You Don't Need to Feel Confident to Practice Confidence

💭 Go deeper: We talk more about this in episode #273 of the Joy Lab Podcast

FYI: you do not need to feel confident in order to practice confidence.

Most of us have been taught the opposite. We wait for the feeling of certainty, the assurance, and the absence of fear before we let ourselves act. We wait to feel confident before starting to exercise, before reaching out to a friend, before speaking up in a meeting. And sometimes that waiting goes on for years.

Dr. Henry Emmons explains why: the amygdala, the brain's threat-detection center, looks for certainty before giving the green light to act. It says, essentially, I can't guarantee this will go well, so don't move yet. The problem is that life is inherently uncertain. That certainty may never come.

Dr. Russ Harris, author of The Confidence Gap, offers the reframe that anchors episode #273 of the Joy Lab Podcast: "The actions of confidence come first; the feelings of confidence come later." Confidence isn't a prerequisite for action. It's the result of it.

This requires untangling confidence from the feeling we've been sold. We're constantly messaged that confidence is the performance of fearlessness, the unwavering certainty, the "No Fear" bravado that isn't actually humanly possible (and would be a bad sign if it were). Instead, Joy Lab works with a more literal, more freeing definition: confidence comes from the Latin "com" (with) and "fidere" (trust) — to trust with. It's a willingness to act and a trust in your own effort, not a feeling of certainty about the outcome.

This reframe also makes room for something the feelings-only model erases: systemic and cultural barriers can make confidence harder to access for some people than others. Confidence as trust and action isn't just an individual fix; it's relational, built with yourself, with others, and within the systems you move through.

The episode also untangles confidence from self-worth (your inherent value, not up for evaluation), self-esteem (a more fragile, comparison-based self-evaluation), and self-efficacy (your belief in handling a specific task, built through repeated practice). Real confidence can draw on all three, but doesn't require any of them to feel resolved before you act.

Listen to this episode of the Joy Lab Podcast to begin building a new, more empowering relationship with confidence. A kind of confidence rooted in trust and action rather than waiting for a feeling that may never arrive.