THE COST OF CONFIDENCE
Confidence is a powerful thing. With it, our spirit is strengthened, our belief is fortified, and our performance is elevated. Without it, though, our mindset becomes weak and unsteady. We second-guess our ability and our performance suffers. The challenge for each of us is that for something we all recognize is so important to our success, confidence can be really hard to come by. That’s because real confidence isn’t cheap. It comes at a cost, one many people aren’t willing to pay.
The cost of real confidence is time. It’s effort. It’s preparation. Confidence is built through hours, weeks, months, and even years of work that typically no one but you will ever see or celebrate. It’s fortified by the discipline it takes to show up, even and maybe especially on the days you don’t feel like it, because you’ve committed to keeping the promises you’ve made to yourself. It’s forged in the fire of adversity and struggle. Like most things of value, it's costly.
That price you pay for real confidence, though, creates a sense of self-belief that’s not easily shaken. It’s not loud and flashy; it’s strong and steady. When you know you’ve put in the work, when you know you’ve done what others haven’t, and when you know you’ve paid the price for the success you’re after? Then you deserve to step into the arena and compete with an expectation of success, because you know you’ve earned it.
Developing that kind of confidence doesn’t mean you won’t still be nervous before a big performance, and it doesn’t mean you won’t face those questions from yourself about whether or not you’re really worthy of winning. It does mean that in those moments, you’ll have a clear answer to those questions, and plenty of evidence to back it up. When that voice in your head asks if you really deserve this thing? You can confidently pull out the receipts.
Those who haven’t earned that kind of confidence usually have to settle for something more fragile and more fleeting. You might call it counterfeit confidence. Instead of earning it over the course of time - instead of paying the price for the real thing - this kind of confidence is conjured up in a moment’s notice. It’s a hollow imitation.
Counterfeit confidence may be loud and flashy, but it’s rarely strong enough to withstand the weight of reality. It fails the most important test: the one we give ourselves. Any one of us is of course capable of saying we deserve success, but when we know we haven’t paid the price that success requires? Our mindset becomes weak and unsteady, we second-guess our ability, and our performance suffers. We can try - and we often do…but we can’t fool ourselves.
I want you to be confident, to step into the arena and compete with an expectation of success. But more importantly, I want you to see today the reality of what developing real confidence requires. Real confidence comes from putting in the work, doing what others haven’t, and paying the price for the success you’re after. It’s not about trying to convince yourself you deserve it. It’s about doing what it takes to know you’ve earned it.