Your confidence can vanish the second something goes wrong. You hit one rough patch, you get one piece of critical feedback, and suddenly the whole thing wobbles. For a long time I assumed that meant I just needed to believe in myself harder. What I found instead is that most of us were sold a version of confidence that was never going to hold up, because it was resting on the wrong thing.
I’m Jule Kim. I’m an executive coach, and I work with women leaders on this exact thing. What follows isn’t motivation fluff. If the usual advice about confidence has never quite stuck for you, there’s a reason, and it has very little to do with how good you feel on your best day.
Let me start with what cracked this open for me.
The moment I realized my old definition of confidence was wrong
About a year ago, I was about to fly to London to give a workshop. Before I left, I FaceTimed my parents to say hi. My dad picks up, and the first thing out of his mouth is, “Wow, you look really tired. Make sure you wear lots of makeup in London.” Then my mom leans in from the side and adds, “And do something with your hair, it looks fugly.”
Yes, they really said that. And honestly, this is pretty on brand for them. I promise you my parents love me. If you grew up in an Asian family, you might already know that criticism is our love language. In the moment, I laughed, because I actually thought it was super funny.
Here’s what stopped me though. Ten years ago, those same comments would have wrecked my whole day, maybe my whole week. When I told a friend about it, she said, “Dang, I don’t know how you’re laughing about this.” That got me thinking about what had actually changed, because something clearly had, and I couldn’t quite name it. That question sent me down a research rabbit hole, and it’s the reason we’re having this conversation.
Confidence definition: what the word actually means
I asked around 50 people how they’d describe confidence. Most of them said some version of “feeling good about yourself.” I used to think the same thing. I believed real confidence meant feeling so solid that nothing could touch you, that even when life got hard, even when you ran into people who criticized you, you’d stay unbothered.
But the million dollar question is how you actually get there. Nobody could tell me that.
So I looked it up, because I’m a big ol’ nerd. The word confidence comes from the Latin root meaning complete trust. That one detail changed how I saw the whole thing.
Here’s a simple definition of confidence that has held up for me ever since: confidence is complete trust in yourself, built by showing up for yourself again and again, especially when things are hard. That word “trust” is the key that most confidence advice skips right over.
Why confidence feels so fragile
Think about someone you genuinely trust, the person you know has your back. That kind of trust didn’t appear out of nowhere. You don’t usually feel it with someone you just met. You trust that person because they showed up for you over and over, and if they were there for you during the hard times, that trust runs even deeper.
Now turn that lens on yourself. Self-confidence works the same way. It grows when you show up for yourself repeatedly, and it grows fastest when you show up during the difficult moments.
This is also why the “feeling good about yourself” version of confidence falls apart the moment something goes wrong. A feeling is a lot like weather. It moves through and shifts with the day. If your confidence rides on feeling good, then a hard week or a rough piece of feedback can take the whole thing down with it. Trust holds up better, because it is built on evidence, not mood.
Confidence is a habit, not a feeling
Once I saw confidence as self-trust, the whole thing finally made sense. Confidence isn’t only something you feel. It’s something you do. It’s a habit.
If you’ve been looking for how to be confident and nothing has stuck, this is likely why. You were probably waiting for a feeling to arrive, when the thing that actually lasts is a practice.
I want to give you a question worth writing down and keeping, because it’s one you can come back to long after you finish reading. If confidence is a habit, what are you actually practicing every day? Sit with that one. In just about any moment, you’re either building a little more self-trust or a little more self-doubt.
When I went digging through my own client work, looking at regular people navigating regular lives, three habits kept coming up as the ones that make the biggest difference. What you think, what you say, and what you do. Let’s go through each one, and how to actually practice it.
How to build confidence through three daily habits
1. What you think
I once worked with a client who never said no at work, because she didn’t want to look dumb. She was spinning a thousand plates and running on empty, because the story looping in her head was some version of, “I have to do all of it, and all of it has to be perfect, or they’ll figure out I don’t belong here.” That’s the single most common thought I hear from the women I coach.
