Confidence is Just Competence

I don’t believe that confidence, as a distinct trait, exists. Anyone encouraging you to “just be confident!” is glazing over three easily demonstrated facts:


I’m much more confident in a game of Tic-Tac-Toe (I’ve memorized the best moves) than in some social situations. More to the point, I’m much more confident in some social situations than in others. Public speaking has never fazed me, but asking a store clerk for help can still be uncomfortable. Does that make me a confident or unconfident person?


I’ve become steadily more confident sending emails the more I send them. I became more confident dancing in front of other people because I took lessons, and now I’m less confident because I haven’t practiced in several months. The correlation is obvious with specific examples, but it suddenly becomes obscure when we talk about more abstract skill sets (socializing) or extrapolate someone’s social impression into an all-encompassing personality label: confident or shy.


I imagine it’s only the ‘unconfident’ people who turn to Google for help socializing and learn that social skills can be broken down and individually practiced. Starting conversations, selling something, small talk, disagreeing productively, empathetic listening, and self advocacy are distinct tasks, and we can all think of ‘confident’ people who are only comfortable doing some of them. Sometimes seemingly confident people bluster or leverage their strengths to avoid the types of conversations they are scared to have.


Whether you are working on yourself or encouraging someone else, if you view confidence as just the external face of competence, it’s much clearer how to gain more of it. You can be forever stuck psyching yourself up for scary things, and failing to get through to your friends who feel ashamed, or you can reframe it as Competence=Comfort=Confidence, steadily practice what you struggle with, and create lasting change.