Meet Clarence Hairston-bellotti

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Clarence Hairston-bellotti. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with clarence below.

Hi Clarence, 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?

As I’ve gotten older, I reflect on the little moments that would make the younger me proud. Whether that’s a big life achievement like marriage, buying a house, or something small like having a fun night at home with my husband and dog doing nothing and wishing or wanting nothing else. In these moments of reflection, I often find myself trying to retrace my course and asking, “How did I get here!”. There is always an array of ideas and synopsis on how it got done, but the number one thing that pops up in each of my memory lane strolls is my ability, from a young age, to believe in myself and that no matter what, I’ve got to keep going.

I had a pretty normal childhood. Early on, it was just my mom, older brother, and me.
Then, when I was five, my stepdad came into the picture, and my little sister shortly afterward. We were your usual middle-class family—lower middle class but not poor. The trope goes that middle children are often forgotten and, because of that, maybe a little needy or resentful. That may be true for some, but lucky for me, I had a superpower that required my family’s attention and garnered everyone’s attention the moment I showed it to the world. That power was my voice. Since five years old, I’ve been singing and performing for any and everyone. Performing and music became my life and became what I was known for. I don’t know if most people are wired this way, but I know that when I’m on the stage or in front of people performing, I want them to enjoy what I’m doing. I realized early on that to do this, I had to believe in myself, and that’s when my confidence was birthed. Not just in my singing ability but in who I was as a person. You may be thinking, “Weren’t you scared to get on stage and perform for all the people?” and maybe a little part of me was, but once I saw them smiling or dancing, I was hooked. It became my purpose and my drive for life.

Fast forward through all of this to when I turned 12. At this point in my life, things started to change for me mentally. I was going through puberty. My body was changing, as was my mind, and so was how I thought about things. The once-naive boy with no insecurities realized the power of self-doubt very quickly. As my friends started to express their feelings and thoughts about each other romantically, I came to terms with one very big truth about myself. They way that I saw the world and my feelings about others were not what most people felt. Unlike the rest of my guy friends, who were becoming more in love with the pink and yellow Rangers because they were pretty and “so hot,” I found myself more attracted and curious about the green and red power Rangers, who reminded me of the guys my mom would watch on Saved By the Bell. (Zach Morris will always be my number one)

Now, 12 is still pretty young. Sexuality and all the things that come with it were still very new ideas to me, especially for a kid who grew up in the nineties. These were things that weren’t addressed a lot in my life, and if they were, it wasn’t in a positive way. It took me a while to understand what this all meant. I probably went through all seven stages of grief once I realized it wasn’t just a dream or a blimp in time, and trust me, I hoped and prayed that it would be! For most of middle school, it was something that I struggled with, and whether or not I showed it or displayed the characteristics that went along with being gay, it made me very insecure that people may find out. This was the first time in my life that I felt like my superpower could not save me, and with that, my confidence started to dwindle. Sometime around the summer before freshman year, I had a really big talk with myself about who I wanted to be.
My family was relocating to Arizona, and for me, that meant a fresh start. I wasn’t used to feeling insecure, and I didn’t know how to be gay but not be gay, so I had to do something. It was around that time that I made a promise to myself. I told myself that I may not be able to change who I am, but I can control how people see me. If the world was going to reject me for being gay, the least I could do was love myself. I can’t tell you why or how I decided this. I just knew I wasn’t ready to give up. I felt I had too much to offer, and maybe the world wasn’t prepared to receive it from a gay kid then, but someday, they would be. That moment and that hope was a huge shift in how my mindset and self-esteem started to grow. I dug in on striving to be my best. While I wasn’t comfortable sharing my secret with the world, I refused not to let the world see what I had to offer, and I felt I had a lot to give.

