The Confidence Con

Hi there,

Being told to ‘just be confident’ is like being told to ‘just be taller’. It’s useless advice dressed up as wisdom.

Because how are you supposed to be confident when you suck at something?

Seriously, how are you supposed to walk into a new job with swagger if you’ve never done the work before? Or how can you be confident speaking in public when you’re still sweating through your shirt just introducing yourself?

The self-help industry loves to say, “Just be confident and success will follow.” That’s bullshit.

Call me a Skeptical Sally, but the truth is the exact opposite. Because confidence doesn’t come before success. It comes after.

Doesn’t it make sense that if you’re incompetent, you shouldn’t be confident? Unless you’re a con artist (or on the Forbes 30 under 30), then by all means, strut around and gaslight everyone into thinking you’re a “visionary”.

But for the rest of us confidence isn’t the starting point. It only shows up once you’ve failed enough times to stop fearing failure.

The Confidence Scam

The whole “just be confident” advice is basically emotional snake oil.

But, we try to hack it anyway:

• Whisper affirmations in the mirror.

• Memorize “7 habits of confident people”

• Strike power poses like we’re auditioning for America’s Next Top Narcissist.

Maybe you feel a buzz for a minute. But it fades. Eventually, the cracks show. It feels forced because it is forced.

You can’t fake your way into real confidence. It doesn’t work long-term.

Confidence divorced from competence is delusion. It’s just another self-help shortcut for people who want the prize without the reps.

Competence > Confidence

Think about it: a confident surgeon who’s never held a scalpel is a walking malpractice suit. And a “confident” lawyer who doesn’t know the law is… well, the reason people hate lawyers.

Their confidence doesn’t matter. Their skill does.

Also aren’t the only people truly confident without competence toddlers and cult leaders…?

In reality, skill is the foundation. Confidence is the décor. You can’t wallpaper over missing walls.

The reason Michael Jordan looked confident taking the final shot isn’t that he stared in the mirror saying, “You are enough.” It’s because he’d already bricked thousands of shots in practice. Competence builds trust in yourself. That trust looks like confidence from the outside.

Real competence only comes one way: failure, repetition, and practice.

Failure Is the Fuel

So here’s the paradox: the people who look the most confident are usually the ones most comfortable with failure.

Confidence is simply the scar tissue of competence. It’s earned.

Now, maybe you’re thinking: “But don’t I need to act confident to get opportunities to build competence?”

Yes and no. A thin layer of fake-it-’til-you-make-it can sometimes get your foot in the door. But the moment your lack of skill shows, the illusion collapses.

That’s why motivational seminars telling you to strut around shouting affirmations work for a weekend or week or two, and then life smacks you back down by Monday morning. You can’t chant your way to competence. You have to grind your way there. True confidence is earned.

The only real way to get confident is get comfortable with failure.

Because every failure is feedback. Every rep adds a new data point. Every time you swing and miss, you’re less afraid of missing again.

And here’s the kicker: once you stop being afraid of failing, you actually free yourself up to perform better. Fear tightens you. Comfort loosens you.

That’s why failure builds confidence, it’s not just skill acquisition. It’s rewiring your brain to stop panicking when you screw up.

The Only Way to Be Confident: Do More Reps

Here’s the boring playbook no one wants to hear:

1. Do the thing badly. Write the ugly first draft. Bomb the speech. Ask someone out and stammer like a fool.
   
   Yes, it will be awkward. No, you will not die. At worst, you’ll just end up as someone’s group chat story for the night.

2. Learn. What tripped you up? Study that. And fix it next time.

3. Repeat. Get more reps in. Keep failing, keep learning, keep repeating. The only path to “effortless” is a mountain of effort.

This is the boring, unsexy truth self-help never sells you. That’s it. No secret sauce. No $999 masterclass. Just embarrassing yourself enough times until it stops being embarrassing.

The bottomline is: competence compounds. The more you do, the less scared you are of doing it.

Every time you fail and survive, your fear shrinks. Every time you screw up and realize the world doesn’t end, you loosen your grip. That sense of ease, comfort, and looseness is what people read as “confidence.”

READER POLL

Final Thought

Confidence isn’t something you summon like a spell. It’s something that sneaks up on you after enough trial and error. It’s the by-product of getting in the reps, failing without flinching, and realizing you don’t die from embarrassment.

Here’s the part the self-help industry will never print on a T-shirt:

Self-help: Believe you’re confident, then success will follow.

Reality: Become competent, and confidence will follow.

The truth these “experts” sell confidence as a product because competence is harder to package. It’s messy. It requires failure. And failure doesn’t sell. They know this. But they don’t sell the truth. They sell dessert: sweet, comforting, nutritionally useless.

So stop chasing confidence like it’s a product you can buy. Chase the work. Chase the reps. Chase the failure that teaches you who you are.

Because the person you become through failure is far greater than the person you were pretending to be through fake confidence.

Confidence doesn’t come before the leap, it’s what you discover in action.

So, go do the thing, already. Give yourself the freedom to make mistakes.

Do it messy,

Shakila

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