You are bold, you are brilliant and you are beautiful.” Those are the words that Ashley Graham used to solidify her status as the original queen of confidence when she spoke to the power of affirmations during a TEDx talk in 2018.
The plus-size model already had a crown on her head when she became the first to make appearances on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit and Vogue in 2016 and 2017, respectively, as a size 16. People everywhere looked up to her for breaking barriers of what was considered the ideal body type at the time. And she was able to respond not just in her photos but also in her work as an advocate for size inclusivity.
Now she’s striving to make an impact on the next generation with her new children’s book, A Kid’s Book About Beauty. And although she’s positioning herself as a seasoned pro, she tells Yahoo Lifestyle that self-confidence is a daily practice.
Whether it’s utilizing affirmations, avoiding social media or simply wearing the right bra, Graham has many tools that she relies on, and is passing on to her three boys. Here’s what we can learn from her.
Keep up with affirmations
“Affirmations are so personal. They're ever changing and they're also a daily practice,” says Graham. “The more that you practice the words that are coming out of your mouth, that you're lining up with your heart and your mind, then this just becomes a regular thing like brushing your teeth.”
The three that she highlights in the book — “I am bold. I am brilliant. I am beautiful.” — are the affirmations that she came up with when she first started with the practice years ago.
”I am bold because I needed to remember that I was supposed to be where I was in my job. I was supposed to be bold with the decisions that I was making in my career and how I was showing up in the fashion industry,” she says. “I am brilliant because I was diagnosed with ADD [attention deficit disorder] and dyslexia at a young age and always was told that I'm not a great reader, I'm not great with my words and I'm not an excellent communicator — I needed to remember that I actually am all those things. And I am beautiful.
She assumes that most think the latter comes easier to her, since she is a model after all. But that hasn’t been the case.
“In the fashion industry you're getting picked apart and your whole image is being manipulated by what others think that you should look like. So I needed to remind myself that I wasn't going to conform to what the fashion industry wanted me to be. I needed to remember that I was beautiful the way that God made me,” she says.
She views these affirmations as “a starting point for people” who want to get into the practice.
Make positive thinking a habit
Graham’s affirmations have proven how powerful words can be. So in her household, negative ones aren’t allowed.
We definitely do a lot of corrective verbal behavior,” she says of herself and her husband, Justin Ervin, when it comes to their kids — 4-year-old Isaac and 2-year-old twins Roman and Malachi. They’re cautious of not only how they speak about themselves and the world around them, but also how people who come into their home do, like Graham’s mother or the boys' nanny. "If you really pare back and look at what is coming out of your mouth, you would really be shocked at the things that you're saying," she says. "So we do that basically in the micro at home with the kids.”
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