As you may now, I have been participating in Alex Beadon's "Feel Good Blogging Challenge" this week. I am approaching the end stretch with today being DAY 6.

In middle school, I never really felt comfortable being who I was. Middle school was definitely the worst stage for me growing up. Think about it - you are going through that "awkward stage", you have no idea how to apply makeup or style your hair, and boys suddenly don't have "cooties" anymore. On top of that, you have the evil "cliques" that you have to deal with.

I was very outgoing and friendly in school. Regardless of the amount of people that I seemingly got along with, I was still bullied. When a group of kids are calling you names, of course you will question if is true. You start to question who you are and then you become insecure. The voice inside my head was worse then the voice of those girls.

But I broke free ..

One day, I woke up a NEW person. It was the day I found my voice. Surprisingly, my voice was so strong that it stopped all the bullying. It was that day that I realized who I was. It was the same year that I ran for Student Council President and won!

I managed to master middle school, but I haven't mastered self-doubt. Tell me if you can relate to some of these --- "Am I good enough? Can I handle it? Do I deserve this? I'm not smart enough. I'm not creative enough. I'm not skinny enough. Why aren't I more successful?"

It is time to start mastering the negative voice inside. I feel that we can be our worse critique! Our mind makes up excuses and reasons for not doing something and we end up holding ourself back. We skip out on opportunities to grow because of the voice of fear. It's time to listen to your "inner cheerleader" and start believing in yourself. If you don't believe in you, WHO will?

I have realized that these negative thoughts and feelings no longer serve me and they are NOT who I am. Sometimes it is best to do things in spite of our mind. I recently was in a "funk" and lacked passion and creativity. I was torturing myself inside. One day, I said "THAT'S ENOUGH." I took all my paint brushes, all of my drawing tools, all of my sketch pads, and got to work!! That day I surrounded myself with creativity and all the things that make me happy. I proved to myself, "Hey, I really am creative. I can do this".

A few months back, I was preparing to film an episode on how to create a home office. The night before I began to psych myself out. You're not confident enough. You're not exciting enough. You don't know what your talking about. You don't have enough experience. You aren't talented enough.

What did I do? I kept repeating in my mind the opposite: You ARE confident. You ARE talented. You ARE enough. You ARE creative. You ARE exciting! You ARE awesome and you can handle anything that is thrown at you !!

It was these affirmations that validated who I was. Not to mention, it helped me tremendously with my stage presence, performance, and confidence.

This is still a learning process for me. It is all about acknowledging your thoughts when they come in and letting them go if they do not serve you. I can tell you that bringing out your inner-cheerleader truly does help! Start looking at yourself in the mirror and say how wonderful you are. Start to appreciate and embrace everything about yourself!

If you haven't heard it today, I want to tell you that you ARE awesome and hope your day is as bright as you are.

Much love,

Amanda