The Things Most Misunderstood About Confidence
Confidence is one of those words that gets used constantly but perhaps not understood in the context it deserves.
If you have ever sat in a room full of people who appear to be completely at ease while wondering, privately, whether you were the only one who does not feel that way, you are in very good company, as it turns out.
In my experience of working with senior leaders, founders and professionals, the people who struggle the most with confidence are often the ones with the most ability and experience. That tells you something important about what confidence is.
Confidence is more learned than inherited
The most persistent misunderstanding is that confidence is something you are born with or develop early, and then either possess or lack for the rest of your life. Some people have it and others do not. If you are in the second group, we often feel that it implies there is something about us that is fundamentally wrong.
A 2023 study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that confidence can behave partly like a trait and partly like a skill, and crucially, that the match between how confident you feel and how accurate that confidence is can be developed over time. The goal then is not about having maximum confidence but acquiring grounded, accurate confidence. Luckily this is something you can build.
Surprisingly, confidence generally comes from doing things, not from when you decide you are ready to do them. Repetitive action in an area, even if it is imperfect or uncertain action, is what builds the evidence base your own confidence draws on. That whole idea of imperfect action being better than perfect inaction is never more relevant than here. Most people wait to feel confident before acting. This is what I mean when I say confidence rarely arrives that way, it tends to arrive after.
The environment matters more than most people account for
Even when someone understands that action builds confidence, it does not mean that taking that action is easy or straightforward. The environment you are working in influences what feels possible, and that can be significantly underestimated.
If the culture around you does not tolerate uncertainty, asking questions or being seen not to know, the cost of visible self-doubt feels higher than it actually is. If the people around you project certainty effortlessly, the comparison makes your own uncertainty feel like a deficiency rather than a normal human experience, which feeds directly into imposter syndrome.
One person I worked with described this thought pattern as: "I've clearly got here just by accident because there was nobody else at that time who was doing this job. That's the reason I'm where I am."
This was despite having a strong track record and a great reputation in her field. None of that was registering in her filter. The environment had taught her to attribute success externally and difficulty internally, and that pattern had become automatic.
A 2025 analysis found that high performers in competitive environments are especially vulnerable to exactly this effect. They understand what genuine mastery looks like and are therefore more aware of the gap between where they are and where they are heading. The more you know, the more visible the edges of that knowledge become.
High achievers feel this too, very often
Roughly 70% of adults experience significant self-doubt about their competence at some point, with around 30% experiencing it persistently. In high achievement environments, leadership, entrepreneurship, medicine, law, the rates tend to be higher rather than lower.
This might show up as: "I get an email and my first thought is: what happens if I can't help this? Rather than: I might not be able to solve it all, but I'm sure I could hopefully add something. I very much always jump to the 'what if I can't do it.'"
My client then identified the pattern herself: "I think I've just had a light bulb moment. I definitely jump to the 'what if I can't do it' thought process. That's always my first."
The word "always" jumped out for me because this was not an occasional reaction. She was describing a habitual first response that had become her automatic go-to. The habit and the accuracy of that thought are two entirely different things.
There is research by Dunning-Kruger which highlighted that people with limited competence in a domain tend to overestimate their ability. People with genuine competence more accurately perceive the limits of their knowledge, which can feel internally like not knowing enough. Feeling uncertain is frequently a sign you understand the territory well enough to know how much is still in it.
Confidence does not mean certainty
This is a common one and it is entirely human. A lot of people wait to feel certain before they act and then wonder why their confidence never quite arrives.
A 2025 study from the University of Kent found that socially dominant people who project the most confidence are no more accurate in their decision-making than those who project less.
Confidence and competence are not the same thing. Neither are confidence and certainty.
The leaders who do their best work consistently over time are not the ones who feel certain. They are the ones who have enough self-awareness of their own thinking that they can move under uncertainty without needing certainty first. They decide, stay open to any feedback that comes back and adjust accordingly. That tends to serve them far better in the long run than projecting certainty ever would.
What inner authority really feels like
The work I do with clients on confidence is not about performance techniques or projecting certainty. It is about something one client described as arriving at a settled kind of clarity:
"I'm pretty bloody good at what I do in work. I don't need to be shouting about my big projects to get noticed. And actually, I enjoy what I’m doing and the vision I have."
That is not confidence as performance. It is a reliable, grounded sense of where you are, not needing constant external confirmation to feel self-assured. It is what lets you say what you actually think in a meeting rather than what you think the room wants to hear. It is what lets a decision close rather than keep reopening again and again.
It builds gradually, through taking action despite any uncertainty. Through noticing that the evidence of your own competence is real even when that annoying inner voice disputes it. Through addressing the patterns underneath the self-doubt rather than waiting for them to resolve on their own.
What is important is that this is all workable. It is not about becoming someone different, or any of those "you are enough" phrases you see on social media. It is about getting clear and honest about what has accumulated between you and what you already know.
What helps
Confidence does not respond to positive thinking, false positivity or being told you are doing well. It responds to evidence that your own judgment can be trusted and to the gradual process of learning to take that evidence in rather than explaining it away.
The environment matters, as do the patterns of self-doubt underneath. Assessing the difference between habitual response and accurate assessment matters too. These are not things that resolve on their own, they respond to the right kind of thinking space and the right kind of support.
Whether through one-to-one coaching, The Confidence Accelerator® or a single focused Unblur Intensive, this work is about building a more accurate and reliable relationship with your own thinking.
A free discovery call is the starting point when you are ready to explore this further.
