The Confidence Myth: 5 Ways to Take Action When You Don’t Feel Confident

We often think if we just had more confidence, we could do anything — even worse, we assume we have to wait to build self-confidence in order to start. But we have it backwards: Confidence is what comes later, and as a result of other actions you take. Here are a few confidence-boosting actions to get you started.

A few years ago I studied standup comedy with professional comic Jim David. We, the dozen or so other amateur comics in the room, had been led to believe that those who succeeded were those who were born with a specific kind of personality that “made” them funny, and as a result, made them confident enough to do comedy.

Haha! No.

Jim David dismissed all of that with a wave of his hand. “You don’t need a big personality to do comedy,” he said. “You just need to know how to write a joke.”

Being funny, it turns out, isn’t so much a trait you’re born with as it is a skill you sharpen.

This is why you can be an introverted, unassuming person and crush on stage—or a big class clown and not be funny at all. Jokes have a specific construction, and when they work, they really work.

The comics who succeed aren’t necessarily all that confident (comics are notoriously insecure, in fact!); they’re just willing to put in the work and show up again and again and again.

How confidence (actually) works — and how to build it

Most people think of confidence the way they think about sunscreen—you put it on first to protect yourself from the harmful radiation out there.

Confidence is not a prophylactic against failure or rejection. Once you step into the sunlight of attention (anyone’s attention) you’ll be exposed to the delicious warmth, scorching heat, and punishing radiation of criticism and judgment—whether you feel confident or not.

That means confidence is not a prerequisite or a goal in and of itself. It’s an outcome, a side effect. The result of practicing something over and over again. Which means there’s only one way to get it.

If we’re going to drag this analogy out just a bit further, think of it this way: Confidence isn’t part of the preparation for this exposure; it’s the way your skin glows after you’ve been out in it long enough.

And so, waiting until you have confidence before you try to do, well, anything, is like waiting to go out into the sun until after you have a tan. You’ll be waiting a long time — and you risk doing nothing at all.

What you’re seeing when you see a confident person

When you watch someone confidently execute a thing beautifully, easily—give a speech, cook a meal, dive gracefully from a great height—you’re seeing the effect of effort and practice.

Seth Godin says in his book The Practice: Shipping Creative Work, “It’s insulting to call a professional talented. She’s skilled, first and foremost. Many people have talent, but only a few care enough to show up fully, to earn their skill. Skill is rarer than talent. Skill is earned. Skill is available to anyone who cares enough.”

Now replace the word “talent” with “confidence.” Same deal. The assumption that a confident person just has it easier, and that you need confidence in order to make something easier, is to undermine their effort, and the courage it has taken them to overcome friction and fear long enough to do that thing.

Confidence is a feeling, and like every feeling, it can change, waver, shapeshift. I might take the stage at a big event feeling confident because I’ve done it so many times. But if the crowd suddenly starts booing, you better believe my confidence would take a nosedive.

You don’t need boatloads of confidence to begin a thing. What you need is just enough courage to overcome stasis. And when you keep practicing courage, that’s where confidence takes root.

5 ways to build self-confidence

People ask me all the time how I became “so confident” and I have to laugh. I’m just as worried and doubtful as the next person. I’m riddled with anxiety about most things. If you assume I sail into situations with zero self-doubt, that would be incorrect.

And yet, despite all my own neuroses, I have spent years doing what I do (writing, speaking, teaching, and so on), so I “read” as confident because you’re seeing the effects of that practice. It’s not an act, and it’s not something I ever had to begin with.

Here are five ways I’ve found work for me — see if they do the same for you.

1 | Forget “faking it.”

When has faking anything ever felt good? Literally never.

Pretending you feel a certain way, and suppressing who you are or how you feel doesn’t usually go so well. For one, it’s a facade that can be easily punctured. But second, an attempt to anesthetize yourself with confidence to make things easier can create more risk — blinding you from signs that you need to respond differently in a situation.

In other words, you don’t want to pretend everything’s great during a presentation, say, and fake confidence when you see visible signs that your audience is tuning out. It may be time to change up tactics.

But the real reason not to fake it is because it creates a sense of incongruity—your actions don’t match your feeling and vice versa; there’s a divide inside you which can be unsettling and difficult to maintain (unless you’re a skilled and practiced con man, and even then, don’t tell me he’s fine with it; he just has a job to do).

Faking it plants the seed for impostor syndrome. If you believe you have to fool people to be successful, then that’s all you’ll believe you ever did.