Now, eventually, I did come out, and shocker, I’m still here. I don’t know if it was foolish or just luck, but the hope that the world would evolve and accept me was precisely what happened. I found out that most of the fears I had about losing the people close to me were my projections and that letting my family and friends in would only bring us closer. This moment in my life skyrocketed my confidence. The analogy I’ve used in therapy is that I felt like I was walking through life with a backpack full of bricks. I was trying so hard to continue to press forward and while I was able to move in the right direction, I was making my journey much more complicated than it had to be. Once I was able to remove all of the baggage and allow myself to just move freely, life became so easy.

So much of my confidence comes from the belief the people around me have in me. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m going to do me regardless but knowing that what I’m doing not only uplifts but brings joy to the people who matter most to me, that’s what I want my life to be. I spent so much of my life trying to prove to the world that I was worth their love and appreciation that I didn’t realize, the only person I was trying to prove that to, was me. Once I allowed myself to feel confident and be who I truly was, my life took off. My husband, family, and friends are the source of my happiness, purpose, and confidence. I believe in myself daily because I know that they’ll always be here no matter what happens to me. That sense of worth is everything, and its all I need to continue to keep going.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

All my life, I’ve been a performer. I started from a young age with singing and music truly taking me worldwide. In my mid-twenties I realized, that I loved music but I wasn’t passionate about it the way I would need to. be to find success. That’s when I shifted careers and started working in the fitness industry. Asd someone who grew up playing and watching sports I was always obsessed with movement. Once I left the military, I received my personal trainer certification and, from there, worked my way up the ladder to where I am today. I’ve worked with several amazing companies, like Under Armour, FitBit, Nike, Barrys Bootcamp, and others. In 2018, I was given the opportunity to get on with a local Bay Area-connected fitness company named Tempo. I started there as just an On-Camera Fitness coach but now work as the Head of Fitness Operations for our entire company.

Outside of my professional life, I’m obsessed with hanging out at home! That’s where my amazing husband and best friend (our dog) Kobe are, and that’s precisely where I want to spend most of my time. We’ve been together since 2018, and I have to say, it’s truly been the best six years of my life. He is my exact opposite, but simultaneously, he completes all the parts of me that I need to feel whole. He is the best thing about my life. We also have our little Labradoodle, Kobe, who is the son he never wanted and the dog of my dreams. It worked out perfectly. In October 2022, with 80 of our friends and family, my husband and I got married in Cabo. I still can’t look at the videos and photos without getting teary-eyed. It was amazing, and our lives have only gotten better since then. Last year, we put firm roots down and bought a home in Alameda, California. The three of us are a little family, and playing and dancing in the living room on any given night is what I want my life to be about.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The three most important qualities of my journey would have to be perspective, resilience, and kindness to yourself.

I think it’s really easy to lose yourself when you feel like the world is against you or that you’ve messed things up so badly that there’s no way back. I’ve been there, and I know that struggle is so real for some people. I would encourage people to remember that so much of the self-doubt and negative talk we experience is happening inside our heads. This means that we are the first and loudest people telling ourselves that we can’t do something or that things aren’t worth what we want most. It’s hard to turn that off, but I encourage you to try and find people, a therapist, or an outlet to give your brain a break. So many times, I was spiraling or laying in bed devising the worst-case scenarios for my life, but little things like listening to music, running, and calling a friend gave me the “deep breath” my brain needed just to reset. I promise you, there’s always something that can be done to change who or where you are that’s making you feel this way. Sometimes the options are tough and hard to do but remember, you don’t like where you are right now, so move. Don’t be afraid to take a step in a new direction, and most important, be kind to yourself.

Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?

I think the best thing we can be as people is curious. Being a kid who was different, I knew from a young age that the world I was shown or the things that everyone else around me was doing wouldn’t work. This resulted in me looking for new ways to solve problems or think about a situation. I try to carry that same curiosity into my work, friendships, and general way of moving through the world. We can sometimes keep our lives in such a bubble, whether we know we do or not. Letting others show you new ways of thinking or bring new ideas to the table is important. I feel like the worst thing I can become in my life, is stagnenint. I want to always be learning, and that mindset has helped me tackle new challenges and find ways to yield success.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/lilbizzy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clarence-hairston/

Image Credits

Josephy Gabriel
Kathleen Luevano