Ep 127: Close Your Confidence Gap
By Charlotte Cummings | Feel Better Podcast
How to Build Confidence: 10 Practical Strategies to Close the Confidence Gap
You're More Capable Than You Think
Here's something worth sitting with: the confidence gap isn't about lacking ability. It's about having a self-concept that hasn't caught up with who you already are.
That's the problem. And for women especially, it's a costly one.
Research consistently shows that women tend to underrate their own competence compared to men. One well-known pattern: a man will look at a job description, decide he can do around 60% of it, and apply. A woman will wait until she feels 100% ready. Sometimes 120%. And by then? She might not apply at all.
There's also what I call the five-year lag. Women often carry a picture of themselves that's five years behind their actual capability. It's not a skills gap. It's a self-concept gap. And it costs us. Promotions. Pay rises. Opportunities we didn't even put our hand up for.
The good news? Self-concept can be updated. Confidence can be built. And you don't have to wait until you feel ready to start.
What Confidence Actually Is (Spoiler: It's Not a Personality Trait)
We often treat confidence like it's something you either have or you don't. Like a fixed feature of who you are.
It's not.
Confidence is behaviour. It's a skill. And one of the most important reframes I can offer you is this: you can act confidently without feeling confident. That gap between the feeling and the action? That's where the growth lives.
If you wait for the emotion of confidence to show up before you move, you might be waiting a long time. The more powerful move is to act first, and let the feeling follow.
10 Ways to Close the Confidence Gap
Update Your Story
Start with an honest look at how you're seeing yourself. What are the stories you tell yourself about who you are, what you're capable of, and where your limits sit?
Try this question: What would I believe about myself if I was already at the next level in my life?
Pull that thinking forward into the present. You don't earn a new identity and then start acting like it. You start practising it now, and the identity follows.
2.Act Ahead of Your Identity
Don't wait to feel ready. Think about the person you want to become. What are they doing? How are they showing up? Start doing those things now.
I've used Mel Robbins' 5-4-3-2-1 technique for exactly this. Instead of circling the question of whether or not to do something, you count yourself down and take the action. It's simple, it works, and it gets you moving before your brain talks you out of it.
Your behaviour will pull your identity forward. Let it.
3. Think About What You're Wearing
This one's practical, and it matters more than people give it credit for.
I had a stylist years ago who replaced my cardigans with blazers and my flats with heels for key situations. That shift changed how I carried myself. I eventually had a particular coral jacket that my workmates called my "confidence jacket." They knew when I was wearing it, I meant business.
You don't have to spend more money. This is about figuring out which outfits make you feel most like the version of yourself you're aiming for, and wearing them more intentionally.
4.Say Things More Clearly
There are well-documented differences in how women and men communicate in professional settings. Women often soften, qualify, and apologise before sharing a view. Sorry, this might be a silly question, but... Sound familiar?
Challenge yourself to use cleaner, more direct language. Try leading with: Here's what I think. Or: My view is this. Or simply: Can we look at this?
You have something valuable to say. Make sure your language reflects that.
5. Separate the Evidence from the Feelings
Your feelings are telling you one thing. The evidence is telling you another. Learn to tell the difference.
What have you actually achieved? What do people consistently say you're good at? What have you navigated that you didn't think you could? Build that body of evidence, and return to it when your feelings are being loud.
You don't have to be good at everything. Double down on where you genuinely excel and own that space fully.
6. Work on Your Overthinking
Overthinking and confidence are closely linked. When you notice yourself circling, replaying, second-guessing, redirect toward action. Ask: What's my next step?
That single question can interrupt the loop and create momentum. If overthinking is a pattern for you, I've got a full episode on it worth going back to.
7. Notice Your Patterns
Start paying attention to how you show up in group settings. When do you choose to speak in a meeting? Are you always waiting for someone else to go first?
Try being the first or second person to contribute. Notice if you're the one always pouring the water or passing around the food, and consider whether you need to step back from that role sometimes.
Small pattern shifts create big identity shifts over time.
8. Ask for Feedback
Don't wait for your annual review. Go to your manager now. Go to a trusted friend. Ask directly: Can you tell me what I'm doing well?
It takes courage to ask. But a targeted dose of genuine positive feedback can be the circuit-breaker your confidence needs. Use your people. They're there.
9. Channel Someone You Admire
Think of someone whose confidence you genuinely respect. Not someone loud or cocky. Someone who has that quiet, grounded, balanced confidence you want more of.
Before you walk into a high-stakes situation, ask: How would they show up here? Then aim for a little of that. Channelling, imitating, borrowing from others is a completely valid confidence strategy.
10. Up-Regulate Before High-Stakes Moments
On the way to something that matters, don't feed your brain more stimulation. Feed it energy.
I jump on my mini trampoline. I blast my running playlist. I choose whatever gets me out of my head and into my body before I need to perform.
