A little over a year ago, I noticed something. Whenever I looked at a cookbook, there were certain recipes I automatically skipped over. It wasn’t that they didn’t look good. It was that I didn’t feel confident enough to attempt them.

I felt fine about cooking chicken, but afraid of ruining most other meats. Whole fish seemed super-intimidating, as did most baking. Anything that required precision timing was out too. Basically, I stuck to what felt safe: sheet pan meals, curries, stews, salads.

But suddenly I felt curious about the rest of the cookbook — the 70 percent of recipes that I’d been leaving off the table. What if I felt confident enough to cook anything that looked appetizing, no matter how it was made?

The Secret to Having More Confidence

So I asked for some cookbooks for Christmas, and I resolved to cook five nights a week. This was a welcome development, as Albert (who had cooked his way through the pandemic) had recently burned out on cooking, and we’d resorted to more takeout than our bodies (and our bank accounts) were comfortable with.

I aimed for 1-2 new recipes a week, and while I mostly chose quick recipes (30 minutes or less), I occasionally tackled something more involved, prepping in the morning or at lunchtime so I could pop a roast into the oven when I finished work.

My main focus was on recipes that featured new techniques. From Nigel Slater, I learned how to slice pork for a stir fry and turn limes and fish sauce into a savory sauce. From Ali Slagel, I learned how to coat chicken in a turmeric-scented flour so it crisped up in the pan. From Yottam Ottolenghi, I learned how to roast whole cauliflower until it turned brown and caramelized. From Sarah Copeland I learned how to make surprising combos like pickled hot peppers and oranges.

Not that I didn’t have fails along the way. But they were less numerous than I expected. And one day, a few months in, my husband took a bite of dinner and looked up. “I feel like I live in a restaurant,” he said. “You’ve gotten so good at cooking!”

The thing is, I knew it too.

I felt so confident in the kitchen. I knew my timings inside out. If I said dinner would be on the table at 8:15, it was, almost to the minute. I was surgical in my prep, laying out my mise en place just so. I knew what I could prep in a 10-minute break between calls, and what needed more time. When I looked in a pan, I just knew when to turn off the heat so things wouldn’t overcook. And the amazing thing is that it had really only taken six months to get there.

What we get wrong about confidence

That experience was a lightbulb moment for me. I’d been waiting my whole adult life to feel confident enough to tackle those fancy recipes. And in just six months I was now a good enough cook that no part of the cookbook felt off-limits to me. Suddenly, I realized that the way we think about confidence is all backwards.

We think we need to build up enough confidence to do a new thing. We read and plan and try to learn all about it, hoping we’ll feel confident enough to try it out. But confidence doesn’t come from reading or planning or learning. Confidence comes from doing.

If we wait until we’re confident to start doing the thing, we will never start, because confidence only comes after we’ve muddled in and given it a shot.

confidence comes from doing

This is true about writing.

We often believe we need to know what we want to say before we sit down to write. But real writers know that you figure out what you want to say by writing. I learned this from Natalie Goldberg’s wonderful book Wild Mind, which suggests that if you don’t know what you want to write about, you should simply start the blank page with “I want to write about…” and see what comes out. Becoming a confident writer means one thing: writing.

It’s also true about speaking.

I struggled with public speaking for years until I was asked to speak at TED, three weeks before the 2018 conference. I felt ashamed and silly as I gave rehearsal after rehearsal to friends, coworkers, and veteran speakers. But the deadline was enough to force me to do the uncomfortable thing and practice. And guess what, I was still crazy anxious on a stage after that experience at TED, but people kept asking me to speak and I had an idea I wanted to share, so I kept doing it. It took about a year of constant speaking for the nerves to go away. It took learning that I need t0 run through my whole talk by myself to feel fully prepared. But I only learned that by getting up and doing it.

And it’s also true about home design.

If we wait until we’re confident enough to pick a paint color or DIY a desk, it’s easy to get stuck. But when we dive in and just attempt the project, we find ourselves so much more confident and able to continue the process. Any action, even if it doesn’t turn out perfectly, build confidence to take more action.

After my cooking experiment, I wondered: if I could get really good and confident at cooking in six months, what else could I get good at through small, daily actions?

How to build confidence

Drawing was a skill I’d been wanting to reconnect with for a long time. I learned to draw in grad school but I was late to learn it and it never quite felt natural to me. I envied my architect-trained husband’s ability to sit down with a marker and just sketch out a fence for our handyman to build. And I looked longingly at sketches from the artists I followed on Instagram. Whenever I had anything to draw, I built it up in my mind and procrastinated so long that the need for a drawing was gone by the time I got around to it.

So, I decided I’d do one simple sketch a day. It could be a sketch of anything, but to focus myself, I planned to stick to one theme a month. First I did flowers, because I’d already had some experience with them. Then I did furniture, houses, faces, and small scenes. I’ve been doing a drawing a day since late August and haven’t missed a single day.

This week, when we fell in love with a vintage bed for Graham and couldn’t find anything like it anywhere, we decided to explore having a fabricator make it. Normally my husband would do the drawing, but this time, I couldn’t wait to do it myself. When our fabricator replied, “Great drawing!” I felt like bursting with pride.

So, good news and bad news.

The good news is that it’s possible to become confident at literally anything you want to. Making friends. Flirting. Dancing. Skiing. Playing guitar. Sewing. Writing a poem. Public speaking. Anything. And this matters because when we feel confident, we do the things we enjoy more often, and we get more joy out of them.

But here’s the bad news: to get confident at that thing, you’re going to have to do it before you feel comfortable, when you still have no idea what you’re doing. If you’re feeling stuck, it may be because you are waiting for confidence to build before you start. To get unstuck, you need to just start doing the thing.

I think this idea — that confidence comes from doing — might be a mantra for my new year. I was stuck on a lot of things last year, I think because I was afraid of doing them wrong. For example, one thing I wanted to do last year was make a pinboard for my office. I didn’t like any of the DIYs I found, so I came up with my own idea, but I was so worried that it wouldn’t work. I bought all the materials, but they just sat around my house for months.

This year, I came back from vacation determined to just do it. I laid out the materials, got the glue gun, and got to work. As the pieces came together, I felt a thrill at using my hands to make something. In the end, it turned out just as I had hoped. I still have to get it on the wall, but I feel much more confident about it than I did when I was just planning to work on it. (Stay tuned for a tutorial on that one.)

What’s something you want to feel more confident at this year? What first step are you going to take to start?

Need a dose of courage to help you feel brave enough to take the first step? We’ve got seven tips for you right here.