Who Took Your Confidence? (You Must Do The Thing You Think You Cannot Do)

Image by Author - I am not Afraid. I was Born To Do This

Who took your confidence? Let me tell you who took mine:

1. Mrs Bennett (P4, Room 8, Strandtown, East Belfast, mid 1980s) when she presented my inaugural attempt at knitting to the rest of the class. It was grubby, lopsided, resplendent with dropped stitches and the worst piece of knitting she had ever seen. (N.B. Mrs B also said I couldn’t use scissors properly).
2. Mrs Keating, self-imposed talent scout, responsible for picking those promising enough to come to after-school hockey. Mrs Keating did not pick me. But I desperately wanted to go. So, I plucked up the courage to go to her room at lunchtime. I stood at her desk and used my extensive nine-year-old influencing skills. She said no.
3. Those who sent me rejection letters when I left University with an English degree and tried to find a job. I punched holes religiously in all these letters and kept them for a long time in a fluorescent ring-binder. (This in retrospect could be described as self-flagellation).
4. My parents who mercilessly criticised all other parents for having the audacity to publicly and proudly share their children’s achievements. “We would never talk about you and your sister like that”. Humility reigned in our house.
5. Catherine, on a sun lounger in Tenerife circa January 1995, whose legs were longer than my entire body. She had a boyfriend back in Belfast and as I lay there with her lofty, tanned physique stretching out languidly and gracefully alongside my stumpy, pale one, I believed my capacity to acquire a boyfriend was entirely dependent on looking like her.
6. All the mirrors that have beckoned me closer and closer to scrutinise every inch of myself and find myself wanting. (Obviously mirrors are not people but they are the masters of judgement).
7. My mother who said I didn’t have the knees for short skirts.
8. Those who didn’t tick the box beside my name when I put myself up for public votes.
9. All the judging panels at unsuccessful interviews.
10. Me - because not only did I allow all those feelings of shame and rejection and inadequacy and judgement to gradually erode my confidence in the first place, I also allowed the fear of feeling those feelings again to stop me from doing a lot of interesting things.

“No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent”. These words are widely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt (although it is not clear when or if she said them) and were on a postcard stuck to my teenage bedroom wall. The message is clear - we have to actively choose to hold on to our confidence, otherwise we consent to others taking it from us. We give our confidence away. Somehow, we have to learn to better armour ourselves against the inevitable attacks.

Many women when I talk to them tell me that they have lost their confidence. When I ask where they lost it, they will recount similar experiences to mine - things said or done that wrecked their self-esteem, times they weren’t chosen or deemed worthy, a set-back when they were brave enough to put themselves forward, negative feedback, repeated rejections, struggles with their appearance.

Something happens to our confidence at a fairly young age, leaving us prone to damage for the rest of our lives. It happened to me and I see the same with my daughters. We start out so self-assured (“look what I did”, “watch me”, “I’m really good at this”, “I made this myself”, “let me have a go”), then just as we hit double-figures, it rapidly starts to dissipate. We decide to hold back. We become overwhelmingly self-conscious. The confidence-erosion process accelerates for girls. How they look plays a major part. Comparison becomes the pervasive thief of joy. Perhaps self-awareness increases, and we realise the harshness of how the world judges us, maybe it’s the narrow-mindedness of the school system, maybe it’s the backlash many women face when they dare to showcase themselves, maybe it’s history repeating itself in over-critical parenting. I can tell my eldest daughter how special she is, how kind, sensible, clever, talented, but she will only ever remember that one time I slipped up and said she looked ‘chunky’.

We can’t say that confidence is responsible for female leadership gaps in the workplace but there is clear evidence that the gender pay gap starts as soon as women exit University. It has nothing to do with subject choice, prior attainment, background, or geographical mobility, but everything to do with fear - fear of not being good enough. Women complete less applications, are less speculative, less likely to self-promote, less willing to over-sell themselves, less prepared to take risks.

“Men appear to be more focused on their career search than women: they begin their career planning earlier during their time at university, make more applications and are less likely to give up once they have begun an application. They also display more confidence - perhaps overconfidence - and are more speculative in the jobs they apply for”¹.

But all is not lost and there are ways that you can actively decide to take your confidence back. These are four that I have shared with my daughters.

1. Store up the good and bring it out when you need it (because you will need to): Keep a folder (physical, email, mental) of positives. Every time someone commends, thanks or congratulates you, file it away where you can find it (easily) and bring it out when your confidence takes a dip. (Also, you must delete, discard, or burn all the rejections).
2. Focus on what you are good at (not on what you are not good at): For all I know, Mrs Bennett could still be knitting away happily in her old age, brandishing her scissors. But she taught me an excellent lesson. You cannot be good at everything so don’t waste time and risk your confidence on something you are not good at. Knitting (alongside many other activities) is not my gift. The world has enough knitters. It needs me to be something else.
3. Normalise self-promotion: It is ok to share your skills, abilities, and achievements. It is also acceptable for others to share them on your behalf. A bit of praise goes a long, long way so learn to accept it and believe that it is referring to you. Don’t be afraid to highlight your successes and achievements. People like those types of posts on LinkedIn and Twitter and you can still be humble.
4. Know your limits: We are not all goddesses. I couldn’t change the length of my legs, so I decided to be funny instead. Maybe that’s what got me a boyfriend. I’ll have to ask him!

Finally, back to Eleanor Roosevelt and some words that can definitely be attributed to her:

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along’. You must do the thing you think you cannot do”.²

Confidence is taking that fear of not being good enough and doing it anyway. That’s how you move forward. That’s how you live life to its full potential. And there is something quite tempting in the idea of looking that horror squarely in the face….

[1]HEPI (Higher Education Policy Institute (November 2020) Cornell, B,, Hewitt, R. and Bekhradnia, B. Mind the (Graduate Gender Pay) Gap.

[2]Eleanor Roosevelt You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys For A More Fulfilling Life