When I was 14, I decided to become a confident person.
As a younger child, I was often described as quiet. Studious, perhaps. Shy.
As I grew older, I didn’t like that about myself. I saw other people being loud, confident and assertive. I wanted to be more like them. I wanted to speak up without overthinking it. I wanted to be noticed, to feel part of things.
So I watched.
I paid attention to how confident people behaved. How they spoke. How they carried themselves. I took mental notes.
A fresh start
At the time, I was living in a very small village in the English countryside. Then, when I was 14, my father took a job in Malta. We sold the family home, moved abroad, and I started a new school where we knew no one.
I realised this was my chance.
When no one knows who you are, it’s freeing. You’re not tied to any expectations of who were in the past. When no-one knows who you are, you can be anyone you choose.
I decided to be a confident person.
‘Fake it ’til you make it’
From day one at my new school, I acted the way I thought a confident person would act. I spoke up in class. I started conversations instead of waiting to be included.
One day at lunch, I walked out into the common area and saw most of my class standing in a circle. The old me – the quiet, shy, timid me – would have hovered at the edge, not wanting to push into that circle.
The new me pasted on a smile, walked straight over and joined in the conversation.
I still remember that moment. Both old me and new me were proud of myself.
It didn’t feel natural. But it felt important.
And I kept going.
Every day, I acted the way I thought a confident person would behave. I smiled. I spoke up. I laughed. I strode. I held my head high.
And gradually, something shifted.
One day, I realised I wasn’t acting any more. I wasn’t trying to be confident – I just was. The old, timid me had stepped aside and the new, confident me was there, standing proudly in the middle of the hallway chatting and laughing with the other girls.
And that’s how I became a confident person.
Not overnight. Not perfectly. But deliberately.
You don’t have to wait for confidence to arrive before you start showing up differently.
You can start by choosing how you want to be – and then you practise it, one small moment at a time.