Things Around the House You Can Stop Replacing So Often

Confidence and competence are at the core of what it means to be human. Unfortunately, for many of us, those two attributes are not equally distributed across areas of our lives. We might be quite confident in our job, but insecure about our physical fitness— or, we might feel immensely competent in building and maintaining friendships, but feel out of our depth financially.

A big part of this is due to the fact that most people haven’t figured out how to apply their strengths to areas that feel foreign. We struggle to trust ourselves in certain contexts, and this erodes the expressiveness and confidence that comes more naturally in other areas.

Noticing people in my own personal life, and reading biographies of interesting people from around the world, I’ve noticed that competence and confidence grow together as you cultivate a certain set of skills. Many people feel stuck because they aren’t confident, but that won’t change until you can prove to yourself (and others) that you know what you’re doing.

What if I told you that nearly anyone can grow in both of these traits, and that there’s a predictable path for doing so? That’s exactly what the rest of this blog post will lay out. It’s based on my own experience of taking certain areas of my life that felt out of control and bringing them into alignment with my values and aspirations. Let’s take a look at the key points I’ve discovered.

Know what you want and why you want it

It’s difficult to be confident if you aren’t sure what you want. You’ll likely feel nervous about the future, and unsure of where to invest your resources. However, this is an easier problem than most people realize, particularly if you’re young and have your whole life ahead of you. In general, you should remember that most experiences end up enriching your life in ways you wouldn’t have predicted, so you should lean more into curiosity than trying to predict how things will go.

Practice one skill over and over again

Sometimes you need to make progress fast, or in short bursts. In that case, you need to gain mastery over some aspect of the job you’re trying to get done. If you work a white collar job which involves a lot of writing, one way to do this is to time box yourself into writing an entire article in a set period of time. The limit will help you to focus and forces you to practice one aspect of writing—speed.

Be quick to apologize when you’re wrong

Someone who is insecure about themselves will often have trouble apologizing. They’ll take the criticism as a personal attack on their character. But as you gain confidence, you’ll realize that mistakes are a normal part of life, and not at all an indication of your overall competency. This will allow you to accept them, own up to them, and simply correct your course as necessary.

Seek out people who know more than you

Confident people surround themselves with those who can do a job better than them. They aren’t afraid of looking bad, only in becoming better. Often these kinds of people will gravitate towards those who are hungry and curious, and will take you under their wing. Acknowledge what skills you’re trying to learn and be a sponge for how they think and how they act.

Identify what you’re good at and do more of it

It is very hard to be confident and competent if you don’t possess some kind of super power. Fortunately, everyone seems to have something they’re particularly good at, and the path forward is to lean into that so that you can gain influence, power, and credibility. The skills don’t have to all come from you. As you grow, you can hire or delegate to those who are skilled in ways you are not. But as the leader of your home, your work, or the light in your social circle, you’ll need to possess some kind of magic, and the strength of your strengths will determine how far you can go.

Attack your problems as soon as you notice them

It’s human nature to avoid dealing with things that make us uncomfortable. We wait until it’s obvious there’s a problem, or we wait for someone else to point it out (our boss or our spouse). But if you want to increase your confidence you should adopt the mindset of a problem solver—someone who tries to get ahead of problems and cut them off before they become worse. This is exactly the sort of behavior bosses are looking for, because it means they can trust you with more responsibility.

Be consistent in the small things

One of the highest leverage ways to increase your confidence is to pick something hard and stick with it for a long time. For example, if you’re out of shape, set a goal to exercise 5 days a week. That routine will have many benefits, the most important of which is proving to yourself that you have what it takes to stick to a plan.

Have a plan for the day

I’ve always been frustrated by the gap between my biggest dreams and the things I know I need to do day-by-day. As I’ve gotten older and more experienced as a human, those two lists have come closer together, but there’s still a gap. But the point is, it’s usually not a lack of ideas that hold people back, but a consistent plan for daily and weekly actions, and a desire to follow through.

Be a reader of good materials

A simple way to gain confidence is to become a reader. Reading will expose you to all kinds of new thoughts and ways of thinking, and it will add to your vocabulary for thinking about the world. You’ll begin to notice relationships you didn’t see before, and see how other people went about solving the problems you now face.

Learn to speak clearly and slowly

In our modern information economy, more jobs than ever before required good communication skills. Unfortunately, this is something that is not often formally trained in school or even expected in college. Since most people are not intentional about this area, the world is full of people who are just below average in their ability to speak clearly. You can stand out by being someone who reads books and learns to articulate your ideas in ways that are easy for others to understand.

Be a person who gets back to others quickly

Many things in life are hard and require special talents to do well. But not all things are that way. In fact, some skills that make the biggest difference can be acquired by almost anyone and with very little effort. One that stands out to me is the ability to be responsive with email, text messages, and voicemails. If you become someone who is quick to get back to people, it will not go unnoticed, and people will enjoy working with you because it makes their own jobs easier.