Build Courage, Not Confidence

As a coach, I often deal with people struggling with confidence - at least, that’s what they say they’re struggling with. We often talk about confidence like an end state or a goal: once we have confidence, suddenly life goes smoothly and we’ll never doubt ourselves again. But, just like happiness, that’s not how it works. In fact, what we really want to be building is courage.

Confidence is knowing you can do something. Arrogance is thinking you can do something without any evidence¹.

Courage is stepping into something with the acceptance you’re not sure you can do it just yet. If you want to grow, then courage is what you need - not confidence.

Don’t Wait For Confidence

People often sit around waiting for confidence to strike, like it’s a state that will arrive magically on its own when we’re ready to take on a new thing. “When I’m confident, I’ll start.” No. Confidence looks backwards; it comes from repetition of things we have done successfully before.

If you’re tackling something new, something meaningful, of course you don’t feel confident. You’ve never done it before! What exactly were you expecting?

Growth only happens at the edge of our abilities, where the problem has teeth. If you’re not a little uncertain of success then you’re not actually growing; you’re just rerunning old levels hoping it counts as progress.

The trick is to aim just outside your current skill level - close enough that it’s achievable, far enough that it bites.

You can picture this like going to the gym - you won’t get stronger lifting the same weight and you won’t get faster running the same pace. But if you try a weight or pace far beyond your current capability that’s only going to cause injury.

The trick is to go just a little heavier or just a little faster each time and, with consistency, growth is all but guaranteed.

What If I Fail?

Strangely enough, this is completely irrelevant. “Failure” isn’t the outcome that matters. In fact, “failure” at some point is guaranteed.

The part that matters to growth is:

how do you respond?
what did you learn?
how can you adapt?
did you get back up?

If you handle intermediate failure well, then success is eventually guaranteed, because even if this attempt wasn’t successful the next one becomes all the more likely. The real win that’s always available to you, win or lose, is progress.

Hijacking Confidence

Recall that confidence is retrospective - it comes from repetition of things we have done successfully before. How can we use this to build courage?

Well, if you keep taking on these challenges right at the edge of your ability, and you commit to learning and adapting through these challenges - win or lose - then that’s repeating something successfully, over and over. That’s building confidence.

Since these challenges are things you genuinely weren’t sure you could pull off, but somehow did, you are building confidence in your courage. You now have unequivocal evidence that you were able to embark on uncertain challenges before, and therefore have the confidence that you can work through uncertainty again.

Confidence is “I know the way.”

Courage is “I know I can find a way.”

By hijacking the confidence we build by finding a way through uncertainty, over and over again, we naturally build the courage to take on more and more. And courage is infinitely more valuable because the cruel truth is…

Uncertainty Never Leaves

Impostor syndrome doesn’t magically disappear as you grow - impostor syndrome grows with you. Every new project worth doing drags those same thoughts back to the surface:

Am I good enough?
What if I screw this up?
What if I can’t figure it out this time?
Maybe I’m not the right person for this job.
Everyone will see I’m a fraud!

You know what these thoughts say to me, as a coach? Good. We’re in the right place. If we’re not brushing up against your limits, then we’re not moving them.

Each time you hit that doubt, remind yourself that every project looked this way before you set out. You’ve crossed the water before - maybe this lake is wider, or deeper, but you’re also stronger than last time.

This fear never vanishes, so long as you are pushing yourself. Try to accept it as a sign you’re on the right track.

What have we learned?

Confidence is what you already know.

Courage is what lets you grow.

We can build courage through confidence by reminding ourselves we worked through uncertainty before - we can do it again. The uncertainty never leaves, we just learn to accept it as the harbinger of growth.

Don’t wait for confidence. Have courage, and the confidence will follow.

Despite its negative connotation, arrogance isn’t always bad! In fact, it’s somewhat required if you want to change the world. ↩