these live in the body and not the mind the awareness is just the beginning.

With somatic therapies such as movement, breath, body awareness, and nervous system support, those blocked places can be witnesses, supported and healed.

And when they do, confidence stops being a phrase.

It becomes a lived experience easily tapped into at the moments you need it.

The Truth About Confidence

Confidence is not something you scream over your fear. Yes feel the fear and do it anyway BUT as you feel the fear LISTEN to it and LEARN what it believes it's protecting you from. The body doesn't lie. It can't. So once you know it's truth and can express it authentically you will finally be able to LET THAT SHIT GO!

It is something you build by meeting the parts of you that learned to shrink. Getting to know why the other parts are trying to protect your system.

Then one day you walk into the room and your body already knows:

I belong here. I AM confidence!

Ready to embody confidence and power authentically? I know I am

Like all of us I am still a work in progress. I do not claim to always be in my true powerful confident Self. However I do know a practice or two that is working wonders for me and my clients. Join one of my upcoming BEAM workshops or book a private Body Attunement Session and see for yourSelf.