If any of that sounds familiar, here’s the part that changes things. You don’t have to believe everything you think. You really don’t.
I think of an intrusive, unhelpful thought like that one friend who tends to repeat the same stories every time you see them. You don’t argue with them. You give a nod, you say hi, and you move along. You can do the same thing with a thought. Notice it, acknowledge it (“yep, I hear you, brain”), and then choose a different one to follow. That last part matters, because you do get to choose what you think next.
How to practice it:
- Catch the recurring story. Write down the sentence your brain reaches for when you feel exposed or behind. Naming it takes away a surprising amount of its power.
- Stop debating it. You don’t have to prove the thought wrong. You just have to stop treating it as the truth.
- Choose your replacement thought on purpose. When I’m not feeling confident, the one I reach for is, “We’re all learning as we go, and that’s totally okay.” Pick a line that feels true enough to lean on, and use it on repeat.
2. What you say
A few years ago I met a woman who somehow always had free time. When I finally asked what she did for work, she told me she didn’t have to work, because she had passive income from real estate. Naturally I asked how she pulled that off. She said she saved for 11 years, then watched the market every single day for over a year before she bought. And then she waved it all away with, “It really wasn’t anything special, I just got lucky.”
I remember the look on my face, because in my head I was going, what? Are you insane? Eleven years of saving is not luck.
A lot of us do this. We have a reflex for shrinking our own wins. You see it most clearly in how people handle compliments. Instead of receiving a compliment like the gift it is, we smack it down like we’re allergic to it.
Think about the last compliment you got. If you’re honest, did you let it in, or did you deflect it? If deflecting is your usual move, that’s worth paying attention to, because every time you wave off your own effort or a kind word, you chip away at your own trust. You quietly teach yourself that your work doesn’t count and that you won’t be the one to stand up for it.
How to practice it:
- Trade “I got lucky” for “I did this.” Ownership language is a small change, and your brain keeps score of it.
- When someone compliments you, for the love of God, just say thank you. Full stop. No qualifier, no correction, no list of reasons they’re wrong.
- Keep a line handy for when you catch yourself minimizing. One of my favorites is, “Repeated luck is never luck.”
3. What you do
The third habit is about how you physically hold yourself. Take a second to picture what your body does when you’re not feeling great, when you feel a little less than or you’d rather not be noticed. A lot of us collapse in the same ways. Shoulders round forward, arms and legs cross, eye contact drops. We make ourselves smaller.
I used to be a champion at this. I was the person you wanted next to you on a plane, because I would not fight you for the armrest, like, ever.
What I didn’t understand back then is that when you physically shrink, you send your own body the message that you don’t belong here. Posture is a two way conversation, and your body is listening. So let’s practice the other direction right now.
Bring your head up. Lengthen your spine. Pull your shoulders down and back. Open your chest. Take the armrest, and while you’re at it, take up all the space that’s yours to take. That’s the physical language of confidence, and you can borrow it before you fully feel it.
How to practice it:
- Do a ten second posture reset before anything high stakes, like a meeting, a hard conversation, or a moment you’re dreading. Head up, spine long, shoulders back, chest open.
- Claim your physical space on purpose in rooms where you’d normally shrink. Both feet planted, arms uncrossed.
- Let the body lead when the feeling isn’t there yet. You don’t have to feel confident to stand like you are, and standing like you are often brings the feeling along behind it.
The other half: stop tearing yourself down
Building these three habits is only half the work. The other half is quieting the negative self-talk, and this part might matter most. You can practice what you think, what you say, and how you carry yourself all day long, but if you’re also the one constantly attacking yourself, if your inner monologue runs on what I call 50 shades of should (“I should be further along, I should be different, I should be perfect”), it undercuts everything else. For me, it was louder and more damaging than anything my parents, or anyone else, could say.
