Confidence is a skill. Here is how you build it.
- Lucinda Othendee
- Jun 4
- 3 min read
From our first Bea & Eve Skills Webinar, Confidence as a Superpower, with Victoria Liu, Master Executive Coach
For many women, confidence does not disappear in a single moment. It slips away so gradually that you almost do not notice it happening. One day you simply realise you are holding back, second-guessing, waiting to feel ready before you do the thing you already know how to do.
When we held our first Bea & Eve skills webinar, Confidence as a Superpower, I asked Victoria if she could share some of the tools and methods that women could take away and apply in their own lives. There was far more than I could possibly cover in one article, but I wanted to capture a few of the insights worth returning to.
Victoria began with a simple but important point: confidence is a skill, not a personality trait. We are often taught to believe that some people are born with it and others are not, which isn’t true. Confidence is a skill, and like any skill it can be built. Victoria linked this to the idea of a growth mindset, a term coined by the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck. When you have a growth mindset, you believe you can learn anything. And one small word helps you get there: yet. You are not confident doing this yet. That single word changes the way you see a situation, because it turns a closed door into a work in progress.
The second thing is that confidence is not a costume. The fake it till you make it approach only takes you so far. Real confidence is quieter than the loud, take-up-all-the-space version we are sometimes shown. It is about feeling genuinely comfortable with what you have to offer, and giving yourself permission to share it, even in rooms where you do not yet feel you belong. So much of what holds women back is not a lack of ability. It is a lack of permission. And permission is something you can learn to give yourself.
So how do you actually build it? Here are three of the tools Victoria shared.
The Evidence Vault
Get yourself a notebook. Something private, just for you. Once a week, write down one thing you did that you genuinely doubted you could do. Not the easy wins, because your brain will dismiss those as luck. The real ones. The hard conversation you handled. The thing you learned from scratch. The moment you showed up when every part of you wanted to hide.
This is not a wins list. It is evidence. Victoria was clear about that distinction. Wins feel like luck. Evidence feels like data. And when the wobble comes, and it will, you have proof to look back on. Proof that you have done hard things before, and that you can do them again.
Reframing anxiety as excitement
Here is something that surprised me. The physical signs of anxiety and excitement are almost identical. The racing heart. The sweaty palms. The flutter in your stomach. The only real difference is the story you tell yourself about what that feeling means.
When you next feel that nervous flutter before something that matters, try saying out loud: I am excited. My body is preparing me to perform. It sounds almost too simple. But more often than not, that feeling is not telling you to stop. It is telling you that something matters, and that you are about to try something worth trying.
The inner voice audit
The loudest voice in the room is often the one inside your own head. And it is rarely kind. Victoria offered a way to test it. When that critical thought appears, stop and ask: is this actually true, or is it just noise dressed up as realism?
Then ask the question that cuts through all of it. Would I say this to my dearest friend? If you would never speak to someone you love the way you speak to yourself, then you have your answer. That thought is not truth. It is noise. And you have full permission to put it in the bin.
None of this means you will never doubt yourself again. Confidence is not linear. We all have wobbles, and we always will. But the more you practise, the faster you recover. It is not about becoming immune to self-doubt. It is about moving through it more quickly each time.
That is what we are building at Bea & Eve. The skills that come before everything else. The ones that make the next step feel possible.
If you would like to hear what we have coming next, you can sign up on our homepage to receive Letters from Bea & Eve.