It's somewhere between super hard and downright impossible to feel confident about something you haven't done yet.

Why? That's just the nature of how our brains work. Confidence builds on past experience – but in today's world we are constantly facing new situations and challenges.

But whatever your new challenge is, I am sure (just because you are here on Elpha and reading this!) that there's ONE thing you can always feel confident about and draw confidence from.

And that's your ability to learn something new.

Depending on what you're facing, the only experience you may have to draw on is that you have done other new things before, that you are a quick thinker, or an avid learner.

It sounds little enough, but in practice knowing this can make all the difference between nervously trying to get through a situation and (somewhat) calmly navigating the new terrain.

My personal mantra for these situations is:

“I've always figured things out. I'll figure this one out too.”

For you, it may be something different, like:

"I've learned a ton of new things in my career – this is just another one."

"I'm a quick study. I'll get it."

"Of course I can't do [fill in upcoming challenge] yet – I'm growing into it.

It's my next logical step."

I would invite you to play around a little with this mindset shift and hope you'll find it helpful.