If you’re like me, your confidence comes in waves. Sometimes I’ll feel and come across as super confident, and other times I’m a hot mess, stuttering my words, feeling anxious, and generally nervous. Confidence helps on a personal level, giving you the freedom and courage to meet new people and make the most of the relationships you already have, as well as benefiting professionally. Although I believe that some people are simply just naturally more confident than others, I do think that, to a certain extent, confidence can be learned and developed as a skill.

Why Aren’t I More Confident?

At its heart, a lack of confidence comes from fear and self doubt. It’s an anxiety present in everyone, albeit more potent in some. Humans are social animals and we seek validation from the people around us, so when we don’t get the approval that we desire, it hurts and makes us feel bad. This fear of social rejection makes us nervous in situations we would hope to be more confident in. Neuroscientist, Dean Burnett suggests this is his book, ‘The Happy Brain’, saying:

‘Negative social interactions are considered unpleasant enough to be labelled a threat; social rejection is painful… As a result, our brains do everything they can to avoid rejection.’ - Dean Burnett (The Happy Brain - pg 124)

Along with our fear of social rejection, we’re also afraid of failure. We’ve all failed at something at some point in our lives, and yes, it sucks, but success doesn’t exist without failure. It is a part of our growth as a person and whether we like it or not it’s a part of our lives.

Confidence Comes from Failure

However scary and painful it can be to fail, it is a necessary part of the journey to success. There are many books, talks, etc from big CEOs and other successful people explaining why failure is important and how you can deal with it and even use it to your advantage. One book, by Elizabeth Day, is actually titled ‘How To Fail’. There is a famous quote from the Irish poet and playwright, Oscar Wilde: ‘experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.’ This suggests that everyone does and must go through failure in order to gain experience and succeed. Of course we don’t aspire to make mistakes or to fail, but when we inevitably do, we can deal with it and use it to our advantage, therefore shouldn’t be afraid to fail.

Understanding your strengths and weaknesses is a great way to avoid and deal with failure. When you understand how you might fail at something, you can prepare yourself to deal with it when it happens. In his book ‘Search Inside Yourself’, Chade-Meng Tan tells a story of when he was placed on a panel alongside Nobel prize winners and other highly respected people, where Chade-Meng Tan, a Google employee, felt out of place and nervous. To overcome his nerves he says that he remembered his strengths and limitations saying:

‘I understood my most immediate failure mode, which was stumbling on English words while speaking, and my recovery mode strategy, which was to breathe deeply, smile, maintain mindfulness, and not let my occasional faltering bother me. Employing all these self-awareness-based strategies, I was able to maintain my confidence the entire time.’ - Chade-Meng Tan (Search Inside Yourself - pg 87)

There is also a concept that if we fear something, it means that it’s important to us. As a simple example, if you’re running away from a tiger, you’re going to be scared, because you’re fearing for your life. You’re scared because your life means a lot to you. Relating this to modern day and using a less intense example, if you’ve got to speak up in an important meeting at work, you’re going to be nervous because your job means something to you and you’re probably worried about disappointing your boss. Steven Pressfield suggests this is his book, ‘The War of Art’:

‘The more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.’ - Steven Pressfield (The War of Art - pg 40)

Confidence Comes from Achievement

I believe that a large part of our confidence comes from our achievements. When we achieve something, we no longer fear it. We have gone up against something, and won. Clayton M. Christensen put it nicely in his book with James Allworth and Karen Dillon, ‘How Will You Measure Your Life’, saying:

'Self-esteem comes from achieving something important when it's hard to do.' - Clayton M. Cristensen (How Will You Measure Your Life? - pg 134)

There are two main reasons our achievements give us confidence. Type 1 is an external achievement where our achievement is publicly and externally recognised so we gain confidence from the social acceptance and verification. Type 2 is an internal achievement which comes from an achievement we have done for ourselves only, where we accept and verify ourselves.

An example of an external achievement might be if you’ve achieved a lot in your industry, making you a well respected, successful person in your field of work. Because of your status, some people might ‘look up to you’ and think highly of you, making you feel highly of yourself, giving you lots of confidence. This can be a good thing, but also has the danger of turning into big headedness and potentially even arrogance, but I believe if you stay grounded and don’t let the confidence feed your ego too much, you’ll be alright.

An example of an internal achievement might be if you told yourself that you were going to go on a 30 minute run today and you achieve that goal, you’ll have a bit of a rush after it, resulting in a confidence boost. This kind of confidence boost comes from within yourself, rather from the validation of others. You don’t need to tell anyone that you went on a 30 minute run, yet you can still feel proud of your achievement and gain the confidence from it. This kind of achievement literally relates to everything you do, no matter how small the goal is. Of course, an achievement can be both internal and external. In the first example where you’re a successful person in your industry, you will also have a sense of internal achievement as well as external.

To make the most of this, achieving your goals, no matter how small, needs to become a habit. In the same way achieving your goals can give you confidence, not achieving your goals can take your confidence away, and the more your confidence is taken away, the harder it becomes to achieve your goals. This is why it is so important to manage your goals well and do your best to achieve them, as well as noticing and celebrating the small achievements. If you do have a lot of achievements and you're successful in your own way but you don’t feel confident, maybe it’s because you’re still judging yourself too much and focusing on the things you haven’t achieved yet. You need to let yourself be proud of your achievements and celebrate and share them with the people around you (though not in a cocky way, of course). This way you will find yourself feeling more proud and confident. This creates a positive feedback loop. You work hard -> you achieve something -> you gain more confidence in yourself to work hard, and so on.

Confidence Comes from Knowledge

It’s reasonably obvious to say that the more knowledge you have on a topic, the more confident you’ll be in talking about it. A prime example of this is politics. Everyone knows that one person who knows all the facts and figures and is ready to throw them down the throat of anyone willing to challenge them in a political debate, and to be honest, they know their shit, so good on them. The same, of course, applies to lots of things. Say you’re at a networking event based around the industry you work in. If you know you’re shit and are very knowledgeable in your industry, you’re going to be more confident in talking to people. The moral of the story is to study up.

Interestingly, this isn’t always the case and intelligent people often lose arguments. This is because intelligent people generally know when they don’t know something, and if they don’t know much about a topic, they won’t start shouting about their opinion on the matter, as they’d prefer to study up on a topic before forming an opinion on it and arguing their view. Dean Burnett talks about this is his book ‘The Idiot Brain’ saying:

‘If intelligent people are generally used to learning new things and acquiring new information, they’re more likely to be aware that they don’t know everything and how much there is to know about any given subject, which would undercut confidence when making claims and statements.’ - Dean Burnett (The Idiot Brain - pg 132)

Conclusion

Don’t be afraid to fail. Failure is inevitable, but you can be ready for it, ready to learn from it, and therefore not fear it. Set goals and achieve them. The more you achieve your goals, no matter how small, you will become a more proud, confident person. Know your shit. When you know your stuff, you become a lot more confident in talking and in yourself.