The Four Pillars of my Anchor: Grounding, Releasing, Reclaiming, and Navigating.

For most of my life, I thought an anchor was meant to keep you still — to hold you down when the waters got rough. But through my healing journey, I’ve learned the anchor can mean something else entirely. It can be a symbol of grounding, of resilience, of knowing when to stay — and when to release.

In my upcoming book, The Why Not Me? Concept: I explore what it means to reclaim your voice and your story. The anchor has been part of mine. It’s more than just a nautical symbol. It’s a reminder of what I’ve carried, what I’ve had to unlearn, and what I now choose to root myself in.

So what does the anchor represent in healing? Here are the four pillars that emerged for me — and maybe they’ll speak to you, too.

Pillar 1: Grounding – The Power of Stillness

Healing begins with grounding. When the storm rages around you, the anchor holds. This pillar is about finding a space, internally or externally, and knowing where you can pause, breathe, and reconnect with the present moment. In The Why Not Me? Concept: this is the moment you stop spinning and ask: “What am I feeling, and why does it matter?”It’s the inner stillness that allows clarity to rise.

When you’ve lived most of your life in survival mode, stillness can feel foreign, even unsafe. You’re used to scanning for danger, fixing, proving, and pleasing. Motion feels like control. But healing asks something different. It asks you to pause. To sit in the discomfort without trying to escape it.

It’s in that quiet space, when you stop running, numbing, or over-functioning — that truth finally has room to speak. That’s where the clarity rises. Not forced. Not loud. But steady. Like a whisper from the part of you that has always known the way home.

Pillar 2: Releasing – Letting Go of the Weight

Some anchors are heavy with pain, guilt, or old stories we no longer need. At some point, healing invites us to pull the anchor up and choose to move forward. The anchor may have once kept you safe, kept you still when the storm raged. But if you’re no longer in survival mode, then staying stuck isn’t safety anymore, it’s self-abandonment.

Pulling up the anchor doesn’t mean forgetting. It means deciding that your future deserves more than the weight of your past. It means realizing that the version of you who once needed to stay hidden, small, or silent has done her job. But now? Now it’s your turn to rise, to move, to reclaim the pen and write the next chapter.

This is the moment when Why me? becomes Why NOT me? Why not me to heal? Why not me to break the cycle? Why not me to live a life that’s finally mine? This pillar is about acknowledging the past, but not dragging it with us. It’s that moment when you ask, “Why not me — to be the one who lets this go?”

Pillar 3: Anchoring to Truth – Reclaiming Identity

Once you release what isn’t yours, you get to decide what is. This is the sacred moment when healing becomes reclamation. When you stop living by default and start living by design.

Because so much of what we carry was never really ours, the shame, the silence, the roles we played to be loved, the masks we wore to feel safe. We inherited beliefs about who we had to be just to belong. But none of those stories were written by you.

When you pull up the anchor of other people’s expectations, you get to decide where and how to drop your own. This is where we tether to truth — the truth of who you are beneath the survival patterns, the people-pleasing, the pain. The truth that says: You are not broken. You are becoming. You are not what happened to you. You are who you choose to be next.

Here, the anchor is no longer a chain that holds you back. It’s a conscious choice. A rooting. A reclamation.

You choose what you believe. You choose who you trust. You choose what you carry forward and what you release.

That’s not just healing, it's freedom. That’s The Why Not Me? Concept in motion. This is the Why Not Me? mindset in action: choosing to anchor in self-worth, not shame.

Pillar 4: Navigation – Moving with Intention

An anchor doesn’t mean staying stuck. It means knowing when and where to drop it. Healing is the same. This pillar is about movement with intention, choosing relationships, environments, and habits that align with who you’re becoming. It’s the courage to ask: “What direction feels like freedom?” And the wisdom to steer toward it.

The anchor taught me more than I ever expected. Not just how to stay still — but how to rise, release, reclaim, and redirect. This is the heart of The Why Not Me? Concept: You are not stuck in what happened to you. You are free to become the version of you that your younger self only dreamed of.

And maybe, just maybe, you're not sinking. You're learning to sail.

Becky Shaffer

www.liveinconfidence.com

COMING SOON- Go to my website to pre-order and get updates on the release date.