Rising up in Buffalo, New York, Caley Rose assumed that having positive self-esteem was an inherent high quality she simply didn’t have. “[I thought] that cool woman in French class simply had that ‘it’ issue and that confidence, and I used to be simply out of luck,” Rose says.
Even worse, she was bullied in center college, experiences that altered the way in which she noticed herself for greater than a decade. When Rose finally turned a Billboard-charting pop musician and singer-songwriter, her lack of self-confidence negatively impacted how she carried out on stage and in social conditions. After graduating from school, she was decided to shed her insecure center college self and turn into the assured individual she wished to be. “I wished to turn into somebody who may like myself and love myself,” says Rose, who now lives in Los Angeles along with her husband and two younger kids.
By way of remedy, self-development courses and analysis, she lastly achieved her purpose. Now, Rose is spreading the gospel of self-love throughout the nation via Music with a Message, a program devoted to empowering college students and ladies via music. By partnering with youngster and teenage psychologists, Rose designed an interactive, music-filled meeting that blends her motivating upbeat tunes with approachable strategies for stopping bullying and constructing self-confidence. “[Music with a Message] began actually simply primarily based on, ‘That is what I wanted as a child, and that is what I hope I may also help younger ladies via,’” she says.
Since Rose based Music with a Message about three years in the past, it has reached greater than 100,000 college students in prekindergarten via twelfth grade. Rose has additionally introduced her messaging to ladies’s shelters and even took this system on a cross-country tour in an Airstream along with her household in 2023, stopping at completely different faculties to carry out. On the high-energy assemblies, college students are inspired to stand up and dance and sing—components that set Music with a Message other than different confidence-building applications.
Rose rewrote a few of her in style songs targeted on feminine empowerment to attraction to audiences of all ages and genders. The lyrics are filled with positive messages and affirmations—quick statements that individuals repeat to themselves to enhance their vanity and confidence—which Rose hopes will stick to college students via adolescence and maturity. For instance, one among her hottest songs, “Courageous Ones,” options the strains: “If you really feel like giving up / If you really feel such as you’re not sturdy sufficient / You’re one of many courageous ones… I’m sturdy / I’m form / I’ll get via / I’ll get via.”
“Music lasts with us our complete lives,” Rose says. “It really works on our unconscious via affirmations. If we begin to take heed to music that has phrases in it, like ‘I’m sturdy / I can get via this difficult time,’ we begin to search for that in the environment and search for extra proof to show to ourselves that these affirmations are true.”
College students depart Music with a Message assemblies with catchy, encouraging tunes of their heads to assist them reframe their detrimental ideas to concentrate on potentialities. If the attendees are youthful children, Rose focuses this system on what traits make them “courageous ones” and small issues that may assist them construct confidence all through the day, comparable to serving to out a guardian or buddy.
For center college and highschool applications, Rose provides classes on tips on how to implement a progress mindset. This mind-set, which acknowledges that information and expertise might be developed via laborious work and assist from others, may also help kids turn into resilient and domesticate a love of studying. (Conversely, people with a set mindset view intelligence and talents as secure and unchangeable traits and sometimes shrink back from challenges.)
The response to Music with a Message has been extraordinarily optimistic, Rose says. “I’ve had some unimaginable tales advised to me by the older college students,” she says. “I believe via exhibiting my vulnerability and telling them about my darkish instances, they’ve felt snug coming ahead and sharing their very own.”
Self-confidence and having a progress mindset aren’t simply important to success in people’ private and personal lives—it may save lives. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the suicide charge amongst younger individuals ages 10-24 elevated 62% from 2007 to 2021, whereas the American Psychological Association famous in 2023 that an growing variety of adolescents reported emotions of loneliness, hopelessness, unhappiness and suicidal ideation.
“I didn’t suppose that I’d be speaking about taking one’s life by suicide once I began this journey with Music with a Message, however that’s what it’s turn into, and I’m so grateful that I may also help individuals keep away from that—particularly younger individuals. When we’ve self-confidence and we possess a progress mindset, that’s one thing that’s going to get us via adversity.”
In 2024, Music with a Message gained its first sponsor, which allowed it to start providing scholarships and partial scholarships to varsities who’ve little or no meeting funds or are coping with bullying points and hardship. Rose was additionally in a position to broaden her staff, which incorporates a number of working mothers, and rent one other performer for assemblies to broaden this system’s attain. “If there’s an meeting at 2 o’clock in Philadelphia that I can’t get to, she’s going to be capable to go there,” Rose says.
Rose additionally says she launched an album, titled Courageous Ones, in early 2025 and hopes to finally carry Music with a Message to varsities world wide. She says, “I need to attain each single college, each single scholar.”
The right way to turn into a ‘Courageous One’
Want a self-confidence enhance? Right here, Rose shares 4 ideas.
1. Settle for that loving your self is feasible.
“Wanting to love ourselves is step one after which discovering methods to understand ourselves,” she says.
2. Do not forget that your ideas aren’t who you’re.
Rose usually walks college students via a meditative exercise to assist them observe and hit pause on their ideas. “If we will discover a tiny area in between these ideas, whether or not they’re detrimental or optimistic or bizarre, we really can uncover that the essence of who we’re isn’t a detrimental thought or a optimistic thought,” she says. “It’s really the calm and the silence beneath these ideas.”
3. Title the positives.
Rose encourages people to look within the mirror and identify three stuff you’re grateful for or like about your self on daily basis. “When you select to concentrate on these optimistic issues, once more, these optimistic issues will broaden and turn into what we concentrate on extra,” she says.
4. Maintain going.
“With college students, I’m consistently saying a very powerful two phrases that you may keep in mind as we speak are ‘hold going’ as a result of it’ll get simpler in the event you determine to work on your self and also you determine that you simply need to work on loving your self and liking your self and rising your self-confidence.”
Picture courtesy of Caley Rose. This text initially appeared within the May/June 2025 issue of SUCCESS journal.
