by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
You Don’t Need More Confidence – You Need More Realness
Many years ago, when I was but a wee whippersnapper, I came second place in a Michael Jackson dancing competition at the Blackpool Tower:
You might say that this wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of human success – I only came second, after all – but at the time, it sure felt like a big deal and I remember the resounding sense of pride I felt as I went about the rest of my day (and here I am still talking about it 30 years later or whatever it is).
When I look back, what struck me most wasn’t the medal or the applause but the sheer simplicity of the moment:
They called us kids up on stage and off I ran – no hesitation, no overthinking, just getting up, showing up, dancing my little heart out, and then leaving the stage with a trophy that didn’t even matter that much.
I suppose I could say that this experience taught me something crucial about confidence:
You don’t need more confidence before you’re ready to act – all you need is to show up and do the thing.
The problem for most of us, as adults, is that we’ve complicated it:
We’ve been told that confidence is something you “build” internally – a kind of magical substance that you need to conjure up before stepping into the world in a real way.
The truth is far simpler, though:
Real confidence is not a precondition for but the by-product of real action.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
More Confidence?: What We’ll Cover in this Article
- You Don’t Need More Confidence – You Need More Realness
- Waiting for More Confidence is Waiting for Permission to Live (You Don’t Need It)
- Real Confidence: Stop Adding, Start Unlearning
- Reality Doesn’t Wait So Why Do You?
- Learning by Doing
- Bash Your Gremlins and Tap Into Outcome-Independence
- Accept, Show Up, & Grow Real
- Practical Steps for Building Real Confidence
- More Confidence?: The Final Word
Waiting for More Confidence is Waiting for Permission to Live (You Don’t Need It)
So many people spend their whole lives waiting for ‘more’ confidence before they actually allow themselves to show up in their own lives:
They wait to be ‘healed’ enough, ‘skilled’ enough, ‘attractive’ enough, ‘educated’ enough, ‘emotionally evolved‘ enough or [whatever else you can think of].
This isn’t ambition, though – it’s the ego at work and it creates an imaginary state of perfection that can never exist which is the reason most people never take real action.
The main reason that people get ‘stuck’ like this is because they’re judging themselves because of underlying shame:
When you judge yourself, you project that judgement onto an imaginary future and so you create a mental scenario where – if only you were finally ‘enough’ – you could step forward without fear.
The only problem with this approach is that this imaginary future is exactly that: an imaginary mirage that’s never gonna meet you in life.
The truth is that reality isn’t waiting for you to get ‘ready’ because it’s already moving and constantly changing which means that you need to keep moving and changing too:
Even if you somehow reached your ideal version of ‘confidence’, ‘healing’, or [‘whatever else’], life would shift again, presenting new flaws, challenges, or mistakes to overcome and so waiting for ‘perfect’ conditions is a literally always an ego trap.
This is the subtle tyranny of ego:
It convinces you that confidence is external and that it’s something you must acquire rather than something that grows through experience.
In reality, confidence is like a muscle, and like any muscle, it grows when you use it – not when you imagine using it, not when you theorise about it, and certainly not when you overthink it.
It something that can only grow when you ACT.
Real Confidence: Stop Adding, Start Unlearning
Here’s the paradox at the heart of the matter:
The thing that keeps you blocked and unable to show up in your own life isn’t a lack of confidence but the constant self-judgement and the internalised “you’re not good enough” messages that keep you frozen.
People think they need to “get more confidence”, but what they really need to do is stop judging themselves.
Judgement is like a mental barrier that sits between you and the real action that you need to take:
When you’re judging yourself, you’re not present – instead, you’re projecting ego into the future and telling yourself that unless you reach some imaginary state, you’re doomed to fail.
Removing judgement isn’t about building something new but about unlearning all the unreal beliefs and tendencies that keep you shrinking instead of showing up.
In short, confidence – really just your REALNESS – emerges naturally as a result of releasing all the dead weight you’ve been carrying and then tapping into the courage to act anyway.
Reality Doesn’t Wait So Why Do You?
The obsession with an idealised state of being is one of the most subtle ways we sabotage ourselves.
We tell ourselves things like:
- “I’ll start dating when I feel ‘healed‘ enough”.
- “I’ll start my business when I’m ‘confident’ enough”.
- “I’ll share my creative work when I’m ‘skilled’ enough”.
But despite telling ourselves these things, reality inexorably moves on anyway:
Like I said, even if you somehow “arrived” at all those imagined markers of perfection, life would continue to present new challenges, flaws, and opportunities to grow anyway and so waiting for some ‘perfect’, never-changing and static state of being is like standing on a shoreline waiting for the tide to stay put so you can step in to the ocean…life just doesn’t work that way.
The alternative is to embrace the realness of radical acceptance:
Recognising that you’re already ‘enough’ (whatever that even means) to get started and that the process of showing up is where real growth – and real confidence – always comes from.
Learning by Doing
This is where the principle of learning by doing becomes life-changing and indispensable:
Confidence grows not by thinking, not by reading self-help books, and certainly not by “faking it until you make it” but by engaging with reality in a real way.
