Confidence is Assurance, With No Guarantees

As someone who has struggled with confidence in herself for most of her life, I’ve noticed that Perfectionism is something people use to feel better about their own fears of failure…

And I’ve paid the emotional price for it.Because to be a perfectionist is to never fully give yourself the chance to try at the things you actually love or to be the person you actually are.

We don’t really stop to ask what confidence even means.Real confidence isn’t about guaranteeing perfect performance.It’s not about being sure you’ll succeed.It’s about being assured of yourself even with no guarantees.It’s about having enough faith in yourself to fail—and keep going.

Because if you only ever do the things you’re good at, you’ll eventually feel stuck, bored, even depressed.And here’s what I’ve learned the hard way:If you don’t try and fail at things, you start to feel like the failure yourself.You spend your life trying to avoid the pain of messing up… only to become the very thing you feared.That’s the emotional cost of perfectionism and fear.

When you rob yourself of the chance to fail at something, you rob yourself of the chance to grow, to become, to feel alive.

There’s so much beauty in our messiness.Life isn’t about always being good or always encountering success.It’s about having the courage to do what we love—and to fail over and over again without letting that stop us.

We so rarely see where the most successful people started.We only see their best.But it often started with a lot of messiness, failure, doubts and imperfection.

But I want to show the process.The fear.The messiness.The becoming.

Because messiness is the journey.And the journey is the most beautiful part of all.

This has been a really common theme coming up in my life—not just because I moved across the world, to a country where I don’t speak the language—but because I’ve always struggled with “having confidence in myself.”

It’s something people constantly say when you’re learning a language:“It’s not about what you know or don’t know, it’s about bitachon (confidence).”

It’s funny how often we repeat these phrases without really stopping to dig deeper into what they actually mean.Like okay, sure, everyone says, “you just need more confidence.“But what does that even mean? What is confidence?

When someone tells you to be more confident, it often feels like they’re implying you don’t have enough faith in yourself.Faith in yourself to do what exactly?The first thought is usually “to succeed,” but that’s not really what it’s about at all.

Real confidence is actually about having enough faith in yourself to fail—and still be okay.Telling someone they need more confidence can backfire—it’s like saying “just gain this thing you clearly don’t have,” which only makes you feel even worse.

To be confident is to be CONFIDENT that you will fail,CONFIDENT you might sound like an idiot,CONFIDENT you’ll struggle,and still CONFIDENT enough to know that WHEN you do, life goes on.

People say confidence comes from doing things you say you’ll do—and that’s absolutely true.But how do we even START doing those things?By getting really comfortable with failure.

When I’m learning Hebrew, people always tell me,“Why are you hesitant? You know more than you think.“Okay—but that’s not the issue.

Even if I knew everything, that’s not what makes me confident enough to try.Confidence doesn’t come from guaranteeing perfect performance.

If confidence required guaranteed success, could we even call it confidence?Inherently, confidence means assurance, but when we define it as a personality trait, it’s something deeper.It’s about feeling assured even without guarantees, which is the highest form of confidence.

Confidence comes from performing badly and still being willing to do it again.That’s how you eventually become great at something.

If you only ever do things you’re already good at, you’ll get bored out of your mind and feel stuck—wondering why you feel depressed, helpless, worthless, like a failure.

Because here’s the thing:If you don’t try and fail at THINGS, YOU are the one that starts to feel like the failure.It’s wild. You’re trying so hard to avoid the pain of messing up that you end up feeling like the very thing you were trying to avoid, but worse.

That’s the emotional cost of perfectionism and fear.When you rob yourself of the opportunity to fail at something, you end up failing as someone—at least in your own eyes.

Failing at something leaves room to try again.But when it starts to feel like you are the failure—that’s something you can’t escape.

I’ve noticed this same thing with my writing and posting on social media about stuff I genuinely care about.

Every time I publish something, it’s not because I’m confident people will like it, resonate with it, or even not think I’m weird.If I had to be sure about those things first, I’d simply never publish anything at all.

Countless times I’ve sat there, immediately wanting to delete a post because I’m worried no one will understand, that they’ll think I’m an idiot or totally off-base.But I’ve learned to sit with those fears and discomforts and just think,“So what?”

So what if it doesn’t resonate?So what if no one cares?So what if I look weird?So what if I fail?

Once you stop fearing failure, you finally give yourself the chance to succeed—and success can just mean trying, again and again.

That’s what builds real confidence.

Confidence doesn’t just come from failure.Confidence is failing.You’ll never have true confidence if all you’ve ever known is success.

Perfectionism is the most toxic poison of all.You shouldn’t do things expecting a perfect outcome.You should expect to fail, and yes, failure is scary—but if you wait for perfection, you’ll never start.

Failing once, twice, even hundreds of times and still waking up to try again—that’s what creates lasting confidence.

Avoiding failure even once is exactly what keeps you from doing anything at all.

I’ve also been thinking about this concept with the “confident gym girl” movement.It really bothers me.

Many of these girls leading this trend have perfect bodies and carefully curated images of strength.Sure, they’re strong, but their confidence often feels rooted in aesthetics.

If you took away their beauty or their perfect bodies, would they still confidently take up space at the gym?

True gym confidence isn’t about being the hottest girl there.It’s about being sweaty, messy, chaotic—even gross—and fully embracing it.It’s about dancing around, taking up space, looking ridiculous, knowing you look ridiculous, and still doing it anyway.

Confidence is the quiet girls who know nothing, who are struggling, who don’t show up with perfect outfits but show up to learn, sweat, and improve—and somehow still find ways to dance around with their headphones on, knowing damn well they look silly.

Confidence is posting when you have zero followers, not thousands.Confidence is trying to speak Hebrew when you know less than 100 words and you know you’re pronouncing them wrong—not waiting until “you know more than you think.”

Confidence is going out in your most hideous outfit and not hiding—not only going out when you’re in your favorite one to show it off.

Confidence is showing up in the world in your full, beautiful, chaotic mess—and still taking up space for everyone to see.

True confidence is doing something even when you feel insecure.It’s showing up unsure, failing loudly and imperfectly—and still choosing to keep going.

And I want to be very clear that I don’t say this stuff because I think I’m above it—I say it because I know damn well I’ve spent a lot of my life suffocating in the middle of it.

Every day is a struggle to escape the sandwich, to breathe, to set myself free. And I hope that by doing that out loud, maybe it can help others own their messiness too.