Action Creates Confidence. Not The Other Way Around.
Action Creates Confidence. Not The Other Way Around.
At the start of this year I made myself a promise.
I was going to stop hiding.
Not in a dramatic, burn-it-all-down way. Just quietly and consistently I was going to start showing up. On video. In rooms. In places that made my stomach turn over and my inner voice say "who do you think you are?"
And I want to be honest with you, I am not a natural at this.
My style on video is, at best, rustic. I am not polished. I don't have a big ring light set up and a carefully crafted script. What I have is the truth, and I say it out loud, and I've decided that's enough. Because I'm not trying to attract everyone. I'm trying to attract the right people, the ones who want grounded over glossy, and real over rehearsed. Because that is me.
This year I have forced myself into public speaking. I have committed to going live on Instagram this Friday and I am genuinely terrified. I am launching CEO Hour, my first ever online group session for my own business. This is terrifying, and I have to show up. With all my work only really being 1:1 previously this is a new thing for me. Every single one of these things is massive for me. Every single one of them has that same feeling attached to it.
What if something goes wrong?
Here's what I know about that feeling now. It's not a stop sign. It's a signal.
We have confused the order of things.
We have collectively decided, women especially, that confidence comes first. That you wait until you feel ready. Until you know enough. Until you've done one more course, built one more plan, got one more qualification under your belt.
And so we wait. And we plan. And we stay very, very busy while the thing that would actually change everything sits on the to-do list, getting moved to tomorrow, and the next day and the next.
I call it the frog. The one thing. The thing you already know you need to do.
And the reason it stays there isn't laziness. It isn't procrastination. It's that doing it means admitting you want more, and somewhere along the way, a lot of us got a very clear message that wanting more wasn't really for someone like us.
Here's the reframe I want to leave you with.
Action creates confidence. Confidence does not create action.
You do not feel brave and then speak on the stage. You agree to the stage, feel sick for three weeks, show up anyway and walk away a changed person. You do not feel ready to go live and then press the button. You press the button with your heart in your mouth and you come out the other side.
I have a friend who calls me "the oracle." I used to laugh at that. I thought she was being kind in the way friends are kind. Then other people started saying versions of the same thing, in their own words, in their own way. You just have a way of making me feel at ease. You see things other people can't see.
I am not someone who finds it easy to say those things about myself. I don't always see what other people see. But I've stopped arguing with it because arguing with it is just another way of staying small. It's also quite rude to continually dismiss the kind things that others say about me.
What I do know is this. The women who work with me get a grounded version of me. Not a guru. Not a highlight reel. Someone who has studied social psychology, who understands human behaviour at a level that's sometimes hard to articulate, who has lived enough of the messy middle (majority of my adult like to be quite frank) to know that the uncomfortable thing and the important thing are almost always the same thing.
Is all of this uncomfortable? Yes. Immensely.
Am I worried things will go wrong? Of course. But it's not the worst thing that's ever happened to me — and I'm still here.
That's the whole point.
You don't need to be fearless. You just need to be willing.
I was gifted a session with someone who I really admire this week, and they highlighted this to me. The fact that I know what I need to do. I am uncomfortable asking for the help but the fact I do it anyway and see what happens is such a great way to be. She went on to say that lots of people speak about doing the thing, but never quite do it.
The frog doesn't get easier to look at. You just get braver at picking it up.
If this landed at all, I'd love to know what your frog is. Let me know.
And if you're done with waiting to feel ready — CEO Hour is for you. First session is free.
Nikkola Wright is founder of Rebel for Business, a business transformation guide who supports coaches, creatives and women in business who are done with their own bullshit and know that the next step is getting out of their own way.
