Photo by Frederick Shaw on Unsplash
To be more confident, stop trying to look confident and start building trust in your own experience. Real confidence isn’t certainty or a powerful pose. It’s knowing in your body that you can handle what happens, including getting it wrong, and you build it the way you build any trust: by showing up for yourself, again and again, in small ways.
Maybe you’re the one who rehearses every sentence before a meeting. Who says “sorry” before asking a question. Who walks into a room and immediately scans for who’s smarter, better looking, more together. Or maybe you look confident to everyone else, and nobody knows what it costs you.
That last one was me. Years ago I was head of business development at an online education company, working under a leader whose moods set the weather for everyone. In meetings I went quiet, and the quieter I got, the more power the room gave me. People read my silence as the stillness of a man with sway over the decisions.
Little did they know. My quiet wasn’t strength. It was collapse. Not a single person knew how much emotional energy I was spending just to appear confident. From the outside it looked like confidence. From the inside it felt like disappearing. The work wasn’t the meetings. The work was wearing the mask.
I’d seen the same thing years before, at twenty-three, working as a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch. I was surrounded by people making more money in a year than all my aunts and uncles made in their lifetimes, and I’m an Irish Catholic boy, so that’s a lot of aunts and uncles. You’d think they were floating in confidence. They weren’t. They were terrified: of falling behind, of not being smart enough, of someone seeing through them.
Before I explain any of it, try something. Read the next sentence slowly, let the out-breath go, and notice what happens in your body as you read it. You don’t have to be sure of yourself to be on your own side. Don’t argue with it and don’t agree with it. Just notice where it lands, the throat, the chest, the shoulders, and whether something in you settles or braces. Stay with that one more breath. That’s the place we’ll work from.
What’s really going on
If your shoulders dropped a little, or something in you said “that’s not how it works”, notice it. That’s where we start.
Most confidence advice is about the outside: stand tall, hold eye contact, talk positively to yourself, fake it till you make it. Some of it helps. But if you’re performing confidence over a body that’s bracing, you get what I had in those meetings. A convincing mask and an exhausted person behind it.
In my book I call this fiat worth. Fiat money is cut loose from anything real, and fiat worth is the same. You perform it every day from zero, because on unsteady ground worth is never established, only re-earned. So every meeting is a new exam, and every compliment wears off by Tuesday.
The part of you that fakes confidence is a protector. Mine went quiet and let people project power onto the silence. Yours might over-prepare, over-talk, charm the room, or hide. It kept you safe when it wasn’t safe to be seen trying and failing. You make sense.
Underneath it you’re usually holding one of two coins. Too much: if I take up space, they’ll think I’m arrogant. Not enough: if they see the real me, they’ll find me lacking. Both coins are shame. Neither is the truth about you.
Real confidence is different. It isn’t certainty, it’s trust. My teacher Aftab Omer had a phrase for it I still use: trust your experience, but don’t believe it. Respect what you feel as real, the fear, the doubt, the excitement, and then bring discipline to what you think it means. “I’m nervous” is your experience. “So I’ll make a fool of myself” is a story.
And that trust gets built the way it does between two people. I tell couples they earn the right to not process every rupture by doing the proof of work of repair enough times that they trust themselves and each other. Confidence works the same way with yourself. You don’t get it by never failing. You get it by failing, coming back, and finding you’re still there.
Need to talk this through right now? Figlet is an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, or right now. It runs this loop with you on the Self ground.
The loop, on your situation
Coaching is how we go from where you are now to where you want to go. We only address the past when it emerges in the present. So take one moment this week when your confidence went through the floor, and walk it through this.
Get ground in your body first
Feet on the floor, one long breath out. Confidence starts below the neck.
What happened
One plain sentence, the way a camera would have seen it. “My manager asked me a question in the meeting and I froze.” Not “I’m useless in meetings.” Just the moment.
Where it lands in the body
A hot face. A tight throat. A stomach that drops. Stay with it for one breath, with permission to stop any time. And now what do you notice?
