Today is March 8, International Women’s Day!
As we globally celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women, let’s have a look at what it took all those women to bring us that far. It’s a safe bet that they all had to up their self-confidence!
How often has a lack of self-confidence, or a feeling of inadequacy, stopped you from achieving or even starting something that could potentially have been awesome, something that could have been your contribution to making the world a better place, something that could have filled you with pride and joy?
The good news: self-confidence can be cultivated! One – of many – elegant ways and a particularly effective one is the way via your outer world.
As an Elegant Alchemist you understand that your identity is being shaped by your environment and your environment is being shaped by your identity.
If you were assuming the identity of a self confident woman, how would your environment reflect this? Put differently: how can your environment give you a feeling of Self-confidence?
5 Ways to Embrace Self- Confidence with the Help of your Home
- You’ll be self-confident when you feel that you are able to open the door wide anytime to anyone.
You surely remember that awkward feeling when someone rings unexpectedly at the door and you have to let them in. The sink is piled precariously high with dirty dishes, the entrance is littered with shoes, bags and boxes, your visitors have a clear view on the battlefield, aka your bed, and you can only hope that they don’t spot the dirty laundry on the bathroom floor and the state of your tub. You profusely excuse yourself, babbling something like “I was just starting on my weekly cleaning”. It wouldn’t even fool a five year old and you know it. Meanwhile your self-confidence is shrinking into oblivion.
And now imagine that you are expecting guests, everything is ready, you open that door wide and welcome them into your home and into your world! Remember THAT feeling? You are serene and relaxed and radiate self-confidence!
Imagine you’d feel like this all the time, whoever rings at your door, you can confidently open the door wide, whether it is your in-laws or that snooty neighbour, child protection services or the Queen, your frenemy or your fling from 5 years ago.
(Disclaimer: this does NOT imply having a ‘perfect’ home 24/7 or to constantly karate-chop your sofa cushions or sanitize your home down to the last tea towel! Neither does it imply that you have to open your door to everyone! But it implies that you could do so with a spring in your step, if you chose to.)
- You’ll be self-confident when you feel that you can look around and say: ” Yes, this is a reflection of who I want to be.”
Your home is usually reflecting your past, your present and your future. You might have a dresser inherited from your grandmother and the piano you got when you were 5 years old from your past, the sofa you bought recently is one that will forgive your present life with your three children battling with the dog, and on your bedroom wall one can find the vision board you made on January 1rst.
So, yes, your home is a reflection of yourself. But is it truly revealing the portrait of the woman you want to be? You can boost your self-confidence with the simplest things: keep only the best of your past and cherish and polish it (rule of thumb: if you can’t be bothered with taking care of something, it doesn’t belong any longer in your life!). Upgrade your present: pull out and use the best of your china, light the sinfully expensive candle, use the fluffy towels and thus show yourself daily that you are worth it. And finally look around: are there areas in your home where you always think: “One day…” you’ll paint that wall, get that armchair or repair that wobbly leg of your dining table. Make your future alive and go and do it now!
The equation is a simple one: the more your home portrays the woman you truly want to be, the more it will help you to embrace self-confidence.
- You’ll be self-confident when you feel that you can leave at a moment’s notice for a 4 weeks trip to the Caribbean.
(Wouldn’t that be nice? Both the feeling and the trip :)) Most of the time we don’t even realize, let alone admit it to ourselves, but unfinished stuff in your home is a surefire way to keep you in Groundhog-Day for days, weeks and sometimes years of your lifetime! Think about it: if you were told that you have to leave tomorrow morning, what are the few (Spoiler alert: always more than just a few) things you’d need to hurriedly get done before you could leave?
It’s ironic that so many people are only up-to-date with their To-Dos in their home on the eve of their annual departure for the summer holidays or up-to-date with repairing and decorating their home when they put it on the market to be sold?
How confident would you feel if you knew that at any moment you could just grab your passport, toothbrush and bathing suit and saunter out of the door? Or to show your home to a real estate agent and hear her say: “In the current state, this house would fetch top-prices.”
You want to stay in your home for the remainder of your days and impromptu trips are really not your thing? Still, your self-confidence will thank you BIG time if those scenarios could at any given moment become effortless reality.
- You’ll be self-confident when you know that during the next lock-down you could be happy at home.
During the various lock-downs we all began to look at our homes with new eyes… what was beautiful, functional and streamlined became a live savior! But lock-down also meant that there was no escape from everything in our homes that was broken, ugly, noisy, impractical and outdated.
Hopefully another lock-down will be more utopian than a trip to the Caribbean is in the current situation. But just like you’ll feel more secure, relaxed and on top of your game, aka self-confident, when you can leave your home at any given moment, you will feel in the same way when you know that you could stay at home at any given moment and be happy there!
- You’ll be self-confident when you know that your environment is ready for the next chapter in your life.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life, remember? What is the next chapter of your life? What do you want it to be? How ready you are to embrace it with self-confidence is much impacted by the space in which you live and spend the most time! Which part of your home is most connected to the next chapter in your life?
Let’s say you want to attract romance in your life. Can you confidently open your bedroom door? Is there even space for another person? Do YOU feel romantic in your bedroom? (Whatever you want to experience, attract or manifest: you need to create the space for it FIRST).
Or let’s say you want to quit your job as an accountant and become a musician, or vice versa: Do your bookshelves reflect the accountant or the musician?
Or you want to enjoy life as an empty-nester: Does your environment reflect your new identity, or do you still everywhere in the house stumble about old toys, sports gear and things your children were too lazy to sort through?
You can dream of a new chapter in your life and hope it’ll just be there ‘somehow’ and then you’ll ‘somehow’ know what to do and how to do it. Or you can create an environment that reflects what you want and thus boost your self confidence. The choice is yours.
Like with anything else in life, the path to self-confidence is seldom a straight line, but a tortuous path, made of small, simple, daily changes, actions and gestures. And like with anything else in life, your home can make all the difference.
