The Day I Got on Social Media to Get Confident and Stayed Insecure for Eighteen More Months

by Maria Williams

I want to tell you something that I probably should not, because I am supposed to be a confidence coach, and there’s a reasonable argument that publishing this is bad for the brand.

I am going to tell you anyway, because the alternative is pretending, and I would rather be honest than employable.

What I genuinely believed

When I decided to start showing up online and talk about confidence and self-worth and all the things I was learning the hard way, I genuinely believed it would fix me.

Not in a Hollywood “and now she was healed” way. I am a real adult. I knew there would be hard parts. But I had this very persuasive thought that if I just kept putting myself out there, the act of being seen would dissolve the insecurity. The insecurity would meet the visibility. The visibility would win. And one morning I would wake up and feel calm.

This was a beautiful theory. It was also a complete fantasy.

What actually happened

What actually happened was that I made my first video, and then I sat on the couch with my stomach in a knot for an hour and a half wondering if I had sounded stupid. Then I made a second video, and I did the same thing. Then I made a third video. I watched it forty-seven times.

I did this for about a year and a half.

I would record something honest, post it, and then immediately need to lie down. I would refresh the comments. I would refresh them again. I would draft text messages to friends that started with “okay so this might sound dramatic, but…” and then I would not send them.

And the whole time, this little voice in the back of my head was going: “Maria, you are supposed to be the woman teaching people about confidence.”

The little voice was correct. It was also very, very mean.

What I tried that didn’t work

I tried a lot of things in that first year that did not move the needle. I’m going to list them so you don’t have to.

Affirmations recited at myself in the mirror. I felt insane. I am sure they work for some people. They did not work for me.
A planner that was supposed to fix my mindset. I bought it. I used it for nine days. I lost it for six months. I found it under a coat.
Telling myself the insecurity wasn’t real. This worked for approximately seven minutes per attempt.
Refusing to look at the comments. I looked at the comments.

None of these were stupid. They are just standard advice. They did not change anything about how I felt.

What actually worked

What actually worked, when I finally stumbled into it, was so unglamorous that it should be illegal to write about.

I stopped trying to get rid of the insecurity. I just stopped letting it chair the meeting.

That is the entire sentence. That is the whole shift.

I still felt sick before videos. I just made the video anyway. I still drafted the text messages I did not send. I just sent something simpler in their place. I still spiraled. I just gave the spiral a fifteen-minute leash and then went and did the thing.

I never killed the insecurity. I demoted it.

It is now a quiet, slightly anxious person who sometimes shows up to meetings and shares a thought, and I can hear her without rearranging my whole life around her. That is the closest thing to “confidence” I have ever found, and I have looked. Hard.

What I would love you to hear

If you are waiting for the feeling to leave before you do the thing, you are going to be waiting forever. The feeling is not the obstacle. It is just a frequent and uninvited guest.

Confidence, in real life, is not the absence of fear. It is fear’s failure to be in charge.

You can be insecure and brave at the same time. You can be scared and capable at the same time. You can make the video, or the call, or the change, or the no, while your stomach is in a knot, and the knot will not kill you, and you will not be lying about being a confident person because you felt the knot. The knot is just the cost of doing the thing.

I am still scared. I am still here. That is the whole trick.

Xo, Maria

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