Emerson wrote “Do the thing and you will have the power: but they who do not do the thing will not have the power.”
When we are embarking on something new, sometimes we feel that we might need a bit of extra confidence or a bit of extra power to do the thing.
What most people do is they wait until they feel totally confident to do the thing before they try and start doing the thing. But if you take action before you are 100% ready, you will get confidence from actually doing the thing.
When you take action towards what you want to do, your brain releases dopamine. This dopamine gives you the feeling to take more action. So in taking the action first, before you are ready, you will find yourself moving towards your goal and creating your own internal confidence from doing.
You don’t need to make one big dramatic action to make a change, rather what you can do is take small actions that will start you moving in the direction you want to go, and you will find yourself creating confidence as you do the thing.
Gordan Ramsay the many Michellin star chef talks about this in his book “Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Cookery Course”, he talks about people who buy lots of expensive knives and cooking utensils, and equipment but leave it in their kitchens and hardly use it, he said it’s “like a footballer who’s afraid to make a tackle for fear of of getting grass stains on his kit”. Gordon Ramsay says in his book that if you start cooking you will learn from cooking, he says ‘I’m going to show you how to cook yourself into a better cook’.
It’s the same with anything, by doing the thing you will get good at it, don’t wait take action towards what you are doing.
One of the things that can stop people is that you can sometimes fear sudden big dramatic change, because we feel that we will lose our old identity completely if we change everything rapidly. James Clear talks about this in his book, Atomic Habits.
But if you take small steps, you will achieve your goal and not feel like everything is changing instantaneously. Instead things will change at a natural pace, in the same way that most things change in nature.
Take small steps, before you are ready, to start moving towards new things in your life.
Amy Cuddy did an amazing Ted Talk about how body language shapes our lives. She has done research into people and how their body language changes their behaviour.
She has shown that moving your body into a powerful position first leads a person to start feeling more confident and releasing certain chemicals into the body, rather than trying to be more confident first, instead try moving your body first and then you will feel more confident inside.
So take the action first, to create internal confidence, rather than trying to find this so called mythical confidence from the outside.
Don’t gain confidence, create it