Speak for Yourself

Chapter Four

Physical confidence

Confidence is a strange word. When you feel good about who you are, and eager to engage with new people and share your ideas, we call that confidence, and with that feeling comes power. It changes who you are, at your very core. It radiates through your behaviour and into the behaviour of others. The challenge with the word ‘confidence’ is that it’s spoken as if it’s an emotion, like happiness, or a personality trait or innate characteristic that some have, and others don’t. It’s not.

A philosopher and polymath from the 11th century called Avicenna created a thought experiment called ‘the floating man’. He asked us to consider a man suspended in the vacuum of space, unable to see or hear anything, arms and legs ...