Take baking as an example:
If you want to become a good baker, the path isn’t to act like you’re a baker until you ‘feel’ it – that’s just “fake it ’til you make it” and it’s usually rooted in ego and fear of failure.
The real path is to allow yourself to bake BAD cakes (or whatever) and then to do it again a little less badly.
Each attempt teaches you something and strengthens your confidence in a real, tangible way:
Do your best and let go of the rest.
This principle literally applies across every aspect of life:
- Relationships: You learn to be a good partner and growing in intimacy by showing up, communicating, making mistakes, and getting back to presence. Each failure is a lesson and each effort builds your relational confidence.
- Business or Career: You learn to be competent by doing the work, serving others, and refining your approach. The only way to become confident in your skills is to act with what you have and improve through experience…not just thinking about it or ‘faking’ it.
- Personal Growth: You don’t meditate your way into calmness and regulation – you practice, stumble, get frustrated, and then practice again.
Real growth emerges from engagement, not theory, and so action is the teacher and confidence is the result.
Bash Your Gremlins and Tap Into Outcome-Independence
Of course, one of the biggest obstacles to acting is what I like to call “Gremlins“:
Gremlins are old programs and patterns, limiting beliefs, and internalised shame that sabotages your relationship with your own realness and sends you hurtling into the Void.
These Gremlins like to whisper to us (usually in our own voice) things that are totally unreal and that keep us locked in our minds instead of engaging in the process of life itself:
“You’re not good enough”, “You’ll fail”, “You’re too inexperienced”, “You need more before you can start” – all of these are the voice of a Gremlin, not the voice of who ‘You’ are in your realness.
We could make the argument that they’re designed to keep you safe and to prevent embarrassment but they’re fundamentally illusions that keep you from your REAL life.
Gremlins make you outcome-dependent – what this means is that they tie your self-worth to results you haven’t yet achieved.
Outcome-dependence is a trap because it makes you judge yourself on something that doesn’t yet exist.
The antidote is to become outcome-independent which means to fully invest yourself in the process of doing without letting the imagined result dictate your sense of value.
The paradox here is that this kind of outcome-independence actually increases your likelihood of success because you’re free to act, learn, and improve without fear.
Accept, Show Up, & Grow Real
Ultimately, confidence doesn’t come from some abstract internal change but from acceptance of what’s real:
Acceptance of where you are, acceptance of your current abilities, and acceptance of your mistakes….This is where true confidence live – not in some imagined future but in your ability to show up and participate in reality.
When you accept yourself, the world, and reality and stop projecting ego-judgement into the future, you release the mental handcuffs that have been holding you back from your own life and can finally start taking action in a real way, learning through doing, and continuously improving.
That’s real confidence because it’s REALNESS.
That dorky kid who ran onto the stage at the Blackpool Tower didn’t wait to feel ‘ready, stop to think about every possible mistake, or try to conjure courage in advance – he simply acted and the act itself became the foundation for confidence.
This same principle applies to everything you do today.
If you want to go even deeper into realness then read Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness so you can stop holding back and start taking real action.
Practical Steps for Building Real Confidence
Here’s how to implement these ideas in your own life in a real way:
- Start Small, Start Now: Identify one area where you’ve been waiting for “more” confidence and take one real action immediately. Don’t wait to feel ready – just embrace the truth that real action creates momentum.
- Do Your Best, Let Go of the Rest: Treat mistakes as lessons instead of failures. If you bake a terrible cake, learn, and try again. The process matters more than the result (and you can control the process more than anything else).
- Identify Your Gremlins: Write down the recurring negative thoughts that stop you from acting (or use the Thought Log tool on this site). Call them out for what they are – old programming – and consciously choose not to invest them with any credence or power over you and your life.
- Practice Outcome-Independence: Take action without tying your self-worth to the result. Know what your goals are but then take your focus away from the goal and dedicate yourself to the PROCESS.
- Learn by Doing: Whatever your goal you can immerse yourself in the process as a learning experience. This allows you to treat life as a classroom and the inevitable mistakes you’ll make as the curriculum.
- Radical Acceptance: Acknowledge where you are with honesty and without judgement. Accept your current abilities and your imperfections as the starting point for growth. Unless you accept this, you’ll never be building on a real foundation.
- Reflect and Repeat: After taking action, reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and what you learned. Then take the next step and then the next one. Confidence is built over time through repetition, not theory.
More Confidence?: The Final Word
The desire for “more confidence” is a mirage because what most people are really seeking is permission to show up, to act, and to engage with reality without the crippling weight of self-judgement.
Confidence is not a precondition for action – it is the outcome of acting and it’s a muscle that grows through effort, repetition, and acceptance.
When I was a kid dancing around at the Blackpool Tower, I understood something adults often forget which is that action comes first and then confidence follows.
Stop theorising, stop waiting, stop adding “more” to yourself – just focus on learning to strip away judgement, bash the gremlins, and start showing up.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to start taking real action and growing real then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you build some real momentum.
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