Confidence comes from saying you’ll do something and doing it. From knowing what’s important to you, committing to it and honouring your commitment. When you honour your commitments, you honour yourself. And honouring yourself builds self-respect and confidence.
You increase confidence and self-respect when you stop giving yourself reasons to disrespect yourself: when you stop breaking your promises, acting in ways that don’t serve you and doing things that clash with your values.
Confidence is not the absence of self-doubt or fear but taking action despite self-doubt or fear. It’s staying committed to your goals, mission, values in the face of resistance, obstacles and hurdles. It’s honouring the magnitude of what’s important to you and being invested in it so deeply and so selflessly that fear loses its grip.
There are only two ways to increase confidence—by increasing it or by not decreasing it. Often, removing what damages your confidence is more cataclysmic. Some of the things that harm confidence the most: lack of radical honesty with yourself, lack of accountability, dissonance between words and action, not being true to yourself, doing things that are against your values, not being physically fit, hiding, avoidance, playing small.
The real problem with lack of confidence is not the lack itself—it’s the fact that it often leads to lack of action. And absence of action is a big problem. Everything you want to attain in your life is contingent on your taking action.
Confidence follows action. It’s not a prerequisite for it, but the result of it. It’s an output, not an input. We often feel that we need to build confidence before we act. No. Act when you don’t have confidence. Act before you feel secure, reassured and certain. Act when you’re scared. And see what this does for your confidence.