It's easy to think everyone's lives are better than ours as we scroll through their highlight reels on social media. But there are ways to switch up your thinking so you feel more confident in your life.
Kim Gravel is a host on the shopping channel, QVC. She shines with confidence in her segments, but said it took a while to collect that confidence.
"Life ebbs and flows, and I think with confidence, it does, too," Gravel said.
Studies show 80 percent of women struggle with low self-esteem, and Gravel wants to change that.
So she wrote the book 'Collecting Confidence: Start Where You Are to Become the Person You Were Meant to Be.'
"I have grown and really built my confidence in the messiness of my life more than the triumphs," she said.
Gravel says you should also get empowerment from the low times in your life. When her name was Kim Hardy, she was one of the youngest contestants to become Miss Georgia, but then lost the Miss America pageant, and shortly after, her marriage ended.
"I married when I was 20 and I got divorced when I was 23," she said.
But she said you'll learn the most from the messy moments.
"You also have to be very self-aware when you've come into messes or mistakes in your life. You've got to own what part of it is yours. And then you've got to say, 'OK, what did that teach me?'" Gravel said.
Next, she says to get real with yourself.
There's something freeing about being just who you are," she said.
When she was a first-time mom, she says she had given up on her dreams.
"I had just had my first son and I had gained a lot of weight and I was miserable," she said.
Gravel said she tearfully told her dad how she was feeling, and he gave her a reality check.
"He paused and he said to me, 'You're not a fat girl, you're just living like one.' Get real with yourself. There's something great about going, 'Yeah, I got 40 pounds to lose, but I'm working on it, and while I'm working on it, I'm going to dress it up much as I can,'" she said.
Gravel also says to stop comparing yourself to others.
"We're looking at everybody else's fake life {on social media} and comparing our real life to it. We talk so bad to ourselves and then we compare that inner voice to someone else's highlight reel. And that's why we're not confident," Gravel said.
Finally, she says to trust your calling. Everyone has a purpose, and hers is to boost others.
"When I decided to be that person and live out my life's calling, then everything started happening almost in a magical way," she said.
Her positivity catapulted her career as a QVC Host.
"When I started just walking in my authentic self, who I really am, then what I'm supposed to be doing unfolded," she said.
And Gravel says you have a purpose, too. You just have to find it.
"Every single person watching this, listening to my voice, you are created for a huge, big calling on your life," she said.