Find your version of that. Walking, music, movement, whatever shifts your nervous system into a better state. It makes a real difference to how you show up.
The Bottom Line
You're not behind. Your self-concept is.
Confidence isn't something you have or you don't. It's built. Through updated stories, bolder actions, cleaner language, and a willingness to move before you feel ready.
The world needs you fully in it. Not a cautious, shrunk-down version of you. The real one.
So let's get to work on that gap.
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Okay, so we have a problem as humans when it comes to confidence. The problem is that we are often more capable than we think we are.
And I want to out the gate name an issue here that for women, this is particularly problematic. And we know that there are some patterns on a whole that affect women when it comes to confidence that are really important to name here. Compared to men, women tend to underrate their competence.
And this is really problematic because it has a compounding effect as we miss taking opportunities that would lead us forward. Now we know that women wait until they feel 120% ready. And how this contrasts to how men approach jobs.
So as a generalization, a man would look at a role advertisement, look at the job description and think, I can do 60% of that, I'm going to apply. And for women we wait until we think we can do 100% of that or 120% of that before we believe we're capable of it. You will have possibly heard me talk on the podcast before about women's self-concept when it comes to their professional skills.
That we tend to have a five year lag around what it is that we're capable of. This is a big problem. And it's really tragic to see that women often get this hit of confidence later in life.
But life can be different if we get quicker at doing confidence much sooner. The reality here is that we're not behind, our self-concept is. It costs us promotions, it costs us pay, it costs us opportunities in other areas of our lives.
And if you know that this is something that you need to fix, buckle up because this episode's for you. And I want to name something here too around confidence that I think is important as we approach this topic today. It's that we sometimes treat confidence like it's part of our personality and something that's a trait that we hold or we don't.
When the reality is that we can all build more confidence within our lives. And that sometimes too how we need to approach this is that the things that we need to do, we need to find a way to make happen even when we're not feeling confident. That if we wait and rely on those good confident feelings, we might be waiting forever and we need to find ways to move and act even when that sense of confidence isn't there as an emotion.
Acting confidently without the emotional presence of confidence is a life hack that I think you need. So if you're playing small and it's time for a confidence glow up, I've got lots of advice to share today. And I want to acknowledge here too that people often look at me from the outside and say you're a really confident person.
And I want to remind you that people's inner experience is sometimes quite different to how they present outwardly. And I'm certainly someone who has some lived experience of this challenge around confidence. In some settings I am really confident, but in others I have lots of doubt.
I sometimes find myself going to my husband saying I don't know if this is going to work out, do you think I can really do this? And trying to outsource my sense of confidence to him. Now many a time he has reminded me it has always worked out before. You've always worked it out before.
It's always worked before. So I often find myself needing to borrow confidence from other people in some particular areas of my life. And that is okay.
This confidence gap can affect anyone and everyone in a variety of different ways. So I'm hoping that the advice I've got to give today around addressing confidence in your life will meet you where you're at. Okay, so let's get into the tips I've got to share with you.
The first one is think about whether it's time to update your story and your self-concept. Have a good think about how you are currently seeing yourself. What are your views around who you are, what you're capable of, what is your identity? What are you telling yourself about who you are and where your competence lies? What your strengths are? What you bring to the table? What are the stories that are going on around that? Now a helpful question here can be asking what would I believe if I was at the next level in my life? If I was achieving that next thing, if I was functioning slightly at that next level, what is it that I would believe about myself in that next stage? And how can I borrow some of that thinking now? I think that this is one of the challenges, that we can start to forecast how we would think about ourselves in the future and pull that thinking forward into the present because that's what helps us move towards that new reality.
So has your self-concept got some room to be updated? And one of the things that I often say to my clients around identity is you don't earn that new identity, you start practicing it. The classic line here, fake it till you make it. Start behaving like that person who has that life, who embraces that way of thinking, who feels that way.
Adopt those behaviours and those ways of seeing things into your life now and see what happens. But the starting point is always taking a really good honest look at the stories you tell yourself about who you are, what you're capable of and how you see yourself. The more brutally honest that you can get about that, the better.
So my next key tip here is to act ahead of identity. So don't wait to be that person at that next level in your life to start acting in the way that you imagined that they would. Think about the behaviours of that person and get quicker at doing those things.
Now this is not about having no doubts and then behaving in that way. This is about taking action before you feel ready. So maybe you don't feel ready to do that thing.
Maybe you think, who am I to leap into that space? Maybe I'm not ready to put myself forward for that. Act ahead of your identity and use your behaviour to pull that new identity forward. Now I had a situation this year where I had to coach myself to put myself forward for something that I just felt so much imposter syndrome around.
I thought, who am I to be doing this? I'm not even sure that I've got the energy to do this again. This is another opportunity where I'm having to ask somebody to help me. This feels really uncomfortable.
