You Don’t Need Confidence to Start Your New Project
Too much of it can be detrimental to success.
‘I need to build more confidence first,’ I said. ‘It’s the only thing holding me back from coaching people and doing mindfulness workshops.’
I was sitting at the front porch of a mountain lodge where I used to work for three summer seasons. There, I made a transition from a housekeeper and waitress to the writer I always wanted to be. I did a lot of things for the first time in that place — from finding my first freelance client, to leading a guided meditation.
Next to me sat the owner of the place, Caroline. She was my coach and mentor while I lived in the mountains. As she listened to my talk about how desperately I needed confidence, she smiled and said:
‘Confidence isn’t something you can have before you start. It grows as you do the things you want to do. You can’t be confident about what you haven’t done.’
We tend to think that confidence is a character trait we must develop to succeed. We assume that first, we build it. Only when enough confidence is in place, we act.
But if you look closely at how confidence is created, you’ll see this is misguided. As Caroline said, you can’t be confident about what you’ve never done. That’s because confidence is…