TRY IT: Be OK with being a newbie.

Everyone was at some point! Come at it honestly. Rather than focus on how to pretend you’re not new, focus on what you can learn by doing it and ask someone else for help or insight.

2 | Do not disclaim.

There’s nothing wrong with being new to a thing. In the Gateless Writing Method, an approach that removes criticism, judgment, and competition from the creative process, “do not disclaim” is the first rule.

Disclaiming doesn’t look good on anyone. It’s not cute, and it doesn’t endear me to you in any real way. It does little to build your confidence or others’ confidence in you. It’s a waste of everyone’s time, including yours.

TRY IT: Skip the preamble.

Simply present your work, your idea, your whatever, without disclaiming it, defending it, or putting it down. Let your work stand for itself. This way, you stop “proving” the very point you’re afraid of making, that you’re not confident, and instead demonstrate confidence out of the gate.

This is a hard habit to break, but I beg you to try. For the next week, do not begin a sentence by apologizing, defending, or excusing anything. Not speaking, and not via email. Don’t tell everyone why they shouldn’t listen to you before you begin talking.

3 | Look for evidence.

If you want to make a case for believing in yourself, you need evidence. And you have plenty. There are many, many instances when you had to be courageous, and when you practiced at something hard until you were at least able to do it, if not master it. (Why skill, not talent, is the path to purpose and meaningful work.)

Your self-confidence does not reset to zero every day. You’re continuously building on the confidence you’ve built throughout your life. It grows along a continuum; it accumulates. That’s why you can look to your past to see all the ways you have built confidence.

And as they say, what you focus on flourishes. So begin to train your attention on all the things, opportunities, relationships that have resulted from your effort, curiosity, and openness. There’s so much you can be proud of and sure of. It’s well worth remembering.

TRY IT: Log some history.

Set a timer for three minutes and write out the things you’ve been most proud of doing, learning, or executing.

You can make a list or focus on one of them, but your hand must keep moving for three minutes. Focus on the times you were able to start or finish a thing you never thought you could and were proud to showcase it. These are just a few of your moments of confidence, and there are many more.

4 | Use trust as a shortcut.

One of the definitions of confidence actually is “firm trust.” Confident is an adjective; trust is a verb. And the decision to trust your audience, another person, requires courage, and also builds confidence.

I have been doing this for years and have come to realize this is why I “read” as confident. When you decide to trust someone else first, the effect is that you seem sure of yourself, and them, which creates a positive vibe overall. Is it a risk? Of course. Every time. If there was no risk, you wouldn’t need trust in the first place.

I find this risk well worth taking, especially when it comes to meeting new people or speaking in front of them. I choose to trust them, with no evidence to the contrary, and I treat them as if they are trusted. I can of course revoke that trust anytime I choose. But trust gets me to connection more quickly.

TRY IT: Trust someone before they trust you.

Who can you decide to trust right now? I don’t mean to go against your better judgment or your gut. But is there someone or something that you’re not trusting and is it worth exploring that resistance? What if you treated them as if you trusted them — what would that look like? Feel like? How would you behave? What questions would you ask? Treat this as an experiment, and see how confident you feel or seem as a result.

5 | Make it less about you.

I’ll admit, I roll my eyes a bit at the advice people give to simply “believe in yourself.” It just feels…elusive. Broad. Like, how do you even apply that? If I’ve never jumped out of an airplane and I attempt to do that without help because I “believe in myself,” I’m about to learn a hard lesson.

Believing in yourself is not solid advice you can apply, nor is it a recipe for confidence because it requires that you feel something that you don’t. Maybe with good reason.

One of the biggest breakthroughs I’ve had as an adult is realizing that no one thinks about us nearly as much as we do! That’s why confidence isn’t the result of assessing our self-worth, coaxing ourselves into believing we’re worth someone’s attention or love.

We will inevitably build confidence not by thinking more, but acting more. Confidence is earned like stronger muscles, and you build them not to have them, but to use them.

Put it this way: Every day you don't do something, you are actively preventing yourself from becoming more confident. Any time you successfully avoid taking action or doing a thing, you’re voting against self-confidence.

TRY IT: What’s one thing you would do today if you were more confident?

What is the action you would take, the person you’d reach out to? The very thing you want more confidence in, is the one thing to start doing, ready or not.

Because there is no “one day” where you’ll feel perfectly ready and prepared. And if you wait for that one day, you could be missing all the many, amazing days passing you by.