Monday's team meeting. You have an idea for the client, a good one. But you hold back, waiting for the right moment, the right words, a bit more confidence. Ten minutes later a colleague says the same thing and everyone nods. On the way home you think about the email asking for a raise that's been sitting in your drafts for weeks. The application for that senior role. The freelance rates you've never dared to raise. Every time, you tell yourself the same thing: I need more self-confidence. When I feel ready, I'll do it.
The rule that keeps you stuck
Russ Harris is a doctor who now trains psychologists, coaches and therapists in several countries. In his book The Confidence Gap he gives a name to the place where we get stuck: the confidence gap. You end up in it when you follow, often without realizing it, one specific rule: I have to feel confident before I can act.
It sounds reasonable. The problem is that the feeling almost never shows up on its own. You can pump yourself up with a motivational book, a video, a pep talk from a friend. But the moment you're facing the real situation, the confidence evaporates. And you're left waiting.
Harris knows that feeling well. As a junior hospital doctor he lived in a constant state of anxiety, terrified of making the wrong call, giving the wrong drug, missing the right diagnosis.
Self-confidence: a feeling or an action?
The first step out of the gap is noticing that the word "confidence" has two meanings. The first, the one we all use, is a feeling: calm, sure of yourself, certain it'll go well. The second is older and comes from Latin, con fidere, "with trust." It isn't a feeling. It's an act of trusting someone.
Harris gives an example. If you need brain surgery, you put yourself in a surgeon's hands: that's an act of confidence. Yet no human being in that situation feels calm and serene. You're scared, you think about everything that could go wrong, and you trust them anyway.
It works the same way with yourself. Having confidence in yourself doesn't mean having no fear. It means relying on yourself while you're afraid.
"Of course I was afraid"
To make the point, Harris tells the story of Nelson Mandela. Sentenced by the apartheid regime, he spent twenty-seven years in prison, the first eighteen on Robben Island, doing forced labor under brutal conditions. Yet his fellow prisoners would see him walk across the yard with his head high, upright and proud. That sight alone, Richard Stengel wrote, was enough to keep them going for days.
Stengel, who spent two years helping Mandela write his autobiography, asked him whether he had ever been afraid. "Of course I was afraid!" Mandela said. "I can't pretend that I'm brave and that I can beat the whole world."
When he crossed that yard, Mandela didn't feel confident. He acted with confidence, fear and all. If he'd waited for the fear to go away, he would never have taken a step.
Actions first, feelings later
That's the rule Harris builds the whole book on: the actions of confidence come first, the feelings of confidence come later. You only feel confident at something after you've done it many times, and you've only done it many times because you started before you felt ready.
The fear you feel when you ask for a raise or pitch a project isn't a sign you're not ready. It's the alarm your body sets off every time you step outside familiar territory: your heart races, your palms sweat, your mind tells you to drop it. Harris says he's worked with CEOs, lawyers, police officers and surgeons who refused to admit they were afraid; they'd only say they were "stressed." It's the same thing, and everyone has it.
He's living proof. By thirty-nine he had written five books, none of them published. The sixth, The Happiness Trap, came out shortly after his fortieth birthday. Had he waited to feel like a confident writer, he'd never have finished it.
Your mind, the excuse machine
The real obstacle, according to Harris, isn't fear itself but the thoughts that come with it. The mind is a reason-giving machine: the moment you consider an important change, it churns out a list of reasons not to do it. I don't have time. I'm not good enough. Other people are better qualified. I'll do it when things calm down.
You can't switch that machine off. But you can stop taking it at its word. Harris suggests a simple exercise. Take the thought that's holding you back, say "I'm not good enough," and repeat it like this: "I'm having the thought that I'm not good enough." Then once more: "I notice I'm having the thought that I'm not good enough."
The thought doesn't vanish, but it stops being the truth and goes back to being what it is: a sentence in your head. And you can still act with a sentence in your head. If that voice turns into a constant scolding, remember why being hard on yourself makes you give up.
Your first act of confidence, today
Pick one thing you keep putting off because you don't feel ready. The email about the raise, the application, the quote with your new rate, the call to the client.
- Write down when you'll do it, with a day and time: "Thursday at 10, I email my manager."
- Tell someone whose opinion matters to you. That's exactly what Harris suggests: announce your commitment to someone who counts. You'll hear the excuse machine start up right away.
- When the thought that holds you back shows up, repeat it with "I'm having the thought that…" Then take the first step anyway.
You won't find confidence before you act. You'll find it afterwards, on the third, fifth, tenth try. And every time you act with fear along for the ride, the gap gets a little smaller.
Is there something you don't do because you think you're not capable?
Tell me. We can start right from that little voice that keeps saying "you won't make it".