11 Confidence Hacks (from a traveling musician)
Belief in yourself, your ideas and your abilities is important for reaching goals and feeling fulfilled. But it ebbs and flows.
I’m a musician, blogger and traveler and I’ve dealt with a lot of self-doubt, failures and awkward moments — it comes with my territory. But I’ve learned a few tricks that help.
So these are my top confidence hacks.
Let’s get to it!
1. Define What Confidence Means to You
Confidence will mean something different for everyone. So a reasonable first step is to define things for yourself.
For me, it’s the ability to push past specific fears, anxieties or limiting beliefs I may have about a situation.
So, how about you?
Here are some questions to help clarify things:
What areas in my life do I feel most confident in and why?
What are the emotions of confidence?
How do I handle failure or setbacks?
How do I react when I receive compliments or praise?
What’s my take on comfort zones and stepping out of them? How come?
Do I believe confidence is fixed or malleable?
What role does self acceptance play in personal confidence?
2. Narrow Your Focus
There are many types of confidence and it’s a nuanced situation.
It shows up (or disappears) in different places at different times and in different ways.
So this next tip is all about narrowing your focus.
Rather than trying to find a solution to general confidence (i.e., trying to tackle all areas of confidence at once), it may be better to isolate specific areas and work on them individually.
Eventually, everything will come together. But first, focus.
For example, some of my confidence goals are performing live music, calling myself a music producer and realizing my value as a creative entrepreneur.
But each of these areas have their own portfolio of reasons, goals and emotions.
So what should I do?
I’d start by making a list of specific confidence areas I want to focus on, and choose just one or two.
Because focus tends to shrink things.
3. Isolate the Cause(s)
“Confidence is the result of overcoming specific confidence bottlenecks, one at a time.”
Once you know which area of confidence you’d like to focus on, it’s time to dissect things. So grab your proverbial lab coat.
To overcome confidence, it helps to first understand what’s causing the issue. Self reflection helps here.
Going back to my lack of confidence as a music producer, I can start by answering one key question: why do I think this way?
It’s probably related to my comparison habits and perfectionism in creativity.
In my mind, I have this fallacy that if I'm not an expert, I don’t deserve the title. So, I’m stuck as a student.
How about you — what are some potential causes of your confidence woes?
4. Brainstorm Ideal Solutions
After identifying the cause(s) of a confidence block, it’s time to plan and get strategic.
It’s time to brainstorm solutions.
I like to believe that most problems have more than one solution.
So we can think of a few remedies — and each may work in different ways at different times.
For example, some days reminding myself that there are no finish lines and there will always be a next level goal gets me out of a confidence slump.
But other days, this mantra just sounds irritating.
So here are some tips to finding ideal solutions:
Practice visualization
Use ChatGPT or Claude
Try meditation to calm the mind for clarity
Study the solutions of other people
Revisit your strengths and weaknesses
Work on your weaknesses
Try body language and posture hacks (like standing taller)
Practice growth mindset thinking
Practice positive self talk
5. Break Down Solutions Into Micro Steps
“If you have a decent list of potential solutions, it’s helpful to break them down into smaller, more manageable steps.”
Solutions usually involve a lot of steps and require a lot of time, testing and patience. So I find it super helpful to break things down into manageable micro steps.
For example, let’s go back to my music producer confidence issue. Let’s say that one cause for this lack of confidence is a lack of skills.
So an obvious solution would be to skill build and focus on weaknesses.
Here’s how I would break down that solution:
Identify 2-3 core weaknesses to focus on first
Create a list of micro-skills the each weakness involves
Create a daily practice workflow for each micro skill
Rotate between the core weaknesses every other week
Analyze progress and adjust
Explore more:
➤ Reverse Engineer Big Goals Into Small Steps
6. Use Emotion (not logic)
Confidence isn’t technically an emotion, but for me, they’re close friends.
Of course, logic has its place, but when it comes to making lasting changes, I’ve found that feeling is way more powerful — it’s an awesome tool.
For example, we all know what confidence feels like. Or we can at least imagine the feelings associated with it.
So rather than trying to reach confidence, we can try to reach that specific emotional state. It’s a perspective shift and sheds the nuance of confidence from the whole equation.
For me, confidence is an emotional cocktail of things like joy, excitement and pride.
So by practicing those emotions and getting into character (through visualization or doing an activity that puts you in that emotional state of mind), we can inch closer to our goal.
It’s like a backdoor to building confidence.
7. Use An Alter Ego
For me, struggles in confidence often relate to my identity. And the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves aren’t always accurate — especially the negative ones.
So I also like to embody an alter ego.
An alter ego is like an alternate version of yourself or who you’d like to be. It’s a powerful tool for artists and is seen as a positive psychological hack.
The whole process is pretty creative (and fun).
So here are some quick tips to creating your own personal batman life:
Make a list of ideal characteristics
Create a persona (interests, values, motivations, a backstory, etc.)
Get into character
Practice embodying your new role
8. Stack the Deck
“Environment plays a big role in our life. Luckily, we can control at least some aspects of it.”
Stacking the deck means creating a situation that supports your goals and preferences.
And it’s an awesome way to build a more confident lifestyle.
I focus on three key areas when stacking my deck:
My inner circle
The people I spend time with
My outer circle
The content I consume
My environment
My room, home and the places I spend the most time in
While you may not have full control over everything, there’s a good chance that you can make changes to at least one area.
So start small (such as consuming less news and more motivational content) and stick with it.
These things (like so many things) add up over time.
9. Make Better Comparisons
Comparison is public enemy number one.
Nothing blasts my confidence like a rogue, unjust comparison. But it’s hard to avoid as modern life is digital and social.
I think there’ll always be an element of comparison that seeps into our psyche, but simply becoming aware of it can have a big impact.
So that’s step one: become aware of unfair comparisons.
They pop up quickly and without warning. Try to get into the habit of recognizing them.
Then, get into the habit of challenging their merit and making healthier comparisons.
I always try to shift my focus (in real time) to more realistic and more helpful comparisons (such as comparing myself to my past self).
It’s not easy and it’s not always successful, but it is another tool in the bag.
Explore more:
➤ I Hated Social Media (so I made it fun again)
10. Skill Build + Zoom Out
Sometimes confidence issues exist because, deep down, we know we can do better at something.
At the same time, they pop up because we forget how far we’ve actually come.
So to address these truths, I like to:
Focus on consistent skill building
Zoom out every once in a while
It’s a balancing act of recognizing skill issues and personal weaknesses while appreciating my progress thus far.
11. Manifest Your Confidence
“If you believe your thoughts and beliefs have an impact on your reality, then why not manifest more confidence?”
Manifesting involves visualizing some future potential and then embodying the emotions and actions of that future right now. And it’s possible to manifest more confidence.
It’s an awesome hack for reaching goals, changing circumstances and more. And it can work for confidence too. But you just need to believe that this stuff actually works.
So spend some time researching things and take advantage of your mind — it’s a powerful thing, after all.
And with that, I’ll wrap things up.
Let me know in the comments how you like to psych yourself up or build confidence – got any bonus hacks?
Want More? Nice. Here’s More.
