Don't wait for confidence

I often hear people say they’re waiting to feel confident before they speak up, apply for that job, have that difficult conversation, or put their hand up for something new.

Here’s the truth: if you wait until you feel confident, you’ll be waiting a long time.

Confidence is the reward for action, not the requirement.

It’s not confidence you need to get started - it’s courage.

Confidence is a feeling. Courage is an action.

Confidence is comfortable. It shows up after you’ve done something a few times and know you can handle it. Courage, on the other hand, steps up before you feel ready. It’s full of self-doubt, sweaty palms and shaky voices. But it’s what creates growth.

Your confidence grows as you behave courageously.

Every time I’ve stretched myself - whether it was travelling solo around Australia for a year at 21, stepping on stage to deliver a keynote, writing my first book, or confronting a tough issue in my personal life - it wasn’t confidence that got me over the line. It was courage. Confidence only came later, once I’d done it a few times and proved to myself I could.

The myth that confident people are somehow different - more fearless, more prepared, more sure of themselves - is often just that. A myth. What they really are is practised. They’ve acted with courage again and again until confidence followed.

So if you’re hesitating because you don’t feel confident, let me offer you this reframe: you don’t need confidence to go. You need courage to start.

Be scared and do it anyway.
Speak up with a shaky voice.
Say “yes” before you feel 100% ready.
Ask the question even if your heart’s racing.

Because courage isn’t the absence of fear - it’s action in the presence of it.

And that, my friend, is where growth lives.