Confidence doesn’t come from knowing you’ll get it right.
It comes from trusting that you’ll figure it out when things go wrong.
When you’ve made mistakes and recovered, you stop fearing failure.
You start taking calculated risks, because you know you can recover.
But if you’re so afraid of things going wrong that you never try anything risky, you’re slowing your own growth.
A mentor once told me he made catastrophic mistakes at work every year. And they led to his success – he took on more scope than he could handle, made mistakes, then figured it out and stretched his capacity in the process.
The best leaders I know don’t get it right all the time.
They’ve learned to see mistakes as feedback, not failure.
Their confidence comes from pushing their limits, getting it wrong, and learning fast.
What risks are you avoiding that might be holding back your progress?
Privilege check: Some people are given more latitude for making mistakes than others. Those from less privileged backgrounds can have even a single minor mistake dominate their performance reviews no matter how much other impact they delivered. Only you can assess your own risk safety in your context. But this post is about sharing my experience that we often overestimate risks, and underestimate the opportunity cost of stasis.