Who’s driving
The one who goes silent? The one who over-explains? The one who cracks a joke to get out of the spotlight? Which coin are you holding: too much, or not enough? Name the part kindly.
Trace it
Only as far as today needs. Where did being seen trying become dangerous? A teacher who mocked mistakes? A home where you had to get it right first time? A job that ranked you every morning?
Feel it and tell someone
Under the frozen moment there’s usually fear, and often shame. Let them be feelings, not verdicts. Then tell one safe person: “I froze today and I felt about ten years old.”
One creative action
Do one small thing badly this week, on purpose and in front of someone. Ask the question you think is stupid. Share the draft before it’s ready. Then notice: you survived, and you’re still on your own side.
How to be more confident, honestly
The usual advice isn’t wrong. This is how I’d use it so it builds something real instead of a better mask.
Keep small promises to yourself. Every promise kept is a deposit. Ten minutes on the thing you said you’d do counts for more than an affirmation you don’t believe.
Use your body to feel, not to perform. Posture helps when it grounds you. If you’re standing tall over a body that’s bracing, put your feet down first and breathe out.
Let yourself be a beginner. Confidence grows in the gap between “I can’t” and “I did it badly and it was fine.”
Ask the critic what it’s protecting. Arguing with it rarely works. Asking it “what are you afraid will happen?” often does.
Stop running on approval. Praise from outside is fiat. It wears off. Your own trust in yourself is the thing that holds its value.
Spend time with people who let you be unfinished. You borrow steadiness from steady people, and they don’t need you to be impressive.
Repair fast when you get it wrong. The most confident people I know aren’t the ones who never mess up. They’re the ones who can say “I got that wrong” without collapsing.
One thing to do tonight
Write down three moments today when you trusted yourself, however small. You sent the email. You said no to the extra plan. You admitted you didn’t know. Read the list back slowly and notice where it lands in your body. That’s evidence, and confidence is built on evidence, not pep talks.
Would therapy help with this?
If low confidence mostly shows up as hesitation and second-guessing you want to work through, coaching is often the right size of help.
But if the fear of being judged stops you going to work, leaving the house or seeing people, or panic is running your days, that can be social anxiety, and it deserves real care. Please talk to a licensed therapist where you live.
The path
What I’ve just walked you through is the Empathi Method. For an individual, it’s built on my Proof of Work of Being Human protocol: building sovereign ground inside yourself. On the Self ground, that means trusting your own experience enough that you don’t need the mask to get through the room.
There are two ways to keep going. You can start now with Figlet, an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, on the Self ground, the night before the meeting you’re dreading. Or you can get on the list for the book and the live program with me, where we do this work together.
Figs O’SullivanFiglet Life Coaching
Get help now
Figlet is an AI coach, there at 2 in the morning or right now. It runs this loop with you on your actual situation, as often as you need. It’s coaching, not therapy. The list hears first about the book and the next live program with me.
Proof of Work, Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027. Not sure which ground is hurting? Take the two-minute Ground Check.
I still go quiet in rooms sometimes. The difference now is that I can feel whether it’s stillness or collapse.
I go deeper into this in my book, Proof of Work (Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027).
Common questions
Why do I lack confidence?
Usually because at some point it wasn’t safe to be seen trying and failing: harsh criticism, a home where mistakes cost you, a job that ranked you daily. Your protectors learned to hide or perform. That’s learned, which means it can change.
How can I boost my confidence quickly?
Feet on the floor and one long breath out before the moment that scares you. Then do one small, true thing: ask the question, say the sentence. Quick confidence comes from your body settling, not from hyping yourself up.
Is confidence the same as self-esteem?
Not quite. Self-esteem is how you value yourself overall. Confidence is trust that you can handle a particular situation. They feed each other, and both grow from the same place: evidence that you stay on your own side.
The phrase “trust your experience, but don’t believe it” comes from the teaching of Aftab Omer at the Institute of Imaginal Studies, where I trained.
