Thought Piece II | Do we want to be confident? Or do we just want to finally be on our own team?

An incomplete discussion...

We are exposed to so much information about confidence - like it’s the goal. Be bold. Speak up. Take the leap. Back yourself.

And I don’t disagree. Confidence matters. But confidence has become aesthetic - like a performance metric. A look. Something visible. Demonstrable.

Here’s the thing. You can learn to confidently do the wrong things for you. You can confidently stay in the wrong relationship. Confidently overwork. Confidently override your own needs.

Confidence without alignment is just performance. And it’s so easy to think this is the way it should be. Most of the confidence we’re taught to chase is external - that is, other people can see you doing it.

But internal confidence? That’s different. Internal confidence is making a decision in your own life and not arguing with yourself about it for three days. It’s choosing rest and not secretly resenting yourself. It’s pursuing something because it’s right for you — not because it looks impressive. It’s walking away from something and not needing applause for the exit.

I was confident in many parts of my life. In my abilities. In my work. In things the world rewards. But I wasn’t always confident in living. I didn’t always trust my own signals. I overrode myself. I negotiated with my intuition. I called it logic.

And the shift didn’t start with “be more confident.” It started with one question: Am I on my own team right now?

The shift was not dramatic, or obvious (at first). It was in the smallest moments. Repetitive, and tedious plenty of times.

It was catching myself overriding my own needs and correcting it. Over and over.

It was choosing the aligned option when it was less impressive. Over and over.

It was sitting with discomfort instead of performing confidence. Over and over.

There was nothing overtly impressive about it. Just practice. That changed everything. Because when you stop betraying yourself in the small moments, something stabilizes. You build the skill. You stretch yourself. But you stretch from alignment — not performance. And over time, self-trust builds. 

That self-trust becomes a quiet, calm confidence. Not loud. Not performative. Not desperate to be seen and confirmed by other people. Just solid.

And when that solidness repeats enough times? That’s agency.

Agency isn’t doing whatever you want. It’s knowing you can trust the person making the decision. It’s freedom from self-conflict. It’s “I’ve got me.” It doesn’t mean you never need reassurance from others. It doesn’t mean there isn’t a process to understand your feelings, thoughts and beliefs about things. But the steadiness changes everything. It’s a built in safety net.

And that kind of internal coherence doesn’t disappear when the day thrashes you. It doesn’t collapse when someone leaves. It doesn’t spike when someone applauds.

It becomes your spine. And in my opinion, that’s what most people are actually looking for when they say they want confidence.

Not how it looks. How it holds.

How it feels when you’re alone.