'Drag Race' Star Ginger Minj Shares the Mantra She Uses to Pump Up Her Confidence

Joshua Allen Eads, who performs as a drag queen using the name Ginger Minj, is used to hearing people around her lift her up. "You know, I go out there on the road, I hit the stage, and everybody's pumping me up, giving me all of that energy," Minj, 37, tells Health.

However, it took her a while to learn how to give herself that same encouragement. "The second I get home and I look in that mirror, there's nobody else there to pump me up except myself," the RuPaul's Drag Race contestant says. "For a long time, I didn't think I was able to do that."

Eventually, Minj learned the power of loving herself. "The more you look in that mirror and the more you find the things about yourself that are just special and amazing, the more you are going to be able to become your biggest cheerleader," says Minj, whose new album, Double Wide Diva, is available now.

This lesson in self-love and confidence led Minj to her personal mantra: "The mantra I live my life by is, 'You have to be your own biggest cheerleader.'" At first, she found the saying cliché. "I don't know that I necessarily heard this from anybody, but I think I've heard it from everybody," she recalls. "It's one of those sayings: You can't love anybody until you love yourself."

Now she understands the power that comes from loving herself. "It's one of those things we hear over and over so many times we don't take it seriously," she says. "But then when we actually are faced with that situation, you realize how much truth is actually in it." Watch Minj's video explaining her mantra above.