What If Confidence Isn't Supposed to Come First?

I've always been something of a leaper.

In my twenties, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting without knowing anyone there and without a job waiting for me. I had an idea of what I wanted, so I went.

In my thirties, I started an e-commerce business with $5,000 in savings and virtually no idea how to start a company. This was 1998, before starting an online business was something you could learn from a thousand YouTube videos or build over a weekend. I had a concept. I hired a website designer. I bought some product. I operated a little gift shop out of my home.

And then I just kept going. I've done some version of this throughout my life. I get inspired. I dive in. I figure things out along the way.

So when a friend recently asked me to think of a time when I moved forward before I felt fully ready or certain, my first thought was, When hasn’t there been a time?!

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there was more to it. Starting has never really been my problem. Staying in it when I couldn't know the outcome was much harder.

When the leap comes later

As my e-commerce company grew, I eventually reached a point where growing it further would require more than my original willingness to figure things out. I needed money. To put myself out there. To ask other people to believe in something I had created. And suddenly, the woman who had started a business with $5,000 and no experience didn't feel quite so fearless.

A friend helped me write a business plan. And then...nothing. I did nothing.

There were practical reasons. I had small children and they needed much more of me. If I'm honest, my heart was probably more invested in raising them than in becoming the businesswoman I thought I was supposed to become. 

But for years, that wasn't the story I told myself, which was that I had chickened out. I hadn't known enough. I wasn't experienced enough. Maybe I wasn't really a businesswoman after all. I saw it as: failure. 

I saw similar patterns in acting and real estate. From the outside, people saw someone willing to try hard things. I saw someone who gave up when they got hard. It's taken me years to look back at those chapters and ask a different question…

What if changing direction isn't always the same thing as failing?

What was I actually waiting for?

When I look back now, I think I know. I was waiting to know that I would succeed. That I would be picked and wouldn't fail. If someone could have guaranteed that putting myself out there would lead to the outcome I wanted, then of course I would have done it.

But life doesn't make those kinds of guarantees. And that's exactly where confidence becomes such a tricky thing. We often imagine confidence as the feeling we're supposed to have before we do something difficult.

First I'll feel sure of myself. Then I'll make the decision.

First I'll know I'm qualified. Then I'll apply.

But I've come to believe we have that sequence backward. 

One of my mentors, Tara Mohr, teaches something that has stayed with me for years – that courage comes before confidence. Confidence is something we build because we were willing to act without it.

Courage isn't the absence of doubt

The word courage comes from coeur, the French word for heart. Don’t you just love that?

To me, courage is less about convincing your head that everything will work out and more about staying connected to what matters enough to move anyway. Our minds are good at analyzing risk, but they're equally good at keeping us circling when what we really want is a guarantee.

And no amount of thinking can give us one.

Sometimes "stuck" isn't about not knowing

I see this in my coaching work, too. One woman I worked with was burned out in her career and knew she wanted to explore another area in her industry, something that felt more meaningful and offered a more balanced life.

But she couldn't seem to move. Her inner critic told her she wasn't good enough to make the pivot. Imposter syndrome crept in. She was indecisive about even the first steps because she couldn't see the whole path ahead.

Our work wasn't about me telling her what career she should pursue. She just needed someone to help her hear herself again. We revisited peak experiences from her past, explored her values and what mattered to her now, and looked at both the part of her that wanted something new and the part trying to keep her safe. As she started accepting more of who she actually was, her strengths became easier to see.

The path didn't magically appear, but she was able to start walking toward it.

What does success mean to you?

Years ago, when I first worked with a coach, she helped me see something I hadn't recognized before- that my definition of success wasn't entirely mine. It was tangled up with old stories, expectations, and ideas I'd absorbed from my family and other people around me growing up.

No wonder I kept feeling blocked. I was trying to succeed according to a definition that didn't fully match who I was or what mattered most to me. Once I started defining success for myself, something shifted.

I felt freer to move forward. And, probably most importantly, I felt freer to fail.

If success only means achieving the outcome you originally imagined, changing direction will always look like failure. Acting didn't become my lifelong career. My e-commerce business didn't become the company I once imagined it could. Real estate wasn't for me.

Those things are true, but I'm no longer convinced they make those chapters failures. They taught me something about what energizes me and what drains me. What I'm willing to work hard for and what I'm not. What matters enough to stay with and when moving in another direction may actually be the braver choice.

That's clarity, too.

Maybe you don't need to feel ready

Moving forward doesn't always require some big, dramatic leap.

I know that doesn't sound particularly revolutionary, but maybe that's the point. Moving forward doesn't always require some big, dramatic leap.

Sometimes it's sending the email.

Having the conversation.

Applying for the position.

Setting the boundary.

Letting yourself explore an idea without knowing whether it will become anything.

And sometimes it's realizing that the thing you once wanted isn't what you want anymore. You may still second-guess yourself. You may still be afraid of failing. You may still wish someone could tell you how it's all going to turn out.

Do it imperfectly anyway. Not recklessly or without thought, but without demanding certainty from yourself first. Because the question isn’t always, “Am I confident enough to do this?”  It’s actually, “Does this matter enough to me to be courageous before I feel confident?”

And then you take the next step from there.

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And if you've been circling the same decision, transition, or question and can't seem to find your way forward, this is exactly the kind of space I create with my coaching clients. Not to tell you what to do, but to help you quiet some of the noise, hear what you already know, and trust yourself enough to take the next step.

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