On Confidence

The difference between success and failure often hangs on a fascinatingly small and elusive concept that our standard education system never touches: confidence.

This is a guidebook to what confidence consists of, why we lack it - and how we can acquire more of it in our lives. On Confidence walks us gently and wryly around the key issues that stop us from making more of our potential. We hear about the impostor syndrome, the wisdom of imagining the great in their bathrooms and what Nietzsche and Montaigne (among others) have to tell us about resilience and courage.

We often stay stuck with the level of confidence we have because we implicitly regard being confident as a matter of slightly freakish and unrepeatable good luck. In fact, as this essay charmingly shows, the opposite is true.

Confidence is a skill based on a set of ideas about our place in the world - and its secrets can quietly and deftly be learnt.