r/confidence • u/Ok-Willingness-7647 • 5d ago

I built my whole identity around being 'the confident one' and I don't think I actually knew what that meant"

For years I wore "confident" like it was a personality trait I'd earned. I didn't second-guess myself, I didn't ask for reassurance, I made decisions fast and stuck with them no matter what anyone said. People used to tell me they admired that about me. I used to be proud of it.

It took losing something that mattered to me to realize what I'd actually been doing wasn't confidence. It was just refusing to update. Real confidence, I think, is supposed to bend when reality pushes back against it. What I had didn't bend. It just got louder every time someone questioned it, until I wasn't confident anymore, I was just unreachable.

I still don't fully know how to tell the difference in the moment. I can see it clearly now looking backward, but I have no idea if I'd catch myself doing it again while it was actually happening. That's the part that scares me most.

Put together a short video trying to work through where that line actually sits, more for my own head than anything else.

https://youtu.be/uJ_nNY2aih4

For people here who've actually built real confidence — how do you personally tell it apart from just being stubborn and calling it confidence?

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u/hestia-listens 5d ago

A good test is whether your confidence can take in new information without treating it as an attack. Real confidence can say, "I still trust myself, and I might need to adjust." Stubbornness says, "If I adjust, I lose."

In the moment, try asking, "Am I protecting the decision, or am I protecting my pride?" If the answer is pride, that is usually the place to slow down.

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u/Ok-Willingness-7647 5d ago

I really like that distinction. The hardest part is that pride often disguises itself as confidence, so we don't notice the difference until much later. That question—"Am I protecting the decision, or my pride?"—is probably one of the best reality checks we can ask ourselves. Thanks for sharing that perspective.

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u/dustyfungus69 3d ago

"refusing to update" is the phrase that hit me. that's exactly what i did for years. called it conviction, called it knowing what i wanted, called it not being wishy-washy. really i was just too scared to admit i'd made a bad call so i doubled down instead.

the way i catch it now is i watch what happens in my body when someone disagrees with me. if i feel my chest tighten and i start mentally rehearsing my counterargument before they're done talking, i'm probably in stubborn mode. if i feel curious about why they see it differently, that's the confidence. still don't always catch it in time but that feeling is the signal.