There's been so much rejection around this in the past. What am I doing? And I used a little Mel Robbins technique that I love. The 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Where instead of thinking about, am I going to do this? You count yourself down and you take the action.
You rip the bandaid off and do the thing. What are the actions that I would be taking at the next level of my life and can I do those things now? The odds are you absolutely can. So get used to acting a step ahead of your identity.
The other piece of advice I would give is think about what you are wearing. Now this is a really practical one. I'm a big fan of some exercise leggings and hanging out in some track pants around my house.
But there was a point in my life where I met a stylist who I know helped me get a massive promotion in my workplace because I was dressing differently. She took away my cardis and replaced them with blazers. She took away all my flats and gave me a few heels to use in certain situations.
Now sometimes we need to signal to the world around us that we are a different person. Maybe we're dressing differently. And I'm not saying if you're more confident you're wearing louder colours.
Maybe you're dressing in more muted colours because they suit you better and you're not following the trends. Maybe you're adopting a minimalist capsule wardrobe because that's the refined person that you want to be into the future. I'm not saying that that is all about being bold or being overdressed or ultra professional.
But think about presenting yourself in a new and fresh way that befits the opportunities that you want into the future. Go and get some help around this. Engage with a stylist.
Find those retail stores where there are people who are really good at dressing different body shapes and pushing the boundaries of what you feel comfortable in. But think about how you're physically representing yourself in the world and how you show up as the best version of yourself. In an old workplace I had a particular jacket that my workmates nicknamed the confidence jacket.
They used to say to me, who have you got on your list today? And they knew that if I had a meeting that I wanted to be perceived really professionally for, that I really wanted to feel confident in, I would be wearing this coral jacket. We know that what we wear has an impact on our mood and on how we present to other people. So take a really good look at that if you need to.
It doesn't have to be about spending more money. It can be about colouring your wardrobe. It can be about wearing certain things more than others.
But think about those outfits you feel most confident in and how you present the best version of yourself. Another tip I have around closing the confidence gap is get used to saying things more clearly. Now there's lots of interesting evidence if you want to dig into the research around this.
But we know that there are some really gendered differences around how people say what they think. So women are much more apologetic in how they raise things. You know, I'm sorry, I'm just wondering if, forgive me if this is a silly question, but, oh I'd just like to add this on.
And men tend to be much more confident in how they raise things in conversation. And there are different patterns in the language used. So challenge yourself to listen to the language that you're using in different settings.
Could you dial up being able to say things like, here's what I think, or my contribution to this conversation is this, or in my view, can we look at this? Think about the language that you're using and whether that's reflecting the power and autonomy that you have as a valuable person entering into conversations. That starting place of believing that you've got something valuable and important to share is so significant to hold onto. But often our language lets us down.
And what we use to try and soften what we present often ends up holding us back as a person. Another tip here is to think about the difference between the evidence and your feelings. This is a conversation I've found myself having with lots of clients.
What's the evidence about who you are and what you contribute? What your strengths are? What your values are? What it is that you're good at and the achievements that are behind you? Now your feelings are saying this, but the evidence is suggesting this. So get used to seeing the difference between the feelings that are showing up for you and the reality of the evidence of who you are and what you bring to the table. Don't forget here to own your uniqueness.
You will have a particular combination of strengths and weaknesses that matter to who you are. And if you're finding the right fit in certain environments, that combination of strengths and weaknesses actually matters. You know, perhaps that person isn't so great at these things, but here are the areas where they really excel and we value them because they contribute this.
You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be good at everything. But look at the volume of evidence and the background of who you are and what you bring and own that part of the equation.
It's not about being perfect. It's not about getting everything right at the right time all the time. It's not about being ideal in every environment.
We know that life gets better when we double down on the things that we are already good at and we own and rightfully take up our space in those areas. Another piece of advice I have for closing the confidence gap is work on your overthinking. Now a really quick workaround that I want to give you here is when you find yourself overthinking something, second guessing, replaying a certain situation, I want you to start challenging yourself to route yourself towards action.
What is it that I am going to do as my next step? Okay, this is enough of this thinking now. What is the action that I am going to take? If we can turn our overthinking into action, our lives gain a whole lot more momentum. So considering that next step is a really good way to stop circling in your own mind and build some new outcomes that shape your reality.
If you want to do a bit more of a dive into overthinking, I have got an episode that you can go back and listen to specifically on this topic. But overthinking can be a big barrier when it comes to confidence and if it's something that you need to work on, I've got you. The next thing I'd encourage you to do is start noticing your patterns.
