You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. You need to trust yourself, especially on a first draft, where amid the anxiety and self-doubt, there should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and wool-gathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

A remarkable thing I’ve learned from my research is that in the growth mindset, you don’t always need confidence.

What I mean is that even when you think you’re not good at something, you can still plunge into it wholeheartedly and stick to it. Actually, sometimes you plunge into something because you’re not good at it. This is a wonderful feature of the growth mindset. You don’t have to think you’re already great at something to want to do it and to enjoy doing it.

1.3. The Ego Default

Our ego tempts us into thinking we’re more than we are. Left unchecked, it can turn confidence into overconfidence or even arrogance. We get a bit of knowledge on the internet and suddenly we are full of hubris. Everything seems easy. As a result, we take risks that we may not understand we’re taking. We must resist this kind of unearned confidence, though, if we are to get the results we desire.

Confidence also Comes from How You Talk to Yourself

Self-confidence is the strength to focus on what’s right instead of who’s right. It’s the strength to face reality. It’s the strength to admit mistakes, and the strength to change your mind. Self-confidence is what it takes to be on the right side of right.

Outcome over ego.