It’s a bit like driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. You can pour effort into moving forward, but you won’t get far while you’re also flooring the thing that stops you.
So that London trip actually happened. A week later, I’m FaceTiming my parents again, this time from London. My mom gets on the iPad, looks at me, and says, “Your hair looks really good today. Is that a wig?”
My parents are all kinds of special, and I could not make them up if I tried. The difference now is that I don’t take it personally, because I treat myself with kindness first. When you decide to stop tearing yourself down, that’s the real turning point. People will keep judging you, that part is out of your control, but their words stop finding a home inside you.
I also came to see that my own negative self-talk was mostly a distraction. It was a smokescreen that kept me busy and kept me from looking at the things that actually mattered, like what I wanted to build and how much I already knew how to do.
How to get self confidence when you don’t know where to start
If you keep waiting to feel ready before you begin, this is the thing that helped me stop waiting.
Everything you know how to do today is something you once had to learn. None of us were born knowing how to read, or how to land a job, or how to have a hard conversation. We figured those things out, often while they were still hard, and we’re all still figuring new things out. That track record is real evidence, and it belongs to you.
When I look at the people out there doing things I admire, I don’t see people who are smarter or more gifted than you. Most of them just decided to start before they felt qualified. So the most useful move is often the simplest one. Pick one thing you know you want to do, and take the first small step toward it.
Because confidence was never really about getting a guaranteed outcome. It’s about choosing to try even when you can’t see how it’ll turn out, even when it’s hard, trusting that you’ll figure it out as you go. That’s how self-trust gets built, and it’s how confidence starts to last.
Figuring out what your one thing should be is its own hurdle, and it comes up a lot. I made a whole episode about it called The First Step to Confidence. In it I talk about a belief my dad handed me about my own voice, how it kept me turning down podcast invitations for years, and the small, slightly terrifying move that finally broke the pattern. If you want somewhere concrete to begin, start there.
When you want help doing this work
Reading about self-trust and practicing it in the middle of a hard week are two different things, and I won’t pretend the second one is easy to do on your own. This is exactly the work I do with clients, helping women build the kind of confidence that holds up when things get shaky, not only when everything is going well.
If something here landed and you’d like support putting it into practice, you can reach out to set up a consult. There’s no pressure and nothing to prepare. It’s just a conversation about where you are and where you want to go.
However you decide to move forward, I want to leave you with this. The world already has plenty of people who won’t understand you or won’t back you. The last thing you need is to add yourself to that group. Be the first one in line to have your own back, pick your one thing, and start. I believe in you.
Frequently asked questions about confidence
What is the definition of confidence? Confidence comes from the Latin root meaning complete trust. A working definition of confidence is complete trust in yourself, built by showing up for yourself again and again, especially during hard times. So confidence is less a feeling and more a habit you practice.
How do you build confidence? You build confidence by strengthening self-trust, and three daily habits do most of that work. Watch what you think and choose which thoughts you follow. Watch what you say by owning your wins and letting compliments land instead of swatting them away. And watch what you do by carrying yourself in a more open way instead of shrinking. Quieting the negative self-talk running underneath all of it is what keeps your progress from leaking out.
How do you get self confidence when you have none? Start smaller than feels impressive. Notice the story your brain repeats and choose a kinder replacement thought, practice receiving one compliment without deflecting, and reset your posture before something that scares you a little. Then pick one thing you want to do and take a single first step, before you feel ready.
Why does my confidence disappear when something goes wrong? If your confidence is tied to feeling good about yourself, it tends to rise and fall with your mood, so a rough patch or hard feedback can take it down. Confidence built on self-trust holds up better, because it rests on evidence that you will show up for yourself, rather than on how you happen to feel that day.
Is confidence a feeling or a skill? A bit of both, honestly, though the lasting kind leans more toward skill. Confidence includes how you feel, but the version that holds up over time is a habit you build through small, repeated actions. Which is good news, because a habit is something you can actually practice.
