Want Unshakable Confidence? Stanford Research Says You Need to Master Only 1 Skill

There are people who are confident cooks, confident speakers, confident number crunchers, even confident flirts. These kinds of people know they're masters of a particular domain, and they carry themselves as such when they're in their element.

But there are also people with overall confidence. No matter what situation you throw them into, they remain unflappable. Usually, other people sit up and take notice when this kind of person walks into the room. How do you become that kind of confident person?

Time is finite, so you certainly can't master every skill you might ever need to ably navigate the world and impress others. But it turns out you don't have to. More than 50 years' worth of psychological research suggests that, if you want to be generally confident across a wide range of situations, there's actually only one skill you need to master.

What exactly is confidence anyway?

It all starts back in the 1970s, when prominent Stanford University psychologist Albert Bandura asked himself a question many of us have asked ourselves too: What exactly is it that makes a person confident? If you have two people with equal talent, why is it that one doubts himself and shrinks from challenges, while the other sets ambitious goals and perseveres to meet them?

In a landmark 1977 paper, he gave his answer: It all comes down to self-efficacy, or the belief that you have the capacity to set your sights on a particular outcome and make it happen.

"Someone with high self-efficacy believes they will pass the test, clear the hurdle, or make it to the top of the mountain. Because they believe they can, they set bigger goals, persevere through challenges, and bounce back more easily from setbacks. Someone with low self-efficacy, by contrast, will avoid tough tasks and get discouraged easily," explains the American Psychological Association.

It's a simple enough idea, but over the last 50 years it has become hugely influential in the field of psychology.

The classic thinking on how to build confidence

Psychologists had discovered that self-efficacy underpinned confidence. But that raised an obvious question: How do you develop self-efficacy? At first, the answer Bandura and his colleagues came up with wasn't particularly helpful for those looking to develop general confidence.

In a series of studies, psychologists pinpointed several ways that people develop self-efficacy. They all boil down to variations on a single theme — past success trains us to believe in our capacity to accomplish hard things in the future.

A few good runs on the bunny slope gives you confidence you can handle steeper trails. Great feedback on your writing convinces you of your skill with words. Your mom being a celebrated neurosurgeon makes it easier to see yourself as doctor material.

In other words, we trust ourselves in a particular area because we have examples of past successes in that area to draw on. Which might make you despair that we're right back where we started. After all, you can't rack up a track record of accomplishment in every skill you might need in life. So is developing general swagger and self-confidence impossible?

Actually no, and once again it was Bandura's work that provided the breakthrough.

The one confidence-building skill to rule them all

"Bandura came back to save the day," best-selling author Mark Manson declared on a massive four-hour episode of his podcast digging into the science of confidence. In the late 2000s, "Around 2007–2008, Bandura returned to the concept of self-efficacy," Manson explained, but this time around, he "added to it. He found a broader, more applicable version of self-efficacy."

Bandura's earlier work had found we build self-efficacy through succeeding in a particular area of expertise. But his later studies revealed one area of expertise was different. Developing this skill acts as a sort of master key, unlocking confidence not just in one domain, but in whatever domain we try to tackle.

He gave this magical skill the less-than-sexy name "coping self-efficacy." What it boils down to in plain English is getting good at coping with failure. Manson sums up Bandura's findings succinctly: "Generalized confidence is not feeling like you're going to succeed in every domain you go into. Generalized confidence is a comfort with failure and setbacks no matter what you do."

When you know you can handle the worst-case situation, you can walk into any room or face any challenge with confidence.

How to make failure less scary

How do you become less reactive to failure and better able to learn from it without shame?

Some comedians recommend a form of exposure therapy. Psychologist Adam Grant tells people to set a "failure budget." Ancient philosophy, as well as modern science, suggests training yourself to take a cold-eyed look at the worst-case scenario can help. CEOs like Spanx founder Sara Blakely claim to know how to turn rejection into rocket fuel. Business school professors offer suggestions too.

Manson's epic podcast has no shortage of further suggestions. But the bottom-line takeaway is as simple as it is counterintuitive. The secret to general confidence isn't thinking that you'll be awesome at whatever you try. It's accepting that you'll experience your fair share or embarrassment and disappointment, but believing in your bones you'll be fine anyway.

The cumulative wisdom of 50 years of psychology research shows that if you master this one skill — call it coping self-efficacy or just coping with failure — you'll be able to walk into any situation with greater confidence.

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