How to be confident

Warning! Contains mild clickbait and a sprinkle of shade on coaching culture.

This sticker lives on my laptop. Artist unknown.

A title that begins ‘How to…’ is a bit like that friend or family member who likes to dish out unsolicited advice. Someone who meets your tangle of thoughts with a slew of well-meaning ‘solutions’, leaving you feeling a little unheard or like the menacing feline above – Don’t tell me what to do! It’s almost always unconscious on their part. Bless. They mean well.

‘How to…’ titles lure us in with their tempting promises of quick success: take these steps (the how) and get this (the outcome, which, in this case, is confidence). We click articles and open books because we want other people’s tips and secrets and we want them now. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be equal parts irked and intrigued by this title. The audacity! But also tell me how to be confident pls thx.

Why bother analysing a title though?

Language matters, that’s why, and aside from being a bossy piece of clickbait, the ‘how to’ formula is often misleading, minimising, overused and just plain lazy. For this reason, I encourage a healthy dose of scepticism towards anyone who offers a one-size-fits-all approach on how to build something so nuanced as confidence. Rapid success methods (Become Confident in 10 Days!) and money-driven hacks dreamed up by a certain breed of life coach (Build Your Confidence and Earn £10k Months!) can get in the bin because you can’t shortcut your way through this stuff.

Long-lasting confidence is an inside job. It’s human, organic and therefore gradual. I can’t tell you how to be confident in any useful way that considers your human intricacies. The only thing I can offer is my biased lived experience, which you must filter and process with a generous pinch of salt.

By this point you might be wondering what I’m going to share if it’s not how to be confident. We’re getting there.

But first, why am I writing this? Am I about to pivot to ‘Faith McAllister, Freedom and Confidence Coach’?

I could – because anyone could with an inflated Instagram bio, a stack of fake followers and a hidden like count – but no. It’s because people have pointed out my confidence growth during the last few years. This sounds cocky and it really does gives me the ick but I can get over this in a bid to share and spark inspiration. A more fitting and humble title might have been ‘Some things that have contributed to my individual confidence growth over a number of years’ but you wouldn’t have opened that, and you’re reading this now which means the how-to nectar worked. Sly!

When this breed of compliment comes my way it still surprises me because only a few years ago I was extremely low in confidence.

Let’s time-travel to mid November 2021 for a moment. It’s 9:30pm and I’ve spent the last three hours on Zoom: listening to lectures on how to be confident, filling out a thoughtfully-crafted-but-corporate-looking digital workbook and heading into breakout rooms to have vulnerable 1-2-1 chats with strangers. While it left me with some reassurance, The School of Life’s workshop wasn't a patch on their brilliant books. I didn’t sign off with a surge of newfound confidence. However, a few seeds from that workshop sprouted later on, and sometimes that’s all you need, a few seeds. And plenty of time.

So here is a crop of confidence tips I grew myself. Feel free to forage some seedlings, grow them patiently and leave some for the rest. 

1. Start with an honest audit. Ask yourself questions: How am I spending my time? Where am I working? Who am I hanging out with? What effect do these environments and people have on my confidence (positive or negative)? Putting pen to paper will help you get real about how you feel around people in your life. You might not like the answers, you might even ignore them for a while like I did. It’s worth considering that something might need to change in your relationships or career for you to rise up. For me, there was a notable correlation between my low-confidence episodes and unhealthy relationships with managers or romantic partners. My self-worth and confidence was shrinking without me realising. Eventually I left the job and the relationship. Both departures did wonders for my confidence.
   
   ‘The end of a relationship is the beginning of a new one… with yourself.’ – We Are Not Really Strangers
   
   

2. Date yourself. Stop cringing – it’s nice and necessary to love yourself. You do deserve it. Find out what brings you joy and become so solid in your our soil that no one can uproot you. Remember, it takes time, practice and growing pains (because even dating yourself is tiring) but the pay-off is… confidence.

   
   One of my friends used to avoid eating alone in cafés and restaurants at all costs. After feeling the fear and doing it anyway, she’s now more than comfortable having lunch without friends and enjoys the time to herself. For me, travelling solo has been a huge confidence boost; it’s full of decisions to make on your own, which is liberating and challenging in equal measure.
   

3. Make something you do non-negotiable. This tip is two-fold. The first part is creating a healthy habit. It could be meditating for five minutes, having a cold shower, playing an instrument or doing something else you know is good for you. The second is making it a promise. You’ll be tested by a constant stream of distractions – do your best to stand by the deal no matter what (boundaries, people!). The confidence comes from keeping to your own word (Sarita Walsh, a coach I rate highly, speaks about building self-trust here). I also recommend signing up to James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter. Clear wrote Atomic Habits, and like the book, his weekly dispatch is full of wisdom.
   

4. Consider your mortality. Sounds bleak but it doesn’t have to be. Thinking about the fragility of life has encouraged me to live more fully. It makes me appreciate being alive. Go down a rabbit hole on the Buddhist concept of impermanence, maybe even visit a Buddhist meditation centre or dive deeper in Martin O’Toole’s book How to Die Happy (forgive the Amazon link but that’s where it’s available). Published in 2023, I had the brief pleasure of working on this part-handbook, part-memoir, which blends ancient wisdom, practical tools and stories.

   
   From time to time, I find it helpful to face the simple fact that we’re all going to die and we don’t know when. Despite this reality, we hold back from living authentically, going after our deepest desires and taking risks. In the workshop, we had to imagine we had only five years left to live. What would we do? What risks would we take? Would we be more confident in taking those so-called risks? To quote the workbook: 

There is something arguably far more frightening still than rejection and failure: The tragedy of wasting our very short lives.

Savage honesty. I’d expect nothing less from The School of Life, who take a famously unromantic approach to everything.

For something more palatable and poetic, leave it to a lyrical legend, the late poet Mary Oliver:

‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’

I have six more tips which I’ll share with you this weekend. I even touch on sex and intimacy so you won’t want to miss it. (Parents, you have been warned.)

This turned out to be a long one and I wanted you to make it this far… while definitely not telling you what to do.

Confidence. It’s a process, a personal one.

PS I borrowed the title of this piece from The School of Life workshop. What can I say, the ‘How to’ hook worked and confidence sells. Just remember to add your own seasoning.