Day 2: Relearning Confidence — The Voice You Thought You Lost

Confidence doesn’t return in a moment. It returns in teaspoons.

Have you tried speaking after losing your voice?
It comes out coarse at first, which if I’m being honest, could be crude to listen to.
I wish I could tell you that confidence traveled with me in those suitcases.
It didn’t. What surprised me most in my first week wasn’t the weather, or the campus, or even the academic culture, it was how suddenly unsure I felt of everything I used to know for certain. Confidence has a way of slipping quietly out the back door when your environment changes.
And that’s exactly what happened.

The moment I realised my voice had shrunk was during the first week of classes.
During introductions, every lecturer gets you to introduce yourself, your background and your career focus. Listen, there is something that observing lying vanities does to you. The time you spend looking around influences your own voice if you’re not careful. So it’s important you keep a track record of your wins no matter how little.

I did make an introduction with the loudest voice in class that day as though I was trying to reassert my place. Walking out of class that day, I remember thinking, When did I become afraid to hear myself speak?

In the MBA classroom, brilliance is everywhere; on your left, on your right, behind you, answering a question so eloquently you wonder if they practiced it in the mirror.

Back home, excellence had a familiar shape.
Here, it had many: consultant brilliance, engineer brilliance, biotech brilliance, finance brilliance. Each one loud in its own language.

And when you’re suddenly surrounded by many versions of exceptional, you start to question the validity of your own, quietly, subtly, consistently. Forgetting that you are a part of that brilliance with your unique insights.

Confidence doesn’t disappear dramatically.
It leaves in whispers with your permission.

The Day I Decided to Speak Anyway was on a Monday.

A few days later after the introductions, I made myself a small promise:
Just speak once today.
That’s it. Because my visibility, perception and grades depended on it too.

So when the professor asked for alternative viewpoints in a case discussion, my hand, moved almost from muscle memory, went up.

My voice was not steady.
My point didn’t come out as cleanly as I had rehearsed it in my head.
But I said it.

And then something unexpected happened:
the professor said, “That’s an angle we haven’t explored yet.”
The class paused.
People nodded.
Someone even wrote it down. It was small, but it was enough.

Confidence is not restored in grand gestures, it returns in teaspoons with deliberateness.

What confidence actually required from me was not perfection. Not comparison. Not fluency in the room’s culture. It required something far simpler, yet harder: permission.
Permission to sound like myself.
Permission to not have the most polished point.

Permission to ply a different route.
Permission to think aloud, even when the words come slowly.
Permission to trust that insight doesn’t need an accent to matter.

Confidence wasn’t a thing I found.
It was a thing I rebuilt, sentence by shaky sentence and alot of practice.

What I Know Now

1. Confidence grows through use, not reflection.
   It’s a muscle, not a mood. For every time you choose not to exercise it, you douse your fire.

2. Your perspective is your differentiator.
   You can’t out-Google a Googler or out-Bain a Bain alum — but that startup experience where you put out fires daily is your goldmine, leverage it. No one can out-you you.

3. Courage feels awkward at first.
   Awkwardness, embarrassment, shame and other nouns that embody the feelings that come with trying out new things are overrated in this context. That awkwardness is proof you’re expanding, not evidence you’re failing.

For Anyone Relearning Their Own Voice

This is for the student who used to speak boldly but now second-guesses every thought. For the professional restarting in a room full of new alphabets, MBA, LLM, PHRi and new expectations. For the leader who suddenly feels like she has to earn what she once embodied naturally.

I see you.
You’re not disappearing, you’re reforming.
Confidence is not a place you arrive; it’s a language you relearn.

And like all languages, you become fluent by speaking it — imperfectly, consistently, bravely.

Here’s a Prompt for You

What is that one task or thought you silenced this week because you couldn’t stand getting heard? Revisit the situation and map out a plan to ensure there isn’t a repeat of it.

Here’s a Video for you

This video, though old, grounds me. It is a video by Lisa Nichols, a woman who turned her life around. You will find a lot of gems in here

Here’s a resource for you

Year on year, I use this booklet to plan out my year. You can use it to unpack the year and plan for the new year. Click here to get it

-I’ll see you next week, My friend