When talking about being confident there are two things I have come across -
Fake it till you make it
Collect everything you are proud of as proof
These two things miss something fundamental - self-esteem.
Person A is good at what they do. They have experience in their field for more than a decade and still, they have very low confidence. Proof of 10+ years of experience, validation from the industry and faking it has not changed how they feel about themselves. The identity of not being good enough and lack of self-esteem blocks them from internalising their abilities and achievements. They feel like they are not good enough and all their achievements are co-incidental.
Person B truly believes in their abilities and that belief leads them to try out new things, take risks and be committed to something without getting external validation, by getting through risks they collect proof of their abilities. And the proof is internalised because they truly believe in themselves, boosting confidence.
In short, confidence is about what you can do, self-esteem is about who you are.
The reason you have imposter syndrome isn’t that you are not good at what you do, it is because you don’t believe in yourself and no amount of success can make you believe in yourself if you hold the identity of “not good enough”
And that is the true cost of confidence, changing the narrative of who you are.
Now that you know the answer, let’s talk about changing how you feel and think about yourself.
A very mind-opening concept that Dr.K (a psychiatrist) talks about in his video is that you can never truly gain confidence. Your natural state is confident. What you have gained through the years is insecurity. So to be confident, you need to lose the insecurity. You need to unlearn beliefs about yourself that are rooted in insecurity. So, what are you insecure about? If it is something that is in your control to change then go get it, lose those 15 extra kgs from your body, take care of your skin and hair, grow your finances, and get clothes that you feel yourself in. If it is something you cannot change like the shape of your nose, it is time to take the burden of perfection from your shoulders and truly accept yourself. And if you want to do things but are unable to, read the next point.
You will take action if you believe you can do it, you will believe you can do something if you show yourself you can do it by, well, doing it. If you are like me, who was never taught to trust myself and take the leap, believing in yourself won’t come naturally. Believing in yourself is actually just trusting yourself, and you know the easiest way to trust anybody? Words followed by action. It is really that simple and straightforward. Commit to yourself but again, don’t try to be perfect, don’t make the perfect schedule and burden yourself to follow through with something so cramped that you burn yourself out. Trusting yourself also means knowing how much weight you can lift and not lifting more than that and avoiding injuries. Make a small commitment like, I will hug my mom every day and follow through. Keep the promises you make to yourself and others. The more you follow through, the more you will believe you will follow through the next commitment, and the more you will feel like you can just do things. And then, you will just do things and then, you will learn to accept validation from others without giving the validation a lot of importance and craving more because now, you KNOW (have internalised) that you can just do things.
There is one last thing that most people miss out when talking about confidence - boundaries. Self assertiveness is very uncommon mainly because you either don’t know what your boundaries are/should be or you don’t know how to protect them. To understand your boundaries, notice where your anger lies. To protect your boundaries, learn to express that anger without agression. Children will only trust parents who protect them, isn’t that true for ourselves? We will only trust ourselves when we protect ourselves.
Some music recos -
Thank you so much for writing this! I have read this in the first week of January, and will read it again to imbibe it and put it into action.
Probably one of the best things I could've read at the beginning of my 2025