Kristin Calabria is a theater artist and fitness professional hailing from the suburbs of Philadelphia. Kristin has always been a 
performer; she has been cultivating her skills as a musician (oboe, ukulele, guitar, and singing), actor, and writer from a young age. She graduated from Boston University’s College of the Fine Arts and Prague Film School with a BFA in Acting. While in Boston, she had the pleasure of working with Company One as an Education Associate and helped to further develop the summer theater program for high school students. Since moving to NYC, she has starred in The Café Collections, the devised piece The Consensus Project, and the webseries Not So Common Sense and Middle SchooLOL. Kristin is a yoga and fitness instructor who believes in cultivating a strong sense of authentic self through movement and breath. Recently, Kristin developed her own class, the UPrise Flow. She also created a yoga program for high school students. Kristin actively teaches group classes and private sessions in NYC.
Kristin shares what life was like for her before and how making the decision to show up as her true self has helped her gain confidence in herself to live the life that she has today. She also shares her tip that can help you in your own journey to self confidence.
Bio
Kristin Calabria is a yoga/fitness teacher and wellness thought leader.
Cultural Background
Kristin is of Chinese and Italian descent.
Favorite Self Confidence Quote
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth and truth rewarded me.
Definition of Self Confidence
Self confidence is being able to show up as your authentic self and speak, think, and act from a place of compassion, even in the face of overwhelming fear. Self confidence means recognizing that there are things we will perceive as flaws in our self.
Her Life Before the Discovery of Self Confidence
Kristin lived in a world where she felt like she had to be smaller. She wasn’t a person who ever felt like she fit into any category and was just trying to find a place to belong. Partially because of her multiethnic self swimming in a homogenous sea of white middle class America, partially because her over analytical mind was always finding reasons why she didn’t fit. For the most of her young life, she found herself always coming up short. She looks back on her younger self with so much compassion. she doesn’t know where young people are supposed to learn how to interact with themselves in a positive way when so much of the media we consume is telling us how we need to be different. That was Kristin. She never felt like she was enough.
The “AHA” Moment
Kristin doesn’t think her AHA was one moment but a collection experiences over her life time that made her realize what joy was available to her if she lived more authentically and used the voice she had to speak the truth. She has been incredibly lucky to attend a university program that basically taught her how to be a good person. Going to school for acting is alot of encountering who you are, what you believe in, and how to cultivate empathy and a safe space to evolve. Much of the training was about unapologetically being who you are and understanding that on a very deep level so that you can be anyone. One of the mantras that they had at our school was “You are Enough”. Hearing this almost everyday had such a large impact on Kristin. She is enough to hold all of the feelings inside of her. She is enough to think the big thoughts. She is enough to do the thing that scares her. She is enough because she is human and inside of her there is such strength and depth.
Her Life After the Discovery of Self Confidence
After four years of intense self study, Kristin felt embolden to take risks in her own life. She started to put more of herself and her heart into everything that she did. When she recognized that she was enough in all ways, she started to see that the things she had to say, the questions she needed to ask, were necessary and important. Especially as a person who identifies as female, she has experienced so many outside forces that will tell her to be smaller, to shine less bright, to be less ambitious. None of those things have to be true though.
The One Self Confidence Tip For the Listener
This journey is not linear. There are times when Kristin still doubts herself, her ability, her prep work. What she has gained though is a tool box to encounter self doubt with compassion and truth. Find your tool box. Fill it with tools. When you doubt yourself, ask yourself, where did this script come from? Is this actually true? What is the evidence to back it up?
Interview Links
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