Exercising Your Confidence Muscle
We have to start somewhere, and it can only get easier
Recently, a friend said something to me that felt like truth bombs deploying in my head. “Confidence is a muscle… You have to exercise it.”
In some ways, this was revelatory, a true light bulb moment. In other ways, I kind of wanted to slap her across the face. I used to be someone who flinched in disgust and resistance when I heard that word. Confidence. Barf.
It inexplicably triggered me. People with confidence were assholes. People with confidence were conceited. People with confidence were a threat to someone like me who lacked it entirely.
I stopped for a moment and realized I may have been conflating confidence with conceit.
I had grown up as a dancer so my understanding of musculature was strictly physical. Confidence was something that I had seemed to constantly struggle with. No matter how limber my legs became or strong my center grew, my confidence muscle had remained weak.
In many ways, it makes sense that I was so drawn to dance in my teenage years. I had always been active and had a real creative streak that had been simmering inside of me since childhood. I loved losing myself to music and accessing those deep and hard to reach emotions that resided inside of me. My body housed them until it was time to move and they were all released in rhythmic catharsis.
I always considered confidence to be something that existed beyond my body. Something that was reserved exclusively for my dance class peers, with their naturally long, thick hair that hung down their backs and their long legs that seemed to effortlessly kick their faces. Confidence was something you were born with, or so I assumed. And just as those other girls had been blessed with horse manes for ponytails, they had also received the confidence gene. And I had not.
For as much as I loved to dance, I hated that it required me to stand in front of the mirror for hours of my day. It became second nature for me to scrutinize the size of my thighs and the pimples that inhabited the landscape of my face.
But when the music came on and it was time to move, I could let go. I could go inward. I could forget that I didn’t look like the girls dancing next to me. In those moments I had unadulterated, though fleeting, access to bliss.
High school was challenging for me and much to my own and everyone else’s surprise, I managed to pull it off and I received a diploma. My sights were set entirely on a career as a professional dancer. I had carved out little room for any other options.
Many of the suburban dance moms I had come to know over the years were both inspired and horrified by my decision to try to make it professionally. It’s very competitive, they warned me. They recognized my fragility and feared the worst for me I’m sure.
My career as a dancer is one I look back on now with a medley of fondness and sadness. “You’re great… you just need to be more confident.” This was something that I heard all too often from teachers and mentors. As if being more confident was even an option.
Here I was, in my early twenties, a time that is turbulent enough without the pressure of pursuing something so competitive, not to mention almost entirely based on your appearance, and I was expected to pull confidence out of a hat? It was nearly impossible for me to understand how anyone was pulling it off. But then I remembered the girls from high school… the ones with the long ponytails and legs that stretched for days.
I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that confidence simply wasn’t available to me.
Just as some people are born with the genetic predisposition to solve complex math equations, I assumed confidence was a similar trait. Sure, anyone can study math night and day but it won’t necessarily mean they will ever be on par with those who have the natural ability to dissect complicated numbers.
I watched enviously as other girls strut their stuff fearlessly in auditions. I assumed that I must have been broken in some way to not be able to do the same. It didn’t feel like I was cut out for it. My worst fears realized, I heard the echoing of the warning heeded to me years before. It’s very competitive.
As I approach the milestone of my 30th birthday, my days of being a professional dancer are behind me. And though I don’t miss standing in front of the mirror criticizing myself, I still love to move my body on my own terms. I have a newfound love and appreciation for it that I hope continues to grow as I embark on a new decade residing in it. And beyond that, I am thankful for the lessons that my experiences as a dancer taught me. Even, or should I say especially, the ones that felt like absolute shit in the moment.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” — Eleanor Roosevelt
I had been willingly giving my consent to just about everyone I knew.
What I didn’t realize then, and I’m starting to realize now, is that confidence isn’t something we are either blessed with or doomed to survive without. You can choose to have it. No one else can choose this for you but you.
But just like anything else, it will take practice. The same way that I had to practice my plies and arabesques. I didn’t walk into my first dance class and drop down into the splits. But you better believe that I stayed late after class every single night and sat in the discomfort of not being all the way there yet. I stretched and stretched and stretched until finally one day it happened. And every day that I did it after that, it felt as though it was something I could always do. I shed the effort of what it took to get there and lived confidently in my new ability.
Sometimes it’s important to remind ourselves of the hard work it takes to get to where we want to be. We seem to live in a culture of overnight celebrity and social media toxicity that leads us to believe it shouldn’t take hard work. Or at the very least the hard work is shameful because it means you don’t naturally have some God-given ability. People like to make it look effortless because the hard work isn’t pretty. The process is rarely shared. Instead, people just want to share their polished results. They want to show up once it feels as though they are ready, myself included.
Confidence is a muscle… You have to exercise it.
For a long time, I let this muscle of confidence lay dormant… Convinced I didn’t have it, I allowed it to atrophy. I was so certain it wasn’t even a muscle that made up part of my anatomy.
Like many things, confidence isn’t in fact something you are born with, but rather something you must work at to strengthen. For some of us, this may be easier, and for people like me, it might mean swallowing your reflex to gag when you hear that word. And that’s ok. We must take small steps towards what we wish to achieve. Don’t get lost in the big picture. That can feel too overwhelming, too daunting.
Maybe this means looking at yourself in the mirror and doing affirmations. Maybe it means simply saying “thank you” when you receive a compliment. Or maybe it means putting on some lipstick and dancing around your bedroom for ten minutes a day. I don’t know what it is for you, but what’s great is that it’s up to you to decide what works.
My friend’s words echo in my head even as I sit here writing this. I don’t have to wait until this is perfectly polished to share it. And in being willing to do that, I am engaging in the very act of exercising my confidence. Showing up, even when it might not feel great. Even when I might not feel ready.
Maybe confidence comes easily to you. Or maybe, if you’re like me, it’s uncomfortable. It’s a muscle you’ve neglected because it’s just too difficult to exercise. But we have to start somewhere. And it can only get easier once we do.
For me, exercising my confidence muscle feels like this… I am on display, awkward, sweaty, and vulnerable, attempting to achieve a position my body isn’t yet capable of. But I am showing up. I am doing the work. I am practicing to achieve my own version of what it looks like. And in practice, in being with the discomfort of it all, I slowly inch my way towards confidence each and every day. And so can you.
