The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know

by Katty Kay

The gains came after orchestras introduced a remarkably simple change in how they chose their new hires. During their auditions, they put up a screen to hide the candidates’ identity. The judges heard the music, but they couldn’t see whether the performer was a man or a woman. Based exclusively on the sweet sound of performance, women began getting hired in greater numbers.

From our youngest years, we learn that cooperating like this seems to pay off.

Soon we learn that we are most valuable, and most in favor, when we do things the right way: neatly and quietly.

Girls leave school crammed full of interesting historical facts and elegant Spanish subjunctives, so proud of their ability to study hard and get the best grades. But somewhere between the classroom and the cubicle, the rules change and they don’t understand it. They slam into a world of work that doesn’t reward them for perfect spelling and exquisite manners. The requirements for success are different, and their confidence takes a beating.

She admired his willingness to be wrong and his ability to absorb negative feedback without letting it discourage him.

Eighty-one percent of ten-year-old girls are afraid of being fat. And only 2 percent of us actually think we are beautiful.

If you aren’t prepared to be criticized, chances are you’ll shy away from suggesting bold ideas, or sticking your neck out in any way.

Her studies illustrate that women have an instinct to dwell on problems rather than solutions:

Managers say this tendency for women to overthink is a real hurdle.

But, of all the warped things that women do to themselves to undermine their confidence, we found the pursuit of perfection to be the most crippling. If perfection is your standard, of course you will never be fully confident, because the bar is always impossibly high, and you will inevitably and routinely feel inadequate.

Moreover, perfectionism keeps us from action.

The irony is that perfectionism actually inhibits achievement.

That’s the cycle that breeds excellence and mastery, allows us to stretch our limits, and creates self-assurance.

There are actually two types of brain matter, gray and white. Men have more of the gray stuff, useful for isolated problems, and women have more white matter, which is critical for integrating information.

That’s the science of female multitasking abilities. Laura-Ann Petitto told us that bilateral use of the brain is more effective, and, actually, more cognitively advanced.

When you have a lot of testosterone coursing through your body, you’re less interested in connecting and cooperating.

We were coming to understand that the acquisition of real confidence requires a radically new kind of nurturing, of ourselves and of our children.

Because nurture, in order to create enduring confidence,

needs to toughen up, to shake off that warm and fuzzy image.

“In the past, you would gain confidence by trial and error, and over time you begin to learn, ‘I’m generally right, I can do things,’

Confidence, at least the part that’s not in our genes, requires hard work, substantial risk, determined persistence, and sometimes bitter failure. Building it demands regular exposure to all of these things. You don’t get to experience how far you can go in life—at work and everywhere else—without pushing yourself, and, equally important, without being pushed along by others. Gaining confidence means getting outside your comfort zone, experiencing setbacks, and, with determination, picking yourself up again.

Nansook Park, the University of Michigan psychologist who is an expert on optimism, says that, in general, the proper way to build confidence in children is to offer them graduated exposure to risk. Trauma is not the goal. “They should be introduced to risk taking, but carefully. Don’t just drop them in the middle of the lake. Teach them how to do things, and then give them opportunities, and be there when they need guidance. When they succeed, celebrate together, and talk about what worked. And if they fail, talk about what they did well, and the action should be the emphasis, but also what they can learn, and how to make it better the next time.”

In Japanese they even have a word for it—gaman. Roughly translated it means “keep trying,” and it gets plenty of use.

I just couldn’t let go of the failures, and I barely saw the successes.”

The starting point for risk, failure, perseverance, and, ultimately, confidence, is a way of thinking, one brilliantly defined by Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck as a “growth mind-set.”

Confidence requires a growth mind-set because believing that skills can be learned leads to doing new things.

Making a distinction between talent and effort is critical.

when success is measured by effort and improvement, then it becomes something we can control, something we can choose to improve upon.

The trick is to recognize that the next level up might be hard, that you might be nervous, but not to let those nerves stop you from acting.

It occurred to us that genuinely confident women, perhaps genuinely confident people, don’t feel that they have to hide anything. They are who they are, warts and all, and if you don’t like it, or think it is weak to show vulnerability, too bad for you.

Jennifer Crocker has discovered that people who base their self-worth and self-confidence on what others think of them don’t just pay a mental price; they pay a physical price, too.

The students who based their self-esteem and confidence on internal sources, such as being virtuous or having a strong moral code, did better than the others in exams and had lower levels of drug and alcohol abuse.

Chasing permanent praise can lead to self-sabotage. Raising our children to constantly seek our approval, instead of helping them to develop their own code, will be debilitating for them later.

she took risks, she was persistent, she worked hard, and even failed. And it worked. Whatever she hadn’t inherited, or soaked up as a child, she created.

That means we ourselves, as adults, can make a decision to be confident, do the work, and see a result.

When we say confidence is a choice, we mean it’s a choice we can make to act, or to do, or to decide.

What held them back was the choice they made not to try. When the questions were difficult and the women doubted themselves, they held back. The men didn’t have those internal brakes; they just went ahead and answered the questions as best they could.

What’s more, when you choose to act, you’re able to succeed more frequently than you think.

When we give in to negative beliefs about what we can and can’t do, we don’t seize the challenges we could easily handle and learn from.

So, yes, as Sheryl Sandberg argues, we do need to lean in. We need to act, instead of holding back. And that means, we now know, that we have to be ready to work in ways that will often challenge our most basic instincts.