You know what can really mess with your head?
Feeling completely confident in one situation and then walking into another one and wondering where that version of you went.
Bahhh. Same person. Same brain. Same experience. And somehow you're completely different.
Around certain people, you don't think twice about what you're saying. You contribute. You joke. You disagree. You ask the question. You don't spend the drive home replaying one sentence wondering if you sounded stupid.
Then there's another room.
Now you're measuring everything.
You have something to say, but you're waiting for the right opening.
Someone else says basically what you were thinking and suddenly you're annoyed with yourself because I was literally going to say that.
Sure you were.
Where was all that confidence five minutes ago?
I used to think confidence worked more like a level you reached.
You build enough of it, become confident and then congratulations — you're a confident person now.
Except that doesn't explain why somebody can lead a room full of people without blinking and then completely lose her footing in one conversation.
Or why you can feel incredibly capable at work and insecure somewhere socially.
Or comfortable with people who know you well and weirdly self-conscious around people whose opinion matters to you.
If confidence were simply something we either had or didn't, it shouldn't move around this much.
But it does.
And I think that's worth paying attention to.
Because sometimes we're trying to fix a confidence problem when the better question is: what changes for me in this room?
Maybe there's history there.
Maybe you don't know the people well yet.
Maybe somebody has a personality that makes you question yourself.
Maybe you're new and genuinely don't know enough yet.
Or you care so much about how you're perceived that you're paying more attention to yourself than to the actual conversation.
There are a hundred reasons.
And they don't all mean you have low self-esteem or some giant internal wound we need to uncover.
Sometimes you're just uncomfortable.
That's allowed too.
But knowing that confidence is contextual changes the way I think about building it. So instead of deciding I'm just not confident, you can get much more specific..
I'm confident when I know the subject.
I get quieter when I feel like I have something to prove.
I speak freely around people I trust.
I second-guess myself around this particular person.
Now we actually have something to work with.
And this is where I think we can learn a lot from the places where we already feel like ourselves.
What are you doing differently there?
Are you less focused on how you're coming across?
Do you trust that a mistake won't change what everyone thinks of you?
Do you feel like you belong before you've proven anything?
Are you more willing to laugh at yourself?
Because the confident version of you isn't some imaginary future person you're trying to become.
She's already showing up somewhere.
That's important.
It means we're not necessarily trying to manufacture confidence from scratch. Sometimes we're figuring out what helps us access what's already there.
That doesn't mean every room should feel the same. I think we’d agree that there are situations where nerves make sense, right?
I mean a job interview should probably feel a little different from sitting on your best friend's couch.
Giving a presentation to five hundred people might feel different from talking through the same idea over coffee.
We're human after all. So the goal isn't to become so confident that nothing ever rattles us. I'm not even sure I'd want that.
But there's a difference between being appropriately nervous and disappearing from the room.
And if you notice yourself doing the second one… get curious about what's changing.
Not What's wrong with me?
What's different here?
That question gives you somewhere to go.
Because sometimes the answer is preparation. You need more experience. More information. More practice.
Sometimes it's relationship. You need enough time with people to stop feeling like every interaction is an audition.
And sometimes you realize you've given someone else's opinion so much authority that you're walking into the room already waiting for them to tell you who you get to be.
That's worth noticing too.
Faith gives me a steadier place to come back to here because who I am doesn't actually change every time the room does.
My value isn't rising and falling with how articulate I was today.
I don't become more worthy because somebody was impressed with me or less worthy because I stumbled over an answer.
That doesn't magically make nerves disappear.
But it does give them less power to define the whole experience.
So if you've ever wondered why you can feel like one version of yourself here and a completely different version there, don't immediately decide one of them is fake.
Both are telling you something.
Pay attention to where you feel most free to show up as yourself.
Then pay attention to where you don't.
The difference might teach you more about your confidence than trying to force yourself to feel confident everywhere ever could.
Want to keep going with this conversation?
🎧 Listen to Episode 51: Finding Steady Confidence in Faith When Hesitation Keeps Holding You Back →