Meet Kemi Reyes

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kemi Reyes. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kemi below.

Hi Kemi, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
At the start of this year, I built my confidence by keeping the promises I made to myself and deciding that my identity wasn’t tied to my timeline. As a teenager, I left New York University due to an unexpected leave of absence. Almost 10 years later, I came back… not to prove anything to anyone else, but to finish what I started and continue to build the life I knew I was meant for. For years, I compared myself to people who “had it together” by the time they graduated from college, or even earlier. I felt behind. I felt like I’d missed my window. That constant comparison eroded my confidence. The shift happened when I stopped trying to catch up and started embracing my own path.
I created the I Affirm Myself Method™, a system rooted in neuroscience, faith, and music that helps people shift their inner dialogue to create results. I realized: confidence isn’t about your highlight reel. It’s about BECOMING who you’re meant to be by taking action steps, one day at a time.
I committed to speaking daily affirmations, participating in identity work, and trusting God’s timing over my own. I started acting like the person I was becoming. I embraced the principle that discipline builds confidence, not the other way around.
Now I’m at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute with Tisch School of the Arts, simultaneously building a business, leading publicly, and helping others do the same. My confidence no longer comes from external validation. It comes from knowing I’m walking in my purpose.
Confidence is a practice, not a personality trait. You build it by showing up, affirming who you are, and trusting that your story matters, even if it doesn’t look like everyone else’s.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I founded I Affirm Myself Alliance (IAMA), where I help people transform their identity, not just their habits, but through a method that fuses neuroscience, faith, and music.

Most personal development focuses on doing more: more productivity hacks, more morning routines, more discipline. I realized that real transformation happens when you shift how you speak about yourself and what you consume. When your internal dialogue changes, everything else follows naturally.

The I Affirm Myself Method™ is a system I developed that uses daily affirmations, intentional input curation, and somatic practices to rewire the subconscious mind. What makes it unique: I’m a trained music producer from NYU’s Clive Davis Institute, and I understand how sound bypasses the conscious mind and goes straight to the subconscious, influencing every decision a person makes. Music isn’t just background noise. It’s medicine. I produce custom tracks for my clients, blending their personal affirmations and goals with music that anchors their transformation on a deeper level.

Right now, I’m leading a “Winter Arc Challenge,” also known as “The Great Lock-In of 2025,” a three-month transformation challenge running through the end of the year. I’m documenting my own journey publicly while helping others lock in on their goals. I’m also preparing to launch my first group program and working toward licensing The I Affirm Myself Method™ to corporate teams, because I believe executive leadership needs this kind of internal transformation just as much as individuals do. I’m also excited to be releasing a curated line of affirmation-based merchandise in the coming months: wearable reminders that help people carry their commitments with them daily.

My story is a little unconventional: I left NYU at 19, spent a decade building experience in hospitality, corporate operations, and sales, and returned to school after ten years. I’m now building my business while finishing my degree. The decision to come back was the embodiment of everything I now teach: you don’t have to follow anyone else’s timeline. You just have to trust your own.

If there’s one thing I want people to know, it’s this: You are your greatest project. Everything you’re building externally starts with who you’re embodying internally. That’s what I Affirm Myself is all about.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Consistency, self-awareness, and faith.

People call me “The Comeback Queen” because I’ve fallen off more times than I can count, and I always come back stronger. My nutrition slipped. My business stalled. My motivation tanked. But I came back every time.
Consistency isn’t always about never missing a day. It’s about refusing to stay down. The people who win aren’t the ones who never fall. They’re the ones who get back up every single time.

My advice: You will have bad days, bad weeks, maybe even bad months. That’s not failure. That’s being human. Find your reason why you refuse to give up. Your “why” is what pulls you back to center. For me, it’s my faith, my purpose, and the people I’m meant to impact.

Next, self-awareness is the ability to honestly assess where I am and what needs to change. When something isn’t working, I acknowledge it and adjust. That’s how I created the I Affirm Myself Method™ in the first place. I recognized I needed a system to rewire my mindset, so I built one.

Self-awareness allows you to pivot without shame. During week 1 of the Winter Arc Challenge, my nutrition was inconsistent. I didn’t beat myself up. I said, “That’s feedback. Week 2, I’m adjusting.”

My advice for someone starting out would be to check in with yourself regularly. Journal, reflect, ask hard questions: What’s working? What’s not? What needs to change? The people who transform fastest can see themselves clearly without judgment, then pivot accordingly.

Last and not certainly not least, there’s faith. For me it’s meant trusting the process even when I don’t immediately see results. My faith in God has been my anchor. There were moments where the logical choice would have been to give up or play it safe: coming back to school, building a business with no guaranteed income, stepping into spaces where I was the only one who looked like me. But I kept hearing God say, “I will provide.” And every time, doors opened.

Now, faith isn’t passive. It’s active trust paired with action. You don’t just pray, say your daily affirmations, and wait. You pray, believe, and move. Even when you don’t see the full path, take the next step anyway. Write down your vision, affirm it daily, and trust that if you’re walking in alignment with your purpose, the pieces will come together.
And when you fall off (because you might), faith reminds you that you’re always allowed to come back. God (or the universe or whatver your believe in), doesn’t give up on you. So don’t give up on yourself.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy changed everything for me. It was the first time I understood that success isn’t built through massive, grandiose efforts. It’s built through small, consistent actions repeated daily over time. When I first read it, I was struggling with the belief that I needed to make huge leaps to see real change. But Darren Hardy showed me that tiny daily habits compound into massive results. In 2019, that insight inspired me to commit to one simple habit: running every day. It didn’t matter how far or how fast. I just had to show up.

Here’s what happened: in addition to my losing weight, my brain started to rewire. Success stopped being this intimidating, far-off thing. It became something I could practice daily. Running taught me that I could trust myself to follow through, which built confidence in other areas of my life. That one habit rippled into my all other areas, including my business, my faith practices, and even the way I cultivate relationships with people in my network.

The most valuable nugget from the book? “Small, smart choices + consistency + time = radical difference.” That principle became the foundation of the I Affirm Myself Method™. Transformation isn’t about one big moment. It’s about who you’re becoming through the small decisions you make every single day.

If you’re early in your journey, start with one thing. One affirmation. One workout. One page written. One conversation. Do it every day for 30 days and watch what compounds. That’s how you build a life. One day at a time.

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Image Credits
Professional photos by Adriane Baker & BriCaptures

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