Start reflecting on how you are showing up interpersonally. If you think about perhaps meetings that you are part of, where do you choose to speak within the meeting? Are you always the one that's waiting for somebody else to speak? Perhaps you need to challenge yourself to be the first or second speaker when it comes time to share opinions on what's being talked about. I became aware as a younger person and as a woman sitting around board tables that sometimes it was important for me to not be the person pouring the water or passing around the food.
Now I get it that we want to be hospitable, that we want to be kind to other people, that we want to make environments pleasant to be part of, but it doesn't always have to be you doing that. So if there are particular ways that you show up and you want to show up as someone slightly different, remember that you can dial those things up and down and different people can take turns at different times. So reflect and notice on your patterns and how you're showing up right now.
The next is be brave and ask other people for feedback. Maybe you need to go to your friend and say, look, I'm just feeling really unsure of myself right now. Can you tell me the things that you think are great about me? Maybe you don't wait for 12 months to ask your boss for some feedback on how you're doing and what they can tell you about what you're doing great right now.
Go for a dose of that as often as you need and be bold and brave in asking for that positive feedback. Hey, I'm in a bit of a loop around the things that I'm doing wrong at the moment. I've been working on a whole lot of corrections around this, been working on this project that has felt like pushing stuff uphill.
Can you tell me what I'm good at? Ask for what you need when it comes to that external boost of confidence. Ask for reviews or feedback. Hold that on more regularly if you need to.
And don't forget you can often use your loved ones for a boost of that confidence too. The next tip I have is channel a confident person. I've been sitting with clients around this issue lately and asking them, you know, have you got a friend who you really respect and admire or a co-worker or someone that you're aware of socially who you look on and go gosh you have the kind of confidence that I'd really like.
Maybe it's that it's not all natural and you're a super extrovert. Maybe it's that they've got a quiet confidence that you really admire. That they're not cocky, that they've got the balance of that exactly right and it's them that you're wanting to emulate.
Think about who you can channel and work on how you enter into environments with that person in mind. I'm wanting to show up with a little bit of their presence today. So what might I do differently here? Channeling, imitating, copying all has a place in this area.
The other thing that you can do that I find really helpful personally is don't forget to take time to up-regulate. So there might be times when you're needing a bit of a boost, when you're needing to feel good about who you are and how you are. I've got some little things that I do that make me feel much better.
I've got a little rebounder trampoline and no you are not ever going to see a video of me doing that, but it lives in my garage and if I'm feeling a little bit blah, I go and have a bounce on the tramp. If I'm going to a meeting and I'm feeling overwhelmed, I'm not listening to a podcast or the news or engaging in something super cognitive, I'm blasting like my running playlist. My music that makes me feel really good and uplifted.
So think about how you can up-regulate your mood going into particular situations and how that might help you behave with more confidence. I think one of the key things to say here is that we don't eliminate this confidence gap. We just stop letting it lead and we learn to take action even when we're not particularly feeling confident.
You can grow into a more confident version of yourself. You don't always have to feel stressed and wobbly. You can do confidence more.
And while it's really normal to have those wobbles, you can spend more time hanging out as a confident version of yourself and find ways to build that picture of confident acting so that you spend more time in that reality and the confidence gap closes. I wanted to address this topic today because I see so many people, women especially, held back by this gap in their confidence. And it's not fair.
It's not fair to who we are. We need to be our best version of ourselves in this world. We deserve to live a life where we're not holding ourselves back.
This isn't about being better or being more or being bigger than other people. It's about being who you are in the world and that really matters. So let's do a bit of a recap.
You're more capable than you think and it might be time to update the story of who you're telling yourself you are and where you're setting those limits for yourself. What will you believe about yourself at that next level in your life? And can you start holding some of those beliefs now? Act ahead of your identity. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Count yourself down and get the thing done.
Your behavior will move ahead of your confidence. Don't wait to feel confident because you might be waiting forever. Think about what you're wearing and how you're physically presenting yourself in the world.
Learn to say things cleaner and observe your patterns and how you're communicating. Build a body of evidence of who you are and what you bring so that that can outrun your feelings. Work on your overthinking so you can nip that in the bud and move towards action whenever overthinking emerges.
Notice your patterns around when you speak and contribute. Ask others for feedback. Pick someone to emulate and upregulate your mood when you're going into environments that you need to present confidently within.
Remember confidence is not something you have or you don't have. It is behavior. It can be built.
It ties in with your identity and who it is you are telling yourself that you are. I reckon the world needs you and it needs you to be fully you. And that it is a beautiful thing when you can offer all of yourself to the people around you who matter the most and to the places that you're choosing to spend your precious time.
If your confidence is needing a glow up I really encourage you to give it some attention. And a little plug here if you find these episodes helpful and you ever want to capture the transcript from the episode or some of the main points all of the episodes I cover on my podcast are turned onto a blog on my website where you can see the main points and the transcript of each episode. So don't forget to check that out if you want to capture the tips in a way that you can hold onto them a little more easily.
