Your Swag Lives Within
stop the search! intrigue the masses with what you already possess
Full transparency, my first memorable understanding of the word “swag” came from Justin Bieber. I guess you might’ve considered me a bit of a Belieber had you been lucky enough to know me in my teens.1 I’m sure the earth shifted a little for fans everywhere when he delivered that under-the-breath “swaggy” in his coming-of-age track Boyfriend, perfectly translating the word’s meaning through it’s onomatopoeia.
Since then, I’ve noticed that concepts, uses, and understandings of Swag have ebbed and flowed between cringe and cool in the zeitgeist. When spoken too seriously, the word reeks of outdated eagerness. Like a man in his late 30s using the word groovy in conversation to attempt to connect with a younger generation, despite neither party existing to appreciate groovy in its peak context.2 To speak the word with guaranteed positive reception, you must embrace the jest of it with a little smirk in the voice or an almost-mimicking tone as though you are in on the joke even if you’re not making one.
For a long time, Swag has embodied something else for me: the essence of someone’s natural cool—the type that you’re born with and have sole ownership over simply because it is yours; that which cannot be replicated. The type that requires long term development and, ultimately, acceptance in order to exist in its fullest potential. This can also mean it is rarely ever fully understood outside of yourself but, as I will explain, that is a very good thing.
Your true unique Swag is that gut pull to everything you like and aren’t ever really sure why. You can find it in real connections of your heart and soul, like your kindness, sensuality, impulsiveness, spontaneity, creativity, and intuition. And that’s just me describing it in the simplest terms. But it could never be fully explained as such, or as quickly. Especially since that’s my personal theory based on my own experience of my Swag. You see how it can tangle itself up and catch you in its web? I think the truth is that you spend a lot of life untangling the web only to find that you were always at the centre. The Swag is you. It starts and ends with you. It comes from you.
In recent years, I’ve watched as the internet became about what we can take from it and apply to ourselves. This is marketed so often as improvement or upgrades as though we are just machines and software waiting for life and feeling to be given unto us, as opposed to seeking it within as we probably should. In some ways, I have been part of that as a writer here on Substack, imparting thoughts and opinions and sometimes guides for niche aspects of life that I hope other people can understand so that I, and they, feel even a little bit less lonely in each experience. But nothing is one size fits all (as we so humbly learned from Brandy Melville).
What I have come to understand through personal learning in the last 6 months is that there is magic in the unsolvable, unexplainable, evolution that it is to be human. And we are not appreciating that magic in its unique rarity and individuality enough when it comes to both ourselves and one another. We are so quick to squash it with any homogeneous trend in appearance, style, or habit. Myself included previously!
Swag, though, is very much built into that magic that you carry around inside and this is my plea that you don’t lose it in the vastness of yourself or grind it into the pavement under the influence of the internet with it’s many opinions and bombardment of too-many faces. I may potentially be cutting myself off at the digital knees by writing this because of course I want you to still want to read my words. I’ll forgive myself later for acting against my best business intentions. I can only hope that you feel that gut-pull of liking this enough to come back for the next one because you recognise my (and don’t hate me for this) Swag.
It is special that we cannot ever fully know each other as deeply as we know ourselves. While it’s obviously tough to feel unseen or misunderstood, the Swag we possess requires it because, this way, the energy can never be completely given away to someone who simply just doesn’t get it.
Discerning those who get you enough from those that don’t, or don’t care to, is a lengthy process full of discovery. I know that sounds like a monotonous trudge but it’s actually a great thing. You always have an essence of you that is yours to keep and never lost to the wrong person or place. It reminds me of the way you can make a brand new pot of yoghurt from a single spoonful just by adding milk. You can always rebuild the Swag that’s been lost or stolen from the spoonful that spends its whole life as yours, unspoiled and unshared.
This whole “essay” has come from a personal shift that I’ve been experiencing from about late 2025 to now. My last couple of posts have even felt a bit different when writing, like they’re sourced from what is ultimately an acceptance of myself in her entirety—the good, bad, and rarely ugly.3 I think this year that shift will continue to grow wings until it feels like I’m flying in my understanding of who I am.
I don’t have a guide here for how you figure your Swag out, or any prompts, or items that might help.4 I guess I’m more hopeful that you realise that everything you need, you already have. That other people’s ideas of what life is, what it should be, what it has to be, does not need to apply to nor define your own. This is not intended as some self help bullshit, though I know I can fall into those vague words easily. It’s not meant to promote negative ideas of selfishness because it is clear we still need community in order to respect that life, and in this case Swag, doesn’t look the same for everyone. But maybe it will encourage you to ask yourself what your own Swag is; what it looks like; how it shows up in your every day.
I’m feeling oddly generous and though I’m a selective sharer when it comes to my precious Swag, on this occasion, I hand over to you an example of how I have helped myself with all of this. I set up an instagram dedicated to my realest self, my truest Swag. Yes, it’s technically still online because I really do love posting on instagram and at this point I do it for myself more than anything.
This instagram is private and it currently has 20 followers made up of my closest confidantes who have met glimpses of the realest me and my Swag before, which pretty much means at one point or another we’ve been clubbing, partying, or dancing together. Those seem to be the credentials so far. On the account I post every single thing in every which way I want to. All the weirdness, the freakiness, and so much silly fun. (In previous years, this concept was called a finsta or a priv I think). Needless to say it has been a very freeing digital experience that has positively affected my confidence, self-image, and radical self-acceptance in real life. A big feat for me!
That is not something you have to do by any means, but if you so feel compelled to understand and develop your unique Swag then it might be a good start to that connection with your inner world. Meditation and movement that you actually like are good for that too.
Take my word for it or don’t, that part is up to you. But eventually your Swag will awaken and turn your world upside down. Get ahead of it and start letting life come from you.
If you liked this, I’d say these other posts are sisters to this one:
Thanks for reading.
New fashion takes and deep thoughts on the way. All yours soon…
sarcasm…or not? who knows
speaking from experience
;)
buying more shit will not help, trust me
I really enjoyed this. When I feel like finding myself I remind me to stop lying, then whatever remains is me. No finding needed. Thank you for writing this.
Hop up out the bed, turn my swag on (I couldn’t resist). As someone who admittedly knows themselves pretty well, I’ve always wondered how I got to. I’ve come to think a large part of it is just getting older. Great post once again!