What is confidence? It’s the belief and feeling that you are happy with who you are and you trust yourself. Self-confidence is contagious, it brings joy to all those in your presence. It’s a beautiful thing!

What brings confidence down? Doubting and not connecting with yourself. Low confidence can turn into a downward spiral of not only emotional self harm, but harm to others including people you love.

A confidence boost is something we can all use. Whether it’s dabbling in a new hobby, taking a different path on a walk or trying something new. These little boosts positively impact your mind and give you strength to keep trusting and pushing yourself.

As much as my career is focused on clothing, it’s focused on confidence. Whether it’s dressing for the job you want or telling yourself how awesome you are, these messages to your mind set up your day just right!

Join me in a little exercise: Close your eyes and think about what the best version of your self. What traits do they have? What are their values? How do they make those around them feel? How do they present themselves to the world? What’s noticeable about them when they walk into a room? Let’s bring in style: What does their power outfit feel like? Writing this down is very helpful!

Here’s my example:

Vision: For me it’s having magnetic energy that lets people feel comfortable around me. I love bringing to joy to people and lifting their spirits no matter who they are. My power outfit looks unique, artistic, and flattering. I want my wardrobe to start a conversation, which leads to bonding with another human. I’m 100% present with all those that engage with me and they feel this energy. I make space for whoever I’m with and whatever I’m doing. My goal is to bring happiness and confidence to people’s lives because I know happy individuals will make the world a better place. I want people to walk away from our conversation with excitement and new ideas!

What I gather from this:

• Being present: meditation allows me to be focused and present, this should be a priority in my morning routine
• Joy: I like making people laugh, so I shouldn’t shy away from humor
• My wardrobe starts a conversation: have fun and interesting pieces in my wardrobe that others might consider “daring”
• Make sure clothing is flattering: dress for my body, not trends – and take care of my body through food and exercise
• Help people be happy: use my empathy to understand people’s pain points to really dig deep when I work with them
• Have confidence: read books and listen to podcasts so I can learn new things and always have new ideas

Creating a vision of your best self not only lets you know what traits you already have and celebrate them, but what traits you can practice bringing into your life. It helps you understand your purpose and gives you a goal to work towards. This also starts to paint a picture of how you want to present yourself to the world. I do this exercise with my clients to better understand what they want their personal style to say. Maybe they want to feel more powerful at work because their current wardrobe makes feel juvenile? Maybe they moved to San Francisco from NYC where they used to wear suits and now need help dressing in a new casual environment without losing themselves? Or the big one: they want to feel more confident on dates and wearing a flattering outfit helps give them that boost!

Let’s dig a little deeper: Write down how you want your ideal self to look and feel like. Go as deep as you want. Go beyond appearance, talk about your ideal friendships, relationships, character, career, business, mental health, hobbies, accomplishments etc. Knowing where you want to go is the first step to getting there!

Here are a couple of books I love for confidence and self-awareness:
You are a Badass by Jen Sincero
Lost Connections by Johann Hari
Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

Ps. You’ll be surprised how strong the power of writing something down is. Check out this exercise called Your Ten Year Plan. I highly recommend doing it!

Hope you enjoyed this post and it empowers you to do a little digging 🙂

Got some time on your hands? Do a closet cleanse! It’s something we know we need to do, but keep putting off. No more excuses! Here are a couple of tips that I use when I help my clients cleanse away…

Set The Mood

Play some music, light a candle and have your favorite drink and snacks at hand.

Pull Out All Your Clothing

If you have multiple areas where you keep your clothing (I.e. another closet, dressers) you can do one at a time. If you have a rolling rack, use it, if you don’t, bed is fine.

A Piece At A Time

You are going to separate your clothing into piles of keep, donate and maybe. Also, categorize your “keeps” into piles of tops, skirts, pants, sweaters, shoes etc. You will try your “maybes” on after and make a decision (feel free to send a pic to a friend for a second opinion if you are unsure).

Outfits

If some of your items were “maybes” because you didn’t know how to wear them and ended up making an outfit you loved, take a picture! It’s so much easier referring back to photos for outfit ideas, especially when you need to get ready quickly.

Shopping List

You might have some favorite pieces, but have no idea how to wear them or don’t have the right things to go with them. For example, you have a fabulous skirt, but no idea what top to wear. In your shopping list, you can write “Top for Green Striped Skirt”.

Hang And Fold

Now it’s time to put everything back. Put all clothing in the same category next to each other. Organize tops by sleeve length, fold sweaters (keep cashmere in a bag to avoid moth holes), hang pants, clip skirts, and hang dresses and jumpsuits by occasion and then length. Putting shoes next to each other the opposite way (heel of one shoe next to the toe of the other) is a huge space saver.

Alright, there you have it… a cleansed closet full of your favorites. You also have a shopping list to help round out your closet!

Feel free to ask any questions! I help my clients with closet cleanses all the time and they feel so free and light after filtering through the clutter.
Stay safe everyone and I hope you use your quarantine time productively!