Hey :)

Let's talk about confidence — specifically, how to help someone who says "I just don't feel confident doing this."

This comes up every single week in my coaching work, so I've had to develop some real clarity on how to tackle it. Here are the frames I use.

The first thing I'll do is ask a self-discovery question: "Tell me about a time when you felt like this before."

Almost every time, the story that comes back is the same shape. They were doing something for the very first time. They didn't feel confident. They did it anyway — a few times — and gradually they got better and their confidence grew. And here's the thing: at some point, they completely stopped thinking about it. It became normal.

So the question becomes: could that be true here too? Could this discomfort just be the completely natural feeling of doing something new?

Because I think that's often exactly what it is.

Which brings me to the cliché that's actually just true: feel the fear and do it anyway. Or more accurately — feel the lack of confidence, commit to it anyway.

The more I understand where confidence actually comes from, the more I believe this: confidence is the result of doing the thing, not a prerequisite for it.

The framework that captures this best is Dan Sullivan's Four Cs: Commit → Courage → Capability → Confidence.

What I love about this is how clearly it shows that confidence comes last. It's not the thing that gets you started — it's the thing you earn along the way. You commit first, which takes courage. You do the work, which builds capability. And then, as a result of all of that, confidence follows.

This reframes a mistake I see people make constantly: waiting to feel confident before they commit. That's the wrong order. Confidence doesn't arrive before the work — it arrives because of it.

The second lens I use is this: if someone is uncomfortable with a lack of confidence in a particular area, that discomfort is almost always a signal that there's a gap between where they are and where they want to be.

It might show up as impostor syndrome. It might feel like they don't have the right to be in a certain room, or that they're stepping outside of their current identity. Whatever form it takes, there's a gap.

And the only way across that gap is to step into it.

In my world, that often means having a difficult conversation before you feel ready. And here's what happens when you do it: whether it goes perfectly or not, you get evidence. You show yourself that you're capable. You can see clearly where your real gaps are — not the imagined ones you'd been building up in your head.

That's the real waste in all of this anxiety and hesitation: the scenarios you construct in your head are almost always worse than the reality. You spend energy on imagined problems instead of just taking the first step and trusting yourself to handle whatever comes.

There's a distinction worth drawing here. I think about it as three overlapping zones: where confidence meets competence, you get grounded confidence. Where ego meets competence, you get arrogance.

Arrogance is when you believe you're always right because you have the skills. Grounded confidence is different — you believe in yourself and your work, you carry an assuredness about it, but you're still open to learning, to being wrong, to growing. It doesn't feel like ego. It feels earned.

That's the destination I'm aiming for with people — not just more confidence, but grounded confidence. The kind that's built on genuine competence and real experience.

If I had to boil all of this down to one thing, it would be this:

The way to become increasingly confident in your work is to do the hard work. When you feel resistance, lean into it. When there's tension, see it as the first step — because it is. That tension is you on the edge of something that will build your confidence if you step forward.

You won't become more confident by sitting there and willing it to happen. It doesn't work that way.

Vote for yourself. Do the thing.

🗣️ 👀

Chris.