I have taught dance and fitness for over 20 years. One of the main things I think that people learn when they take dance classes is confidence. You learn about confidence and discipline in a ballet studio and it can transfer to other aspects of relationships and business.

What is confidence?

Confidence is the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something.

Do you feel confident? 

Do you have self-confidence? 

Do you believe in yourself? 

It’s not an easy thing to do. If you don’t have 100% confidence, you can begin to train yourself to become more confident. Confidence is a skill that you keep working on constantly, just like dance. It comes and it goes. When something great happens, you usually feel more confident, right? And even if everything else is going your way, something bad can happen and you lose your confidence.

I’ve created these five principles of confidence based on the 5 classical ballet positions that you might have learned if you took dance with your kid. And why use these positions? Movement that is connected to a thought process tends to be easier to remember and apply. These five positions can become a quick checklist for yourself so you can go through them on a daily basis, or a weekly basis, and just see how you’re doing.

Ballet in general teaches you to stand with good posture and conduct yourself gracefully and with poise. That is helpful in building your own confidence. It’s all about going back to the basics. You hear that all the time. If you come back to these basics when things get tricky and it might help ground you.

So, let’s get started.

First position is the classic baby ballerina position with your heels together and toes apart.

First position can also be with the feet parallel, but the classical ballet position is with your toes turned out. Stand with your feet together, squeeze your glutes, and then just rotate from the hips and that’s your first position. 

First position is a great place to check your posture. There are a few things that people think about when they stand up straight and that usually ends up with overexaggerated arching of your back and chin up. That isn’t actually good posture. Arching the back puts pressure on the lower spine and tilting the chin up stresses the neck and upper back.

Here are some things to focus on when you’re checking your posture:

1. Put your hand right on your ribs right at the bottom where they come together. Take a deep breath. Exhale until all the air is gone and you feel the ribs pull together. When the bottom of the ribs pulls together, feel how it immediately engages your abdominals.
2. Next, tilt your pelvis forward slightly. Not that you’re tucking under, but just a little slight tuck where you’re squeezing your glutes.
3. Last, the third piece of correcting your posture is to roll your shoulders back and down. Don’t lose your ribs and don’t lose your pelvis as you roll your shoulders back and down, and hold that.

This will likely take some practice. You’ll lose it throughout the day, especially if you sit at a computer a great deal. Stay persistent and you will not be the only one who notices improvement in your posture. Think about correcting your posture even if you’re sitting a lot during the day. You can secure the ribs and roll the shoulders back and down. Feel almost like there’s a string attached to the crown of your head, pulling you up, to keep your posture.

Not too difficult, right?

You will start to notice that as your posture improves little by little, so will your confidence.

Practice each day.

You’re worth it.

Check out the video below for a visual demonstration: