I have long been obsessed with the concept of ‘confidence’. Where does it come from? Why do some people have more than others? Is it earned, or do you just claim it, like an unnamed sweatshirt from lost property? Possession is nine tenths of the law, my dad used to say, and it seems that those who declare ownership do indeed seem to end up with it at some stage.

I am beginning to worry that confidence just isn’t for me, in the same way I’ve never suited a fringe. I’ve had a few runs at fringes — curly, straight, long, short — but one way or another, I’ve always had to grow them out to avoid looking like a Padovana chicken. Maybe confidence is the same for some folks: a nice daydream, but an unlikely conclusion. I think about it most often when I’m en route to an important meeting, like a job interview or a date. I try to pep myself up, but fail. Instead of rolling over in my mind all the wonderful reasons I am special and gifted and a delight to be around, I end up in a mental House of Horrors, replaying every mistake or embarrassment I can remember. I try on confidence like a fake moustache, hoping I’ll get away with it, but fairly sure I won’t.

“You need to be more confident in yourself,” people have said to me more times than I can count since the divorce. They tell me this fact with great authority, like someone instructing a taxi driver on how to reach their house. They don’t think I should be more confident, they know I should be more confident. I know it too, I tell them. I know that there is nothing more unappealing than an uncertain, 35-year-old divorcee who struggles to finish a sentence. I know. And I’m working on it, I suppose. I have started to write down a list of things I don’t like about myself, in the hope of fixing them and therefore stepping aboard the confidence streamliner that will deliver me to my (potential, highly conditional) future happiness. The list is long, and fairly embarrassing, but I’ll give you a taste:

My lack of nice dinner plates.
The way I buy sour worm lollies even though they hurt my stomach and then hide them in the freezer so I don’t eat them but still manage to eat them in a matter of days despite the fact they are rock solid.
The fact I am learning to drive as a very old person.
My fear of not being fed at major events where it’s not really a food event, such as funerals or afternoon meetings.
The way I look when I am listening.
My front right tooth that seems to be protruding more and more with each year, like a Roald Dahl villain.

And on and on it goes. Everything about myself makes me cringe. Self-help books are scattered across my house, podcasts with Brene Brown and Mel Robbins bookmarked with urgency. When I’m at the gym, I listen to shows about mastering your inner mean girl, and feeding the good wolf, and journalling your way to happiness. On the bus, I read about how to manifest my best self. I meditate and jog and delete Instagram and buy nice underwear and still, still, confidence remains a mirage on the horizon, sluggishly waving from afar with a grotesque smirk on it’s face. “Ha-ha,” it seems to say. “You wish.”

What I think I am beginning the understand is that confidence is actually about genuinely liking yourself. Like, really enjoying yourself. You need to be unshakably proud of all the big markers in your life — your home, your job, your family — regardless of what they look like. “I am a corporate sell out!” you are expected to shout across a crowded room. “I write about copper pipes for a living and bring leftover stir-fry for lunch every day!” There’s no room for the squeamish embarrassment I feel when someone asks me where I’m living or what I’m doing for work. “Surviving,” I often feel like answering. “Doing the bare minimum so I don’t have a nervous breakdown.” All of the things that I still wrongly perceive to be the hallmarks of success — that is, your material wealth — don’t exist in my world. Confidence is something that I suspect I feel will come further down the track, along with a car and an airfryer.

It wasn’t always this way, you know. In my 20s, I loved people watching me. I loved people watching my life, too: I felt like I had curated the world I dreamed of as a suburban teenager. I ran a successful content business, I travelled the world, I dated interesting people, and at that age I still quite liked what I saw in the mirror. I had lots of friends, and was popular, mostly I think because I worked as a host in a nightclub and could get free drinks. Nonetheless, people liked me. Or maybe they liked my confidence. Is it the same thing? And then it started to crumble. I moved city one too many times, found myself drifting out to sea while others were busy building communities and nice houses and careers. I moved abroad, isolating myself further, and then made the mother of all errors in judgement by moving back to my hometown during Covid. Then came a baby, a wedding, and a divorce five months later. I was suddenly in an empty apartment, wondering what went wrong. Wondering if I liked the person who landed me there; that person, of course, being me.

In the time since, I have come to realise how deeply critical confidence is to my success. In order to get a good job to support my kid, I need confidence. In order to date, I need confidence. Secure a rental? Confidence. Meet new friends? Confidence. Start exercising again at a new gym with really fit people and girls that have asses like Megan Thee Stallion? BUCKETS OF CONFIDENCE. To be confident is no longer a ‘nice to have’, but a ‘need to have’. It has dawned on me that I may be stuck in this rut forever if I can’t forgive myself for simply being me, and start to like myself enough to rejoin the world.

Confidence, after all, is an aura. It’s an inexplicable scent that follows a select few without rhyme or reason; it is not formulaic, nor is it predictable. My mother used to tell this one story over and over when we were pimply teenagers trying to navigate the brutal world of early 2000s body image. When she was in her 20s, Mum reckons she had a friend who was a real Plain Jane. A real rough sort who swore a lot and sailed and drank beer. She never wore make up, never did her hair, and generally just got around in denim cutoffs and bare feet. (For those conjuring up Brooke Shields circa 1985, same. This story never made sense to me either.) The boys loved her, apparently. Why? Her confidence. She’d steam into the room full of expletives and presumably bare feet and the boys would fall over each other to get to her. The message from Mum to my teenage self was clear: as long as you present confidently, you’ll obtain the golden glow of adoration. (Also: men don’t like make-up, so maybe think twice about all that bronzer.)

The thing is, though, you can’t just ‘be confident’. Not really. In the same way you can’t learn Cantonese or pirouette on demand, confidence is something that you must learn and practice in order to correctly execute. I am currently studying the teachings of Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, and his vibe was mostly about learning the difference about what you can and cannot control. By learning to focus primarily on things within your control (your opinions, your choices) and decoupling yourself from things that other elements can influence or control (wealth, body shape, fame etc) you find peace. It’s a long-ass process, says Epictetus, and one that you need to work at. “Progress is the result of sustained effort,” translates Massimo Pigliucci in ‘The Stoic Guide To A Happy Life’. “Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, the development of your better self requires years of practice, likely, the rest of the years you have left. Yet, that very progress is the only sure guaruntee of freedom and happiness.” TLDR? With the arrival of happiness and contentment, you will find confidence. It will just take a really long time.

Time is not something I think I have a lot of. I have someone watching my every move — my daughter, Minty. I worry that my inability to feel confident or proud of myself will have a negative impact her and she will grow up to hate herself a little bit, just like I do. At just three years old, I have felt until now that she was in the primordial lump phase of life, barely absorbing much beyond cartoons and chicken nuggets. But the other day, I caught her staring in the mirror, a dejected look on her face despite being dressed in head-to-toe princess costume. “Well, don’t you look pretty?” I asked. “Not pretty,” she said. My heart fell out of my tshirt, rolled across the floor, and lay limp in the corner.

I must fight the urge in these essays to avoid the neat closings I was always encouraged by my editors to find. In a perfect world, I would tell you that I have begun a fearless fight to the death, me versus me, a valiant crusade to become A Confident WomanTM. But that’s not true. There is no more work I could possibly be doing to like myself. It is just a slow, arduous journey that may take many years. But there are sparks. Today, I had a driving lesson. My shoulders are still cramping from sitting so rigidly in the driver’s seat, white knuckled grip of the steering wheel, a flush of shame that someone might spot me with the bright yellow L plates on the rear window. But when I pulled into the driveway after an hour of shaky circles around the neighborhood, I realised I was done. I did the thing I didn’t want to do. I was one lesson closer to being able to drive. I was….proud. Something like hope danced in front of me, and I realised that brick by brick, I can build this life I am imagining. Perhaps then I will like myself. Perhaps then I will feel confident.

It won’t happen soon, but it will happen. As Pigliucci says, it might just take the rest of my life. But really, what else is there to do?