Why the Confidence Advice You've Been Given Isn't Working

It wasn't built for the reality women in tech are actually navigating. Here's what does work.

You know you're capable. You have the track record. You have the wins, the evidence, the receipts. And yet in the high stakes moments, the big meeting, the stretch opportunity, the moment you need to advocate for yourself, an old thought shows up and holds you back.

So you do what you've been told to do. You review your list of achievements. You try the affirmations. You remind yourself how far you've come. And in the moment that actually matters, it doesn't hold. The old thought comes back anyway.

And then, to add insult to injury, you judge yourself for not being more confident.

Here's what I want you to hear before we go any further: nothing is wrong with you. The advice was wrong. And more specifically, it was built for someone else.

Why fake it til you make it fails women in tech

The standard confidence advice, think more positively, fake it til you make it, just back yourself, is built on one assumption: that confidence is the only thing standing between a talented person and their results. Close the confidence gap and everything else follows.

But that advice was designed for an environment that is not the one most women in tech are actually navigating.

We're told to be confident but not too aggressive. To speak up but not take up too much space. To back ourselves but make sure we don't threaten anyone in the room. The tightrope is real, it's specific to our experience, and fake it til you make it has never once accounted for it.

So when the positive thinking doesn't hold under pressure, it's not because you lack discipline or resilience. It's because you were given a tool that was never designed for your situation.

What actually happened when I tried it

A while back I found myself in a new role with a new team. There were very different ways of working, new systems to navigate, and the expectation that I'd show up as a leader while still figuring out the basics. And my brain, very helpfully, was offering me the thought on repeat: I don't know what I'm doing.

I tried the positive thinking. I tried reminding myself of my track record and everything I'd delivered before. I tried to leap from "I don't know what I'm doing" to something more useful and I watched it bounce right off every time. Because the gap between those two thoughts was too wide. My brain knew it wasn't true, and it rejected it like a bad transplant.

What I needed wasn't a leap. It was a rung.

The thought ladder

This is the tool I teach every single one of my coaching clients, and it works where affirmations don't for one simple reason: it doesn't ask your brain to accept something it knows isn't true.

Picture a ladder. The bottom rung is your current thought, in my case, "I don't know what I'm doing." The top rung is the goal thought, the one you're eventually building toward, something like "I am capable and exactly where I'm meant to be." The problem with traditional affirmations is they ask you to jump from the bottom rung straight to the top. The gap is too big. Your brain refuses.

The thought ladder asks you to do something different. Find one thought that sits just between where you are and where you want to be. One thought that is slightly more true and slightly more useful than the one currently running on autopilot. Not inspiring. Not a battle cry. Just true enough that your brain can actually hold it under pressure.

For me, that thought was: I have managed projects before.

Not motivational poster material. But it was true. And from that one foothold I could take a breath, show up, and start demonstrating what I actually knew how to do.

Why this works especially well for women in tech

The thought ladder doesn't ask you to perform anything. It doesn't ask you to pretend the tightrope isn't there or that the environment isn't harder than it should be. It asks you to find what's actually true right now and build from there, on your own terms, in your own reality.

That's a fundamentally different ask than fake it til you make it. And it's one that holds when the pressure comes back, because true is what holds. Performance falls apart under scrutiny. Truth doesn't.

Your homework

Go back to the thought you wrote down after Part 1, the one that's been quietly running the show. Don't try to replace it with the opposite. Instead find one thought that is just ten percent better. One thing that is true right now and slightly more useful than what you've been thinking. Write it down.

That's the rung. That's where the transformation starts.

And once you find it, you're going to need somewhere to climb toward. A thought ladder without a direction is just a nicer feeling, and a nicer feeling without a clear goal is energy with nowhere to go. That's exactly what we're tackling in Part 3, out Thursday.

🎧 Listen to Beyond Certainty Part 2 on Apple or Spotify and subscribe so you don’t miss Part 3.