Calm is Confident
How to stay vibrant as a gentle person
Certainty, perfection, and doubtlessness
The capitalistic cultural myth whispers that confidence requires performance. Entities ranging from advertisers to educators push the message that showing up powerfully means to be loud, certain, maybe even a little aggressive. Living under capitalist, colonist, patriarchal, racist and colorist expectations, we've inherited narratives that strength is only found in certain personalities, shapes and statuses. Confidence under capitalism will always remain insecure because confidence relies on trust and capitalism relies on us to betray trust in ourselves.
Trust, intimacy, and safety
Our nervous systems recognize true confidence as safety, and feeling safe isn't about convincing anyone of anything. Confidence emerges from a regulated nervous system in a state of ventral vagal safety, the kind of calm that allows for genuine social engagement without the exhausting theater of certainty. Learning to trust ourselves, our actions and insights nourishes confidence. It’s an intimate process that requires time and compassion to discover ourselves, our desires and fears, on the deepest levels of acceptance.
When your nervous system feels safe enough to be present, confidence becomes something you inhabit rather than perform. Your body’s inherent wisdom recognizes grounded, full breathing, and the ability to stay inter and intra-connected as confidence.
Feeling calm, grounded and centered is the foundation of authentic action and confidence. What if instead of asking our bodies to rise to an impossible standard of how confidence should on the outside, we’re allowed yourself to return to how we feel on the inside? There would be no need to convince others of your worth. Your nervous system needs to stop defending itself in order to use that energy to trust itself instead. Calm is confident because a body at rest in itself has nothing to prove.
Staying vibrant
Feel into yourself to feel like yourself is an imperfect and spiraling process, so do it scared, do it imperfectly and have fun discovering your personalized sense of confidence. The point is to stay curious and aware of where we get messages of power and inquire if your nervous system is in alignment with those messages. Each time you return home to yourself you’re building self-trust and confidence that calmly exists beyond approval or permission.
