How to be more confident
Do the thing in small steps, and let the evidence pile up. The psychologist Albert Bandura found that your own experience of success is the strongest source of belief in what you can do.1 You don't have to feel confident before you start. Skip the "power pose", too: the study behind it didn't hold up.2
Take one "I can't do this" thought and look at it step by step. Nothing you type leaves your device.
The moment
Just the facts, as a camera would record them.
If writing this out leaves you feeling worse, it's fine to stop and come back later, or to talk to someone you trust. If you're thinking about harming yourself, call or text 988 in the US, or see crisis resources.
Bandura's four sources, strongest first
In 1977 Bandura described four sources of self-efficacy, his word for the belief that you can do one specific thing.1 They aren't equal, and the order matters for what you try first. We wrote the examples below for this page.
1. Doing it yourself
Bandura called this performance accomplishments, and it came out strongest.1 Every time you do the thing and get through it, belief grows. Repeated failure lowers it, especially early on.1
"I was shaking the first time I spoke up in the team meeting. By the fifth time, I barely thought about it."
2. Seeing someone like you do it
Watching another person do it and come through fine raises your sense that you could too.1
"My cousin started her own business at 40 with two kids. If she figured it out, I can at least try."
3. Being told you can
Encouragement helps less than doing. It fades fast once experience contradicts it.1
"My manager said I'd be good at leading the project. It helped me say yes. It didn't help much in week one."
4. How you read your body
A racing heart before a talk can look like proof you're about to fail, and Bandura noted that high arousal can lower people's expectations of success.1 Reading those signals differently is a skill you can practice.
"My hands get sweaty before every interview. I used to think it meant I wasn't ready."
Build a confidence ladder
This is the first source used on purpose. You arrange small successes in order, so each one makes the next more believable.1
- Pick one skill: Something specific, such as speaking up in meetings.
- List the steps: From easiest to hardest, five to ten rungs.
- Do the lowest: One rung, this week.
- Write it down: What you feared, and what happened.
- Move up: Climb only when the current rung feels manageable.
Start lower than feels necessary. If speaking up in a meeting is the top rung, the bottom one might be asking a single question in a group chat, then agreeing out loud with someone else's point, then adding one sentence of your own.
Success on an easy rung still counts.
After each one, write a line: what you feared, and what happened. Read the list before the next hard thing. A colleague, friend or cousin a step or two ahead of you is the second source in practice, so ask them how their first try went.
Sure with friends, blank in front of a boss
Confidence in one place and none in another is how self-efficacy works. Bandura described it as belief about specific tasks.1 Nobody carries one setting for every room.
The waiting is the other thing people notice. You wait to feel ready, and the feeling doesn't come. Or you avoid the thing, the relief is instant, and next time it looms bigger. Avoidance removes the one source that works best.
Skill first, and confidence follows
Self-efficacy and work performance go together: a meta-analysis of 114 studies found a clear link.3 Then a later meta-analysis took personality, ability and experience into account, and the link shrank.4
Part of what looks like confidence causing success is skill causing both. That's good news for anyone who doesn't feel confident yet, because skill is the part you can practice.
Feedback helps the practice along when it's specific. "Was my point clear?" teaches you more than "How did I do?", and it gives the third source, encouragement, something real to rest on.
The power pose, and the author who walked it back
The 2010 study had 42 people hold an expansive pose for two minutes, and reported higher testosterone and lower cortisol afterward.5 Then 200 people tried it in a replication, and their hormones and their risk-taking didn't budge.2
In 2016 Dana Carney, the first author of the 2010 paper, wrote that she no longer believes power pose effects are real.6
The story has one more turn. The 200 people in the replication did report stronger feelings of power after posing.2 Amy Cuddy and colleagues argue that the wider research on posture and feelings shows a real effect.7 Standing tall may help you feel steadier for a moment. Your chemistry stays where it was.
Two things to say before the hard moment
- "I'm excited." Across studies with karaoke, public speaking and math, people who said "I am excited" did better than people who tried to calm down.8 Both states come with a racing heart, so the label is easier to change than the feeling. Say it out loud if you can.
- Your own name. In seven studies, thinking about a stressful task with your own name or "you" in place of "I" lowered distress and improved performance.9 "Maya, you've prepared. Say the first line and the rest will follow."
Positive self-statements are a different tool, and the research on them is mixed (the affirmations page has the details). Lines you can back with evidence are a safer bet, which is how our affirmations for confidence are written.
What is one situation where you'd like to feel more confident? Write the smallest step toward it that you could take this week, and what you fear might happen.
Answer this with JoyWhen the fear is about being watched
If fear of being judged has kept you from work, school or seeing people for months, it may be social anxiety, which is common and treatable. Our anxiety check-in is a short, private place to start.
Joyful is an AI journaling companion, not therapy. Joy can keep the record of each rung with you; it can't replace care.
Questions people ask
How can I be more confident at work?
Pick the one work task that makes you most nervous and give it its own ladder. If the worry is less about the task and more about being found out, the imposter syndrome page fits better.
How can I be more confident in myself?
That's a question about self-esteem, your sense of worth as a person, and it works differently from confidence in a skill. The self-esteem page covers the thoughts and rules that keep it low.
Are some people just born confident?
All four of Bandura's sources are experiences: doing, watching, hearing and reading your body.1 Whatever you started with, those are the parts that can still change.