Lainey Wilson has a powerful message for all the young girls who were watching her at the Country Music Association Awards on Wednesday night.
It's one the 31-year-old singer-songwriter says she recites to herself on a daily basis.
"For all you little girls watching and for the ones that are here tonight too, it's something that I'm doing, I'm getting up every single day and I'm looking at myself in the mirror and saying, 'I am beautiful. I am smart. I'm godly. I'm fearless.' If somebody tells me I can't do it, hold my beer. Watch this," Wilson said as she accepted the award for female vocalist of the year.
Wilson would end up taking home five CMA Awards on Wednesday. Aside from her female vocalist honor, she won the coveted entertainer of the year award, as well as the award for album of the year for "Bell Bottom Country." Prior to the ceremony, she won musical event of the year and music video of the year for her collaboration with Hardy on the song "Wait in the Truck."
MORE: CMA Awards 2023 recap: All the biggest wins and epic performancesBackstage at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, where the awards show took place, Wilson told ABC News' Lara Spencer that she has embraced her self-affirmation ritual and encourages young people to give it a try.
"It's something that I haven't always done but it's something that I'm doing now," the CMA Award-winner said. "It's getting up every day and looking at myself in the mirror and saying, 'I am beautiful. I am smart. I am fearless. I'm always doing all the things that I want to be.' And I tell myself, like, 'You got this.'"
Wilson also said she would tell her 9-year-old self -- she said she received her first pair of bell-bottoms and first visited Nashville at that age -- that her country music dreams are valid and achievable and nothing to shy away from.
"I would say the feeling that you're feeling and the dreams that you envision, it's going to happen," she told Spencer. "I would say, 'Trust yourself, trust your gut, trust the Lord. Stay true to yourself. It's going to be some hard and dark days, but at the end of the day, it's what you love. And if it's in your heart and soul, you just get up and you just do it anyway.'"
MORE: CMA Awards 2023: All the looks on the star-studded red carpetWhile Wilson has been working her craft in Nashville for over a decade, she said now feels "a lot of genuine love and support" -- but she added that it hasn't always been that way for her.
"I've been here twelve and a half years, and I started working on this when I was 9 years old, and so, it's been a long road," Wilson said. "I didn't have a lot of support in the beginning. I didn't have any support until about year eight of being here in this town, because what I did was not cool then, right? But it's about timing. It's about finding the people who love what you do, and lucky for you, don't want you to change."
