Confidence Grows From Moving Forward, Not Waiting For It To Arrive
By Dr. Scott Zarcinas | Author, Doctor, Wayfarer
What’s in the article:
- Why confidence is often mistaken for certainty.
- The hidden reason we hesitate at the edge of change.
- Why the familiar can feel safer than possibility.
- How confidence may grow through movement rather than before it.
Does Confidence Really Come First?
A year ago, I worked with a client who wanted to leave a well-paying job and become a farmer.
He had thought about it for years. He loved farming, understood the realities of the industry, and had carefully considered the financial implications of a lower income.
This wasn’t an impulsive decision born of frustration or dissatisfaction. He enjoyed his work, respected the people around him, and had built a good life for himself. Yet despite all this, he found himself hesitating.
Initially, he told me he needed more confidence, but I suspected something else.
The Desire for Certainty
The more we explored the situation, however, the more I wondered whether confidence was really what he was looking for.
What he seemed to want was certainty. He wanted to know he wasn’t making a mistake. He wanted to know the reduction in income wouldn’t create difficulties for his family. He wanted reassurance that the path ahead would unfold as he hoped.
In short, he wanted certainty about a future that had not yet happened.
That conversation stayed with me because I have seen the same pattern in many different forms. Someone wants to start a business, write a book, change careers, move interstate, begin a relationship, or pursue something they have quietly dreamed about for years.
When asked what is stopping them, they often say they need more confidence. Yet when the conversation deepens, confidence frequently turns out to be something else.
What they are really seeking is certainty that things will work out.
The difficulty, of course, is that life rarely provides such certainty.
Why Do We Wait?
No amount of thinking can completely remove the unknown from the future.
We can gather information, seek advice, run the numbers, weigh the pros and cons, and imagine every possible scenario, but eventually we reach a point where the remaining questions can only be answered by living them.
The answers no longer exist in our thinking. They exist somewhere ahead of us.
This raises an interesting question: If certainty is unavailable, why do we spend so much time waiting for it?
Perhaps because uncertainty feels uncomfortable. Yet the more I reflect on this, the less convinced I am that uncertainty itself is the problem.
Life has always been uncertain. Relationships are uncertain. Careers are uncertain. Health is uncertain. The future has never come with guarantees. If uncertainty alone were the issue, we would never do anything at all.
What strikes me is that some uncertainty feels manageable while other uncertainty feels paralysing. The difference does not seem to lie in the uncertainty itself but in our relationship to it.
Does Confidence Come First?
Perhaps this is where confidence becomes an interesting idea.
Most people seem to assume that confidence comes first. First we become confident, then we take action.
Confidence is viewed almost like a green light that appears before movement begins.
Yet when I look back over my own life, I struggle to find many examples where this was actually true.
Writing books did not begin with confidence. Leaving medicine did not begin with confidence. Many of the decisions that shaped my life were made in the presence of uncertainty rather than in its absence.
Confidence did not arrive beforehand and grant permission to proceed.
Confidence Grows Through Movement
If anything, confidence emerged afterwards.
Confidence grew through experience. It grew through discovering that I could meet whatever unfolded next.
Confidence grew through movement.
This makes me wonder whether confidence is not something we obtain before taking the step, but something we develop because we take it.
If that is true, then waiting for confidence may be like waiting for a destination before beginning the journey.
We keep looking for something that can only emerge through movement itself.
The Question Beneath the Question
I often think back to that client and the decision before him. What interested me most was not whether he ultimately became a farmer. It was the question hidden beneath his hesitation.
The question was not really about farming, income, or career change. It was a question many of us encounter at different points in our lives.
How much certainty am I waiting for before I allow myself to begin?
It is a question worth sitting with, because there comes a point where no amount of thinking can answer the remaining questions. At that point, the future remains unknown, the risks remain real, and the guarantees remain absent.
Yet the opportunity remains as well.
So perhaps confidence grows not from waiting for certainty, but from discovering that we are capable of taking the next step without it.
Let the Weight Drop
A short written guide to understanding what’s weighing you down and how it releases.
Get the Welcome Pack
No fixing. No pressure. Just clarity.
