Here’s  a question to ask yourself: How does your physical behavior change in different situations, and why? In which situations or environments do you feel most confident, and in which do you feel most insecure? Today I learned that I not only need to train myself to stop apologizing with my words, I also need to train myself to stop apologizing with my body language, facial expressions, and tone. You communicate so much about your self-image, fears, and insecurities through the way that you present your self, and in the waythat you say things (as opposed to what you actually say).

How I stand when I am actually feeling confident and self-assured, is very different from how I stand when I am trying to make people believe that I am confident and self-assured. Change needs to occur from the inside out, not the other way around.

The key to standing straight is not simply standing straight. To stand straight you need to first change your internal self-talk and as the way you speak to yourself changes, the way you stand will change too. I am beginning to realize that personal growth is a little bit like a puzzle – or like a game of Jenga played in reverse. We are all like a tower of Jenga blocks, but we all have a secret: as we’ve grown up and built ourselves into the person we are today, holes have formed in our foundation. To undergo personal growth you must start to fill in those holes. The blocks of the Jenga tower are made up of your belief system, and the holes in the tower represent your limiting beliefs. The solid part of my tower are made of things I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, to be true about myself: like my appearance, (the color of my hair, eyes, skin, my weight, and my age) my achievements (physical and intellectual), and my dreams and ambitions. Many of our limiting beliefs didn’t exist when we were children, when our foundation was strong. As we grow older external factors like our families, friends, and education can cause us to doubt ourselves. To fill in those holes you must learn to replace doubt with an unwavering certainty that you have what it takes.

I’ve noticed that when I’m feeling insecure I have a tendency to cave my shoulders in as part of an effort to disappear. One of my limiting beliefs is that because I wasn’t a naturally good actor through grade school, I’m not good as those who were. This is the first block that I am proactively going to begin filling in. Tomorrow whenever I feel insecure about my potential, I must repeat the following phrase to myself: “I am an extremely talented, funny, and intelligent woman. I can effortlessly make others laugh, cry, and seethe through my devotion to my craft. I am completely uninhibited in everything I do.”

Try this exercise yourself, transform a limiting belief into an uplifting one and observe what happens.