Rising up in Buffalo, New York, Caley Rose assumed that having optimistic vanity 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 best way she noticed herself for greater than a decade. When Rose finally grew to become 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 faculty, she was decided to shed her insecure center college self and turn into the assured individual she needed to be. “I needed to turn into somebody who might like myself and love myself,” says Rose, who now lives in Los Angeles together with her husband and two younger kids.
By remedy, self-development programs and analysis, she lastly achieved her aim. Now, Rose is spreading the gospel of self-love throughout the nation by Music with a Message, a program devoted to empowering college students and girls by music. By partnering with baby 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 based mostly on, ‘That is what I wanted as a child, and that is what I hope I will help younger girls by,’” 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 by twelfth grade. Rose has additionally introduced her messaging to girls’s shelters and even took this system on a cross-country tour in an Airstream together with her household in 2023, stopping at completely different colleges to carry out. On the high-energy assemblies, college students are inspired to stand up and dance and sing—parts that set Music with a Message other than different confidence-building applications.
Rose rewrote a few of her well-liked songs centered on feminine empowerment to enchantment to audiences of all ages and genders. The lyrics are full of optimistic messages and affirmations—quick statements that individuals repeat to themselves to enhance their vanity and confidence—which Rose hopes will persist with college students by adolescence and maturity. For instance, certainly one of her hottest songs, “Courageous Ones,” options the strains: “While you really feel like giving up / While you really feel such as you’re not sturdy sufficient / You’re one of many courageous ones… I’m sturdy / I’m sort / I’ll get by / I’ll get by.”
“Music lasts with us our whole lives,” Rose says. “It really works on our unconscious by affirmations. If we begin to hearken to music that has phrases in it, like ‘I’m sturdy / I can get by this tough 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 destructive ideas to deal with 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 mother or father or buddy.
For center college and highschool applications, Rose provides classes on how one can implement a progress mindset. This mind-set, which acknowledges that information and expertise could be developed by exhausting work and assist from others, will help children 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 infrequently draw back from challenges.)
The response to Music with a Message has been extraordinarily optimistic, Rose says. “I’ve had some unbelievable tales advised to me by the older college students,” she says. “I believe by exhibiting my vulnerability and telling them about my darkish occasions, they’ve felt comfy coming ahead and sharing their very own.”
Self-confidence and having a progress mindset aren’t simply very important to success in people’ private and personal lives—it could save lives. The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention reported that the suicide price amongst younger folks ages 10-24 elevated 62% from 2007 to 2021, whereas the American Psychological Affiliation famous in 2023 that an growing variety of adolescents reported emotions of loneliness, hopelessness, unhappiness and suicidal ideation.
“I didn’t assume that I might 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 will help folks keep away from that—particularly younger folks. When we now have self-confidence and we possess a progress mindset, that’s one thing that’s going to get us by adversity.”
In 2024, Music with a Message gained its first sponsor, which allowed it to start providing scholarships and partial scholarships to colleges who’ve little or no meeting price range or are coping with bullying points and hardship. Rose was additionally in a position to broaden her crew, 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 is going to be capable of 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 colleges all over the world. She says, “I need to attain each single college, each single scholar.”
Easy methods to turn into a ‘Courageous One’
Want a self-confidence enhance? Right here, Rose shares 4 suggestions.
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. Keep in mind that your ideas aren’t who you might be.
Rose typically walks college students by a meditative train to assist them observe and hit pause on their ideas. “If we are able to discover a tiny house in between these ideas, whether or not they’re destructive or optimistic or bizarre, we truly can uncover that the essence of who we’re isn’t a destructive thought or a optimistic thought,” she says. “It’s truly the calm and the silence beneath these ideas.”
3. Identify the positives.
Rose encourages people to look within the mirror and title three stuff you’re grateful for or like about your self each day. “For those who select to deal with these optimistic issues, once more, these optimistic issues will broaden and turn into what we deal with extra,” she says.
4. Preserve going.
“With college students, I’m continually saying crucial two phrases you can bear in mind at present are ‘maintain going’ as a result of it’s going to get simpler for those who resolve to work on your self and also you resolve 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 Might/June 2025 challenge of SUCCESS journal.
