“Now you have to work with the awkward middle age woman. “
You’re only awkward because you tell yourself you’re awkward. You make it worse every time those words fly out of your mouth to openly laugh about your insecurity. We can joke about it endlessly and you’ll never get more comfortable or confident in front of my camera or a crowd. Self-deprecating humor can be a charming and humorous tool to build connection when used intentionally but if you’re using it as a crutch, calling out your own insecurities before anyone else laughs at them, this is not skillful, it’s a coping mechanism. Stand up and own the fact you feel insecurity without using words. Feel inside yourself those uncomfortable feelings, stare them straight in their squirming little face and act above them. Do the thing. Do the thing with as much boldness as you can muster, and don’t bother utterly any words about how you feel or how you’re performing. Just do it the thing in silence. Inside, you’ll feel awkward and nervous. Outside, we see you showing up. I don’t care if you are awkward in front of my camera. I can work with that. I can talk to you, make you laugh, get you to relax. I’m good at that. The awkwardness is not the problem. The problem is what you keep telling yourself, the messages you’re feeding yourself that are keeping you stuck in that awkwardness. So put down those stories and step onto the stage, step in front of the camera, step into the room, step in front of the mirror and other people’s eyeballs and be as you are, awkward or not. The more you refuse to let the awkwardness control your identity, the more room you’ll find to around you, space to grow and expand and realize just how magnificent your energy is when you let it out to play. YOU are not awkward. You are choosing to cloth yourself in awkward words, thinking and behavior. Put on a different outfit, my love. You’ll feel different, look different, act different, and a different life will be yours.
This message is for the women who talked to me after my shows last week and the women I photographed this weekend. You all have been looking at me saying how totally awesome I am. You’ve admitted that you feel insecure and awkward, that you feel so nervous speaking in public, you can’t image singing on stage, and you don’t see yourself as being a confident, sexy, powerful woman who can rock the camera like a supermodel. I hear you. You shared this with me and I appreciate your vulnerable honesty. I have felt exactly the same way at various moments in my life. These days, I’m super comfortable on camera and on stage. You know how I got here? By shutting my mouth and doing it. My journey has been really uncomfortable, awkward, embarrassing, stressful and full of shooting myself in the foot moments that I’ve had to heal from and overcome. We are all facing the same challenges along our own paths. I have spent so many freakin hour sitting at my piano, playing with my eyes closed, imagining that if I opened my eyes I would be performing on the giant main stage at the Gorge Amphitheater. I told myself that my imagination was so powerful that I could convince myself that this was real and if I visualized it hard enough, I could really feel it as a reality, in my body. Practicing this visualization over and over, it got more comfortable. I was brainwashing myself to believe in who I will be and to feel it, like reaching into the future and feeling my future self right now. This is what she feels like. If I can feel her in my imagination then maybe I am her? Feel it. Feel it. Feel it. It’s a fuck ton of mental work to convince yourself that you’re a rockstar. I realized that I would never become her if I didn’t start acting like her, dressing like her, thinking like her, feeling myself as her. Play dress up in your mind and in your life until you are who you want to become. Your future you is your hero and role model. Become her.
LOVE,
CHA🍍WILDE