Welcome to 2023, my loves! Personally, I am really excited about 2023. It feels like a really exciting time for me, and I’m hoping that this is a really exciting time for you as well.

I know everyone tends to look at January as a fresh start, and in some ways, it is. It’s nice to have that built-in reset button, but here’s the truth: you can have a fresh start in September or July or March or whenever. You could have a fresh start right now, if you want.

The beginning of January shouldn’t be the only time your whole life gets to change, because…fuck, how disempowering would that be? You’re only allowed to completely change your life once a year? How boring. You can decide today, right now, that you’re ready to step into something different and to embody a different energy. For me, this next year is all about committing to main character energy, babes. Let’s talk about what that looks like.

What is Main Character Energy?

So, obviously one of the reasons I wanted to talk today about being the main character of your life is because I’m doing a program called Main Character Energy. I want to make sure I give a bit of a backstory as to what “main character energy” even is, and how my story of embracing main character energy came about.

So what does “main character energy” mean? It means that you get to decide right now that your story’s going to be different moving forward. You get to decide that you’re not going to be the fucking supporting character of your own goddamn life anymore—you’re actually going to be the main character.

Before we can get into what that looks like, let’s talk about the role you’re playing now: the role of a supporting character.

Supporting Character Energy

Being a supporting character essentially means that in your life, everyone else comes before you. Everyone else is the main character: your boyfriend, your mom, your fucking dog, everyone. They all get given priority above you, and you always feel like you’re glossed over or unheard or unseen. There’s just so much more to life that you feel like you’re not experiencing because you’re not prioritizing yourself.

My Journey to Main Character Energy

My journey through this concept has been a big one; a journey that spans my whole life, in fact. As a child, I was really grounded in that main character energy, because a child has to be the main character. They have to be, because they’re so reliant on other people for their survival. They actually have to be the center of attention.

But at some point, life happens. Maybe we start to get bullied. For example, as a kid, I was very exuberant. I would sing, I would dance, all of that stuff, without a care in the world. It didn’t matter what others were thinking, because I enjoyed it. And then, kids being kids, they started to say things or they would laugh at me, and all that began to change.

This is what happens for a lot of people. You might think that you’re just not confident, but actually, you may have a really big nervous system response surrounding your confidence. You might actually have trauma around being confident, because that confidence once earned you some ridicule as a kid.

It’s really important that we start to hold space for those experiences. You don’t have to know exactly what it is, but you know that when you were a little girl or a little boy, you were your own main character in your own way. And somewhere along the way, we lost that. So we want to hold space for that part of us that is wounded, that is sad, that is grieving, but we also don’t want to get stuck in that. If we let ourselves get trapped there, we can end up blaming all of our struggles with confidence on other people.

There’s a time for acknowledging the trauma and the grief and what caused it, and then there’s a time where you actually have to stop blaming every single person around you for why you are the way that you are and take some fucking responsibility for it. I know that’s very direct, but if you know me, you know to expect that by now.

What Being the Main Character Means

For me, being the main character means being someone who prioritizes themselves. People with main character energy put themselves first, they have healthy boundaries, they act in congruence with what they want, and they have epic self-care and self-love rituals. (I’m going to go in-depth in my Main Character Energy program about what self-love actually means, because that’s a huge piece.)

Here’s the thing: I am the main character of my life. I am. No one else gets to be the main character. My boyfriend’s not the main character. My friends aren’t the main character. My mentor’s not the main character. I’m the fucking main character, and all of those people are supporting characters in my life.

Notice what happens in your body as you read that. Are you tensing up? Are you contracted? Are you thinking, “Fuck, wow, she’s arrogant. She’s so full of herself.”

Good. I fucking should be.

I fucking should be full of myself, and so should you! What the fuck else should we be full of? I don’t want to be empty. I want to be so full of myself that I am overflowing.

I think this is where a lot of people get it twisted: they look at people who do have this main character energy and they think, “Wow, they’re fucking arrogant. Oh, I don’t like that.” You know what that tells me? That tells me they have a fucking shadow there. They have a shadow around people who put themselves first and people who really take care of themselves.

If you think that it’s selfish for people to put themselves first, I hate to break it to you, but it’s just not the case. And personally, I’m not going to apologize for putting myself first because you choose not to do that for yourself.

We may be resentful of other people for putting themselves first, or having healthy boundaries, or getting everything that they want. But you know what? That’s your choice. You get to step into the main character energy that allows you to set those boundaries and put yourself first.

The Main Character is an ACTIVE Role

Here’s the deal. I have pretty much everything that I want, and that’s because I decided that I am the main character.

I decided that I’m a person who gets what they want. I’m a person who decided that when I have a desire, it comes to fruition.

Listen: we are not only the main character of our own lives, but we’re also the director, the producer, the set designer, the costume designer, the screenplay writer, all of the things.

What happens to us a lot of the time is that we tend to give our power away. I don’t love that term, but I have yet to figure out a way to describe it better. We disempower ourselves by believing we are at the mercy of everything and everyone around us. For instance, “I can’t have the relationship that I want because I have anxious attachment.”

How fucking disempowering to think that you are at the mercy of everything and everyone around you to the point that you cannot have the relationship that you want. If you have some shit that you need to work through, then go work through it.

Find a therapist. Find a coach. Come work with me. Come do the Connected Woman program. Come do Main Character Energy. Be a private client. Do whatever. Read a book, for fuck’s sake. Listen to my podcast and implement what I’m talking about. Do anything, but don’t sit there and say, “I can’t, because.” You can. When you’re in your main character energy, you absolutely can.

If there’s anything that I’ve learned, it’s not about how we can “fix” these parts of ourselves that are keeping us from what we want. It’s about actually being able to fucking sit with ourselves. I go into detail with this within Connected Woman, so if you really want to heal those wounds around yourself and in the context of relationships, you should definitely do Connected Woman. If you’re wanting to work on building confidence and creating a life that you fucking love and being delusively confident, then do Main Character Energy. And if you want to do both, which is my recommendation, because I designed these two programs in such a way that they go hand in hand, there’s a bundle available as well. I’m adding all the links below to make it easy—no more excuses. 

If you’re ready to step into your own era of delusional confidence, sign up for my six-week course, Main Character Energy, starting in early January: https://michellepanning.thrivecart.com/main-character-energy/

If you want to go from feeling anxious AF about your love life to feeling confident, secure, and having unfuckwithable self-worth, join my program The Connected Woman, starting in early February: https://michellepanning.com/the-connected-woman

Can’t choose? You don’t have to! Get the Main Character Energy and The Connected Woman BUNDLE: https://michellepanning.thrivecart.com/hot-girl-shit-bundle-tcw-mce/

Join The Hotline, a 4-week group Voxer container for you to plug into my mind and feel supported over the holidays: https://michellepanning.thrivecart.com/the-hotline/

Be sure to connect with me over on Instagram. I’d love to hear what you thought of this post and what your major takeaways were. Or head over to my website to learn more about how we can work through your relationship journey together.