Confidence is not a trait you are born with or stumble into by luck. It is built deliberately, through specific habits of thought and action. In this episode of The Daily Mastermind, George Wright III draws from Brendon Burchard's *High Performance Habits* to break down the three core practices that separate high performers from everyone else when it comes to confidence: competence, congruence, and connection.
Burchard surveyed over 20,000 people and studied those with the highest high performance indicator scores. What he found was striking: these individuals were not superhuman. They simply thought about things that gave them confidence, did things that reinforced it, and avoided the things that drained it. That is a framework anyone can follow.
Why Confidence Is Not Something You Are Born With
One of the most common assumptions about confident people is that they have always been that way. Burchard's research puts that myth to rest. In every interview he conducted with high performers, not one said they were "just born confident." Confidence, at its core, is purposeful. It comes from intentional thinking and deliberate action, not from personality or circumstance.
This is genuinely good news. If confidence is a skill built through practice, then it is available to every leader, solopreneur, or professional willing to put in the work.
How Developing Competence Builds Real Confidence
The first of Burchard's three C's is competence. Your competence is your capacity to perform: the skills, knowledge, and abilities you have sharpened over time. As George notes, there is a direct line between what you know how to do and how confident you feel doing it.
A key point here is giving yourself credit for your wins. High performers do not chalk up success to luck or circumstance. They let those wins integrate into their sense of self.
High performers ponder the lessons from their wins and they give credit to themselves and they allow those wins to integrate into their psyche.
When you analyze your successes and failures honestly, you sharpen your abilities. But equally important is owning your growth. Each skill you build and each win you acknowledge compounds into a stronger foundation of confidence.
Why Congruence Is the Most Overlooked Confidence Builder
The second C is congruence, and George calls it one of the most underrated drivers of confidence. Congruence means living in alignment with your values, your stated commitments, and your identity. When your thoughts, feelings, and actions line up, you trust yourself more, and that trust becomes confidence.
The opposite is also true. When you tell people (or yourself) one thing and do another, even in small ways, it erodes your inner trust.
Confidence comes from being truthful with yourself and others.
George points out that many leaders perform confidence while privately breaking small agreements with themselves. They say they will do something and then do not. Each breach, however minor, chips away at self-trust. Congruence is the repair. It means saying what you mean, doing what you say, and building the kind of integrity that holds up under pressure.
How Connection Removes the Pressure That Kills Confidence
The third C surprises most people: connection. At first it seems unrelated to confidence, but the logic is powerful. A lot of what depletes confidence in social and professional situations is the pressure to impress, convince, or persuade others. That pressure is exhausting.
Burchard's high performers flipped this entirely. Instead of focusing on how to get others interested in them, they focused on becoming genuinely interested in others.
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
When you shift from selling yourself to genuinely connecting, the pressure drops and your confidence rises. You are no longer worried about your pitch or your impression. You are curious, engaged, and present. As George puts it, it is simply much easier to be interested in others than to try to force others to be interested in you.
What High Performers Actually Think About
The thread running through all three C's is intentionality. High performers do not passively wait for confidence to arrive. They direct their attention toward competence-building activities. They guard their congruence by keeping their word to themselves. And they channel their energy into genuine connection rather than performance anxiety.
This is what Burchard means when he says that confidence comes from purposeful thinking and action. The direction of your thoughts and the habits you reinforce each day determine how confident you feel and how confidently you perform.
Action Steps
- Audit your recent wins: list three things you accomplished this month and explicitly give yourself credit for each one.
- Identify one area where your actions are out of step with your stated values or commitments, then close that gap this week.
- In your next meeting or conversation, set aside your agenda and spend the first five minutes asking genuine questions about the other person.
- Avoid inputs (content, conversations, situations) that consistently leave you feeling less capable or less worthy.
- Read or revisit Brendon Burchard's *High Performance Habits*, especially the sections on the three C's of confidence.
Start Building Confidence on Purpose
Confidence is not waiting for you at the finish line. You build it with every competence you develop, every moment you stay congruent with your values, and every genuine connection you make. George Wright III puts it simply: focus on what gives you confidence, act on it consistently, and stop doing the things that rob you of it. It is never too late to start living the life you were meant to live.