Can I challenge something you've probably been told your whole career?
“Once you feel confident, go for it.” or “You'll know when you're ready.”
It sounds reasonable. It may even sound supportive. But I've watched too many brilliant women sit on the sidelines of their own careers waiting for a feeling that never really arrives. And I think it's one of the most well-meaning, genuinely harmful pieces of advice out there.
Because here's the thing: confidence isn't a prerequisite. It's a result.
You don't build it by thinking your way there, or by reading enough books, or by finally believing you're ready. You build it by doing the hard thing, surviving it, and collecting the evidence that you can. That's it. That's the whole model.
So today, I want to break down why waiting for confidence is costing you, and what to do instead.
Let's dive in…
The myth that's keeping you stuck
The “wait until you feel ready” advice is everywhere. It's in the leadership books. It's in the well-meaning feedback from managers. It's in the voice in your own head that says, “Not yet. A little more experience. A little more certainty.”
And it makes a certain kind of sense, right? You wouldn't jump into a pool before you knew how to swim. So why would you put your hand up for the VP role, or walk into the high-stakes room, before you feel like you belong there?
Here's where the logic breaks down: swimming is a skill you can learn before you need it. Confidence in leadership doesn't work that way. You cannot practice it in a vacuum. The evidence you need to feel confident only gets created by doing the thing you're not yet confident about!
Waiting for confidence before you act is like waiting to feel full before you eat. The sequence is backwards.
And the cost of keeping that sequence backwards isn't small. It's the stretch assignment you didn't raise your hand for. It's the promotion conversation you kept putting off. It's another year of doing the work at a level above your title, while someone with less experience but more willingness to act gets the recognition.
Why waiting costs you more than you think
I want to share something a client shared after a particularly high-stakes moment in her career. She'd been preparing to share a key recommendation with senior leadership, and expected to walk into a room where she would get pushback. And I mean real pushback, from people with more tenure, more authority, and a history of not making things easy.
But to her surprise, it didn't go that way. “I walked in calm, confident, and clear. I stated our direction along with my rationale and held my ground, and the message landed. There was no pushback.”
The most important thing to recognize is that she didn't walk in confident because she woke up that morning feeling fearless. She walked in confident because she had done the preparation, made the decision, and committed to her position before she ever opened the door.
The confidence was the output of her action, not the input.
That's the shift. That's everything.
When you keep waiting until you feel ready, you also keep denying yourself the exact experiences that would make you feel ready. Every time you hold back, you send yourself a signal: “I'm not sure I can do this.” And that signal compounds. Over months. Over years. Until the gap between where you are and where you want to be feels enormous, and the idea of crossing it feels even more daunting than it did before.
What to do instead: collect evidence
If confidence is built on evidence, then your job isn't to wait for the feeling. Your job is to go out and collect the proof.
This is what that looks like in practice:
• Do the hard thing before you feel ready. Take the meeting. Send the proposal. Put up your hand for the stretch assignment. Have the conversation you've been avoiding for weeks. Not because you're certain it'll go perfectly, but because doing it creates data.
• Notice what happens. Not just whether it went well, but that you got through it. You spoke up, and the world didn't end. You held your ground, and the room respected it. You asked for more, and they said yes. That's evidence.
• Build the file. Literally. I call it a ‘brag sheet'. Keep a running record of the times you did the hard thing, the outcomes and wins, and the decisions you made. On the days when imposter syndrome is loudest, that file is your counter-argument.
• Repeat. Every rep adds to the record. Every hard thing you do makes the next hard thing feel slightly less impossible.
This is not a mindset hack. It's not positive thinking. It's a practical, repeatable process, and it works because it's grounded in reality. Your reality. The things you've actually done.
Here's where it comes back to you
I know some of you are in this right now. Delaying a conversation you keep meaning to have. Going back and forth on applying for a role you know is a stretch. Maybe second-guessing that opportunity that feels exciting but a little too scary.
And the story you're telling yourself is that you'll do it when you feel more confident.
I want you to consider the possibility that the confidence you're waiting for is on the other side of doing it, not on this side. You can't think your way across that gap. You have to make the call to walk across that gap, and let the evidence accumulate as you go.
And if this resonated with you, I want to personally invite you to my upcoming free, live masterclass.
We're going deep on what it actually takes to move into VP-level leadership, and the things that may be holding you back today that you don't even recognize. Spend 90 minutes with me, and walk away with the key insights that may just change everything for you.
Until next time friends… ✌️💜
Katy
