Fake confidence is not confidence. It’s literally fake, it says that in the name. It’s pretending. That’s not terrible but if you’re wondering why all this time has gone by and you still haven’t become truly confident it’s because it’s fake! At best it will appear real to outsiders, which is nice, but you will still be miserable as the person who is inhabiting your body and living your life. Fake confidence only looks good until someone with authentic confidence walks into the room and shows you how it’s done. The truth is that most people who fake it until they make it, don’t ever make it. They are just hoping to be perceived as someone who has made it.

I’m sorry to tell you but if you’ve been doing affirmations for years and years and you’re still sending me asks about being confident, it’s not working. I can’t say if you’re doing it wrong, not doing it enough, or not believing it hard enough but either way, something’s gotta give. How many more years are you gonna waste?

You start building confidence in 2 ways: one, you get action-based self esteem. Get some hobbies and work on them. Learn some skills, get good grades, try something new. Do something with your days!! Make an effort!! Complete something!! Scrolling all day won’t give you a sense of accomplishment and when 5,7,10 years go by and you look up and realize that you have nothing going for yourself, you will obviouslyyyyy feel like crap. Reread this point over and over again. Two, get in tune with yourself and figure out what you like, dislike, and truly want. When you really know yourself like that, you will make moves accordingly. You won’t question everything you do and run all of your decisions past other people. You’ll just happily make decisions on your own accord. You will not get to know yourself on a deep enough level if you are online all day and that’s a fact. You’re constantly bombarded with everyone else’s content, everyone else’s opinions, everyone else’s sense of style. Your brain has become a frankstein monster of every other persons ideas. Who are you even? Do you even know? Without a bunch of tiktok girls to tell you what your new aesthetic of the month is, do you even know what you like doing, buying, wearing, how you like to decorate, or what you want to do as a morning routine? Or are you just gonna keep letting outsiders tell you that in January you’re a pink Pilates princess and in March you’re a clean girl and in July you’re that girl. Who are you?? You’ll never be confident if you’re always cosplaying other people. Log off and find yourself.

Stop crumbling every time someone doesn’t like you or what you do. Learn to like yourself! Stop letting the opinions of strangers hold you hostage. Do you like yourself? Okay then.

Remember that being confident doesn’t require you to think you’re the best of the best, the crème de la crème, the hottest thing walking. You can think your looks are overall average, and still be wildly confident. You can acknowledge that you aren’t the best in the world and still be confident. Not only is being less than perfect absolutely okay, it’s rooted in reality. When people try to boost your confidence by having you tell yourself that you’re essentially perfect in whatever domain, that’s toxic positivity and fake confidence yet again. Rid yourself of the thought that confidence always looks like arrogance and lying to yourself about being at the top of the pyramid. Yes you have shortcomings. Lots of them. So do I. And???