People overcomplicate confidence. They think confident behavior is only the tip of the iceberg, and that “real” confidence comes from deep within the subconscious mind. To have “real” confidence, one must first heal their traumas and reach a state of inner perfection.

Of course there’s a grain of truth to this view: what you exhibit on the outside is often a reflection of how you feel on the inside. Even an actor playing a confident character must on some level feel confident to convincingly portray the swagger of a confident person. So yes, confidence must have some inner congruity. It must come from within.  

But how deep within are we talking? How far into his psyche must a man reach in order to access this elusive trait? Unless you’re severely neurotic, which you’re almost certainly not, I would argue not very far at all. A man must simply decide “I will be confident,” and the rest will fall into place.

Think of it like posture: if you have bad posture, you simply stand up straight, chest out, shoulders back. That’s it. Of course, just moments after you make this correction you’ll revert to your bad posture. So what do you do? You correct your posture again and again until, slowly but surely, the amount of time you have good posture exceeds the amount of time you have bad posture. You are a person with good posture when good posture becomes your default.

It’s the same with confidence, and, for that matter, pretty much every trait and behavior. Any given moment is an opportunity to practice. If you’re on a date and you’re feeling and acting unconfident, you simply correct and carry on. If moments later you’re back to feeling and acting unconfident, you correct and carry on. “Begin again,” as the Buddhists like to say.

Everyone on the planet can think and behave confidently for at least a few seconds at a time. The goal is to practice enough so that seconds turn to minutes, minutes to hours, etc.

It really is that simple. Most men just don’t practice confidence enough (it needs to be practiced constantly), and that’s why they rarely feel confident. And since they rarely feel confident, they think confidence itself is rare—that it’s some holy grail only the lucky few can attain.

Think of it this way: you don’t “build” confidence, just as you don’t “build” posture. You practice it. In that sense, confidence is posture.