Lydia Fenette

I think confidence feels like you are entirely sure of who you are.

So if you walk into a room, you're not thinking to yourself, oh gosh, is everyone thinking that I'm not supposed to be here?

Or if someone makes a comment about you that you overhear something that isn't necessarily kind, it doesn't affect you because you realize that that's about them, not about you.

It's being comfortable in your own skin and confident in the person that you are at that moment, regardless of what other people around you think or frankly, what other things happen around you.

Yeah, I think that there's truth to that.

I think a little bit of it's faking, but I think it probably is that they were tested early on and realized that they were strong and kept following that thread.

Because the interesting thing about confidence I found in my own life is when you become confident, it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Because that confidence propels you to try things and not to care so much about the result, but really understand that it's more about the journey.

So a lot of times I believe people who've been through really difficult things often have more confidence than people who don't because they've already seen that they can stand up again.

They can keep going.

And as a result of that, it makes them stronger.

If you think about someone who's an ultra athlete or somebody who has exceeded all expectations of what their career should be, they're probably a pretty confident person because they've been knocked down a lot to get to that point.

Athletes will stand on top of the Olympic gold medal podium holding that gold medal, but

At the end of the day, how many defeats went into that to get them there?

Many, right?

But they've overcome it and they've learned from it.

So I would think that there are certainly some people who are born with the Teflon skin.

Nobody can knock them down.

But I also believe that there are a lot of people who through small actions over the course of their life have built up confidence and can take that confidence with them wherever they go.

I think it really comes down to pushing yourself outside of the things that make you feel comfortable.