What Real Confidence Looks Like
By: Jessica Wildfire
Tags: Self Improvement, Emotional Intelligence, Confidence, Relationships, Leadership

The most confident person in the room might be the last person you’d expect. It’s not the one who talks the most, or the loudest. It’s not the one who strides in wearing the most expensive clothes, or even the one who gives the most polished speech. True confidence is quiet.

It’s about what you do, not what you say.

Look at someone who goes into a job interview wearing something nice, but not exactly Dior. They know what’s up.

It’s easy to confuse confidence with arrogance. The bluntest minds always think they’re the sharpest.

Fake confidence spells big trouble for everyone.

There’s not many things worse than someone pretending to know what they don’t, tricking everyone into believing them, and then wrecking whatever jobs or relationships they’ve been trusted with.

It’s actually not that hard to cultivate real confidence. It starts with a handful of concrete behaviors. Like love, confidence doesn’t emanate from some mysterious place within you. It’s about actions. So how does someone build real confidence, and not the fake kind?

1. They go into a situation prepared

A lack of confidence points to one key thing: you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s fine. Nobody does, not all the time. Nobody gains confidence by sitting around stressing. They come up with a plan.

They do the research. They ask around. They put in the time to figure out what they need to know. They organize. They train. They practice. When the time comes, they’re ready.

And being ready is what makes you confident.

Someone with fake confidence pretends to have a plan, when they don’t. This is otherwise known as lying. Competent people can see right through it, even if they’re too nice to say anything.

2. They dive into new opportunities

You can’t get anywhere without venturing past your green zones. That means applying for jobs that look demanding, or asking someone on a date before you know the answer.

Nobody gains confidence by acting like a daredevil. They just accept that life comes with a certain amount of unavoidable risk.

They don’t hide from the future because they think they’re not qualified for a promotion, or that girl’s out of their league. They take the chance. When they fail, the learn why and go from there.

A bruise to your ego can hurt just as bad as a kick to the shin. Confidence is about feeling the pain, not avoiding it.

Someone with fake confidence has no idea how to do this. They stay within their comfort zones and never get better at anything. They’ll do whatever they can to avoid looking or feeling like a novice or a loser. They never take any real risks, because that requires maturity.

3. They search out feedback, not validation

Nobody gains confidence by always asking for approval and fishing for compliments. They do it by asking for honest feedback from people who are willing to give it to them.

They take the criticism, and build on it.

They get better at what they do. Tracking your own improvement overtime gives you real confidence. The surest way to feel good about yourself is for a mentor or supervisor to say you’re doing a better job.

They also know how to weed out mindless haters and criticism that has no substance. They don’t dwell on it.

Someone with fake confidence surrounds themselves with sycophants. They starve to death on a diet of empty praise.

4. They admit what they don’t know

Nobody gains confidence by knowing everything. Confidence comes from filling holes in your mind with knowledge. You can’t do that if you always pretend to know everything, or live in fear that you’re going to ask a dumb question or somehow expose a weakness.

Confidence comes from experience.

We all start out at zero, and go from there. It’s only healthy to have an accurate, realistic sense of your abilities.

This means admitting that maybe you’re not the smartest person at work, or the most gifted programmer. The only way to continue getting better at what you do is to see how you can get there.

Someone with fake confidence does the opposite. They pretend to know more than they do, and put most of their effort into talking themselves up in front of everyone in their path. The second someone contradicts them, they start back-tracking and flip-flopping.

They’d be so much better off just saying they were wrong.

Confidence doesn’t come from being smarter. But someone who practices confidence comes off that way a lot, just because they listen to experience and expertise, and follow good advice. They don’t waste time focusing on how smart they look, they focus on acquiring knowledge.

Sure, there’s always a jerk or two out there who loves to needle someone who doesn’t have all the answers. That leads to…

5. They keep their cool under pressure

Confidence doesn’t come from always being in control, and everything going exactly according to plan. It comes from knowing that you’re going to screw up, and that life has its own agenda.

You practice confidence by understanding that things go wrong — that’s the norm. And it has nothing to do with you.

There’s usually a partial solution, a workaround, or some way to salvage even the worst situations. This means giving up the perfect vision you had of how your day was going to unfold.

It could mean letting someone help you fix things.

Confidence means not indulging in the meltdown that’s brewing inside your head. It means being scared or worried, even showing it, but also doing what’s expected of you in the moment.

Keeping your cool is all about taking your ego out of the game.

Someone with fake confidence wants to be a superhero. They’re not concerned with their responsibilities, or other people. They only care about how they look. And in their pursuit of glory, that’s when they make their biggest mistakes and the biggest enemies.

Think of confidence as a verb, not a noun

Nobody really “has” confidence, certainly not all the time. Everyone goes through moments of doubt and panic. If you went through every minute of your life feeling bulletproof, you wouldn’t last long. Everyone worries a little at midnight, sometimes about the silliest things.

Nobody forges confidence that we can just slip on like a bat suit. It would be great if it were that easy.

Instead, we demonstrate confidence through actions. We perform acts of confidence, even when we’re feeling nervous. We do it every time we make a plan, take a chance, seek out solid advice, confront our faults, and handle a tough situation because others depend on us.