Why You Feel Less Confident as You Gain Experience — and How to Overcome It
Read time: 7 minutes
Welcome to My Musings, a (usually) weekly newsletter where I share what’s been impacting me lately, what I’ve been thinking about, and actionable ideas to help you navigate the career and life transitions that might be coming up for you.
Today:
Musing: Why is it that confidence goes down just when you have enough experience to be good at something?
Quote: “Shaping beliefs that cultivate and support steady confidence is crucial for long-term growth.” Raymond Prior, Golf Beneath the Surface
Word: “Disappointment”
Navigating Confidence and the Dunning-Kruger Effect
I am no expert.
Maybe on certain things.
But definitely not on career advice or how to make decisions about your career. I’m not an expert on mindfulness. I’m not an expert on somatics. I’m not an expert on coaching. I’m not an expert on parenting. I’m really not even an expert on being a man (and that is something that, at 42, perhaps I could be...but I digress).
I'm figuring it out, like basically everyone else.
From Novice to Experienced
For the purposes of this article, let’s focus on my work as a coach. I’ve been coaching for some time—not that long, but long enough to know what I’m doing and to have a healthy degree of confidence around it.
My clients tell me so; my mentors tell me so; my certification and accreditation tell me so.
Yet, despite my competence, my confidence is low—or at least lower than I feel it should be at this juncture in my experience and with my level of skill.
What gives?
This is where the Dunning-Kruger Effect comes into play—a psychological phenomenon that explains why sometimes, the more you know, the less confident you feel.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect Explained
Identified by psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in a 1999 study, the Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that leads people with low ability, knowledge, or expertise in a particular area to overestimate their own competence. Essentially, it describes how individuals who are less skilled or knowledgeable are more likely to be confident in their abilities, often because they lack the awareness to recognize their own deficiencies.
But (and it’s a big but), the Dunning-Kruger effect also highlights the importance of self-awareness. It suggests that as people gain more knowledge and experience in a given area, they become more aware of the complexities involved and are more likely to recognize the limits of their understanding, often leading to more humility and a more accurate self-assessment.
Understanding the Confidence Paradox
Let’s go back to me - or, rather, the diagram.
At Point 1 on the Dunning-Kruger curve, we think we know what we're doing. We have little experience, but we’re confident—we’re fresh out of school, eager to work, and think we can conquer the world.
This is the apex of naivete.
As we move forward and gain experience, we also start recognizing what we don’t know. This is Point 2—a place where, objectively, we are quite competent but don’t feel that way. We feel less competent because our confidence has taken a hit, leading to a paradox: the more we learn, the less confident we become.
This is the valley of despair. This is where it all feels pretty pointless (or at least incredibly frustrating).
But wait….…and something changes.
The Path to Enlightened Confidence
This starts at Point 3 on the Dunning-Kruger curve—the Ascent of Enlightenment.
When we make space for awareness of our experience, or lack thereof in certain regards, we start to recognize what we’re good at, how we’re good at it, and where we can improve. And a funny thing happens—we get more confident as a result. Having a realistic self-assessment—knowing both our strengths and limits—leads to a more solid and well-founded confidence. Not because we believe we know and can do everything, but because we understand the scope of our expertise and can navigate it effectively. This humility, combined with genuine competence, results in a more stable and grounded sense of confidence.
In Other Words…
Have patience.
Yes, it’s hard. You, me, and just about everyone else want results now. And, given how our culture and commerce work, we are used to getting things instantly.
But, wait. At some point, the outcomes you are seeking will show up, so long as you keep working at becoming more skilled, deepening your self-awareness, and taking action when opportunities arise.
Your Next Steps to Boost Confidence
If you’re feeling the despair of low confidence around something you’ve been doing for a while and wish you were more confident about it (and, yes, we’ve all been there), try this:
A few times a day, check in with yourself with the following questions. Make notes, see if there are patterns, and ask what you can do with what you learn from this exercise:
What event (conversation, action, relationship, completion, etc.) gave me confidence?
How did I know? Was it a feeling, a physical sensation, a thought?
In what way did my skills allow me to access that confidence?
In what way can I augment my skills to feel more confident?
In what ways can I rely on my skills and my confidence to continue to develop?
Word of the Week: Understanding Disappointment
I spent a considerable amount of time this week speaking with a client about the feeling of “disappointment”—when we have it, how we know, and what comes up when we think we’ve caused it in others.
The word "disappointment" carries a deep emotional resonance, rooted in a history that speaks to unmet expectations and broken promises.
Stemming from the Old French desapointement, "disappointment" originally signified the undoing or failure of an arrangement, evolving over centuries to encapsulate the sadness and dissatisfaction that arises when reality falls short of our hopes.
It most often resonates as the human experience of unfulfilled desire. The desire to be liked; the desire to make others happy; the desire to “do well”.
But, I have felt that its most impactful when it arises in relation to our desire for others to not be disappointed in us. Whether we call it seeking approval, avoiding criticism, or just caring too much what others think - it can hurt when we believe (falsely or not) that someone is disappointed in us.
Next time this comes up for you, ask: how do I really know he/she/they is disappointed in me? What evidence do I have for that? And how can I turn inward to sit with that feeling and investigate what else it can tell me?
Quote of the Week: Shaping Beliefs for Long-Term Growth
I’ve written about golf before. It’s a challenging, fun (sometimes), interesting, stressful, and ultimately psychologically rich game.
Which is why I am reading a book about that—the psychology, not the actual game.
Written by Raymond Prior, Golf Beneath the Surface is actually more about mindfulness, identifying our habits and beliefs, and our stories about ourselves and our performance than anything specific about golf.
This insight is crucial both in and out of golf: “Shaping beliefs that cultivate and support steady confidence is crucial for long-term growth.”
Golf, like life, is a long-term project. And the stories we tell ourselves and believe about ourselves over time can impact our ability to grow, develop, nurture our Selves, and perform in ways that bring us satisfaction, joy, and meaning.
In golf, work, and life—how are your beliefs shaping and supporting your confidence and growth?
Want to Dive Deeper?
I work with teams and individuals to discover their deeper purpose, navigate difficult transitions and answer the call to vocation.
If you want to talk about what’s coming up for you, get in touch.
I hope this was helpful for you. See you next week.
