How to become permanently confident

You don’t have enough “reference experiences” of you being successful to truly feel like a success. That’s the hard part — bridging that gap between not having the experience and mustering up that tiny amount of courage to get the flywheel going.

But that’s how you do it. By building habits and behaviors that increase your competence over a long period of time.

Super sexy, right?

In a sense, the idea of “think it and you achieve it” is true. There is power in positive thinking, especially in the beginning, because you’re just going to have to lie to yourself a bit and pretend like you have the confidence to get any momentum going. But to make the confidence stick, you’ll need to develop evidence to back it up.

When you build more evidence, you create an upward spiral. If I could burn one sentence in your brain it’s this — you never remain at stasis, either you’re building momentum or further succumbing to inertia.

We’ve all had those moments where we’ve hit a streak of good luck or demonstrated skill in some area for a long enough period of time. You get momentum.

Notice how your confidence is context dependant — the nerd who can’t socialize feels no fear over his ability to play video games. In fact, he’s quite the macho man with the headset on.

Why? Because when you’re in your zone and element built on competence, confidence comes naturally.

The trick is getting this to occur in the areas that don’t come easy to you, but you’re desperate to get good at.

Think of an area you want to increase your confidence in. Let’s say you’re socially awkward and lack confidence talking in front of or to other people.

Find the teeniest tiniest little step you can take that sends a signal to your brain saying “you’re good at talking to people!” This could be finding the most non-threatening person possible in public — like a 106-year-old woman — and asking them something simple like “What’s the time?”

Your next step could be trying to have 1 minute of small talk with someone in line at the gas station. Next, you could attend a local speech club and just watch. Then, next time you introduce yourself, the next time you speak, etc.

I’m in three different toastmasters clubs and it’s amazing watching people gradually get unstifled themselves gain confidence by simple exposure therapy. You just can’t be as afraid of giving a speech after you do it 27 times. Impossible. And I’ve seen people go from visibly shaking on stage to delivering a speech with confidence.

You’re always trying to invest in your “credibility bank account.” You operate on a feedback loop — both positive and negative — each action you take tells you you’re either moving forward or backward. Make more deposits into the credibility account and you’ll start to feel better about yourself.

None of this is easy, or fair, or right. It just is. I can’t convince you to love yourself. No one can. Only you can. And changing your behavior is the best route.

The Key to Getting Started With All of This

You know why it’s so hard to change? Why it’s so hard to develop confidence in certain areas? Why we find ourselves getting swallowed by our own insecurities?

The answer is simple — we find it hard to admit we have a problem in the first place.

You build up a self-image to cope with the reality of your life. Those daydreams of being your ideal self are enough to shield and protect you from the reality that you’re not. The key to breaking the cycle is to put yourself in situations that crash with and even destroy your ego. It can be as tough and painful as it sounds. You have to decide whether or not it’s worth going through.

Who wants to admit to themselves that they have irrationally low confidence?

Who wants to own up to being lazy?

Who genuinely wants to take a look at their actions and see that they’re responsible for their fuckups?

This doesn’t feel good.

Rationalizing doesn’t feel great either, but at least it gives us an out. And this is exactly what the institutions, media, and society as a whole want.

Marketers don’t hate the fact that you blame them for creating unrealistic standards. They want you to think that because their marketing wouldn’t work so well if we all believed that we were the ones responsible for our own lives.

If you make them the disease — by giving your self-esteem away to an outside entity — you also make them the cure because you’re admitting they have control over you.

It’s better for the societal machine if we all go about our days thinking that our self-doubts are a reflection of our circumstances instead of a reflection of the way we see our own behavior. If you think about it deeply, this misguided form of self-doubt keeps the world spinning.

While everyone else spins and spins, get out of the cycle and realize that your self-doubts are, in fact, a signal that you need to change something about your behavior.

When you actually admit to yourself, “Yeah I kinda suck at this and I need to get better,” you’ve taken the first step. That realization that the power is within you to change the way you see yourself gives you the fuel you need to follow through.

To change, don’t feel bad about feeling bad about yourself. It’s normal. Once you accept how normal it is, that burden gets lifted off of you and you can begin anew.

General Recommendations for Self-Confidence

You’re a unique individual with unique circumstances, so the exact recipe for turning your life around is a mystery to me.

Some themes that have been true and consistent over a long enough span of human history for me to make some educated guesses, though.

A) Get healthier

I won’t beat this horse to death. It doesn’t matter how you do it. No specific recommendations here. But if your body doesn’t feel good it’s hard for you to feel good.

And the process of getting healthier is (obviously) no easy feat, but it’s so worthwhile that repeating it 37459684032406 times is okay.