An Engineer's Guide To Cultivating Confidence

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An Engineer's Guide To Cultivating Confidence

You don't need to "feel" confident to be confident. Here's how.

Steve Huynh

Oct 1

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For most of us, confidence is like trying to recall a specific word on the tip of your tongue. The word comes when the stakes are low, but the harder you focus on it in a conversation, the further it slips away.

We hope we have it before a big presentation. We wish for it when interviewing for a job. We’d love to have it when in a group of strangers.

But we wait for that word on the tip of our tongue to show up and we’re disappointed when it doesn’t.

The word always comes later when you don’t need it.

My wife still makes fun of me for a story that almost stopped my YouTube ambitions before they ever started. Back in 2013, the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay came to Seattle to film an episode of his show Kitchen Nightmares. If you haven’t seen it, Gordon finds a failing restaurant and spends a week trying to save it, which usually involves a lot of shouting.

My wife and I had a choice. We could be diners in the “before” group, eating the original food, or the “after” group, eating the new and improved menu. We chose the “before” group. We wanted to see the drama up close and witness Gordon going off on the staff. A piece of advice: don’t ever do this. You always want to be in the after group.

When our food came out nearly an hour after we had ordered it, it was disgusting. I had ordered deep-fried calamari, and it was not fully cooked. It was cold in the middle and the batter was still liquid in some parts. I flagged down a waiter, which immediately triggered the production team. Suddenly, a camera crew and a sound guy with a boom mic were surrounding our table. Bright lights switched on.

The waiter asked what was wrong. I completely froze. I sputtered some words that didn’t form a coherent sentence. My mind went blank. She asked what I wanted—a refund, a new plate, what? I meekly managed to say I wanted a refund. She didn’t hear me and asked me to repeat myself.

I never did get to see Gordon, though I did hear some shouting from the kitchen. He had no problem letting the owner and staff know exactly what was on his mind.

We didn’t make it into the episode, but the table next to us did. They had also ordered the calamari.

Years later, when I decided I wanted to start a YouTube channel, my wife looked at me with a smirk and said, “You want to start a YouTube channel? Remember the Greek restaurant?”

Yes, yes I did.

I’ve struggled with confidence for years, and none of the common tips and tricks ever worked for me. In this article, I’ll go over 4 REFRAMES that helped me overcome my anxiety, fear, and deer-in-the-headlights moments. If you’ve ever been told that you need to “speak up more during meetings” but have no idea how, this article is for you.

If you are finding this article useful, you might also enjoy the most popular posts from A Life Engineered this year:

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REFRAME #1: Speak for “We,” Not for “Me”

When I look back at the Greek restaurant, my failure wasn’t just a lack of personal courage. My mistake was thinking I was only speaking for myself. The food in front of my wife was just as disgusting as mine. In that moment, I had a team of two, but I acted like a team of one. I was trying to find the confidence to say “I have a problem,” which felt selfish and confrontational. I couldn’t find the words.

What if I had framed it differently? What if I had raised my hand to speak for “us“?

This is the reframe that changed everything for me. We think confidence means having the guts to speak up for yourself. But it’s infinitely easier to be confident when you are speaking on behalf of a group. When you represent a “we,” the stakes for “me” feel much lower.

I discovered this by accident in a meeting at Amazon. I was sent to represent my team on a project where a senior leader was pushing for a change that would negatively impact our work. In the past, I would have stayed silent, crippled by the fear of challenging someone so far above me.

But this time was different. I wasn’t there to represent my personal opinion. I was there as an ambassador for my team.

When the moment came, speaking up felt surprisingly easy. The words just came out, clear and firm. It wasn’t about me being brave. It was about my duty to the ten other people I was representing. My confidence didn’t come from an internal source; it came from the mission. I was just the messenger.

Confidence is really easy when you’re advocating for others.

I was at a busy restaurant, the line was out the door and it was chaotic. I had finally got to my table only to realize they got my daughter’s order wrong. I saw the long line at the counter and thought, “I don’t want to be the guy who holds everyone up, the order was wrong but it was still good food. I hate making a scene.”

But the reframe changed the mission. I wasn’t speaking for myself. I was speaking for my 3 year old. Suddenly, the long line wasn’t an obstacle. I had to do it for her.

Actionable Advice: Find Your “We.” Before your next important moment, ask this one question: “Who am I speaking for besides myself?”

Maybe you’re speaking for your team. Maybe you’re speaking for the customer. Maybe you’re speaking for your partner or your family. You might even be speaking for the other quiet people in the room who are thinking the same thing but are afraid to say it.

You can bottle this feeling. Identify your “we,” and when the moment comes, speak for them and yourself. You’ll be amazed at where you find your voice.

Build Your Professional Tribe

That feeling of speaking for a “we” is the most powerful confidence booster on the planet. But at work, it’s rare to have a dedicated tribe focused solely on your career growth and success.

That’s exactly why I created my group coaching program, Speedrun to Promotion.

As part of that “we,” I am in there with you every week, coaching you directly on the exact skills that hold people back, like building confidence, effective communication, and cultivating your influence.

If you are a tech individual contributor targeting a top performance rating and your next promotion, this is your chance to join a team that has your back.

Stop learning from your own mistakes and learn from mine. This is the most direct way to trade money for your most valuable asset: time.

I’m opening up a limited number of seats for the fall. I keep the groups small and focused to ensure everyone gets the personal attention they need to succeed.

You can learn more and apply here.

I’d love to have you on the team.

REFRAME #2: Confidence Is An Action, Not a Feeling

Here’s a trap that that kept me stuck for a long time. I believed I had to feel confident before I did the scary thing. I waited for a wave of courage to wash over me before I spoke up in the big meeting, approached a stranger, or had the difficult conversation.

But the wave never comes. This creates a paralyzing loop. You can’t get the feeling of confidence without taking the action, but you’re waiting for the feeling before you take the action.

The reframe is to realize you have it backward. The feeling of confidence is a lagging indicator. It’s the result of taking action, not the prerequisite. You don’t wait for the feeling. You choose the action, and the feeling follows.

I learned this from a communication coach I hired earlier this year to help me with my camera presence. I was expecting tips on my posture, vocal tone, or what to do with my hands. Instead, she gave me a lesson that changed how I approach fear. She told me, “Confidence is like a pair of shoes. You just decide to put them on when you need to go outside.”

Her point was that I was wasting energy trying to control my internal state. I was trying to force myself to feel calm and confident, which is nearly impossible to do on command. She told me to stop managing my feelings and focus only on my actions—the simple, mechanical process of “putting my shoes on.”

Before my next speaking engagement in front of a couple of hundred people, I was a nervous wreck right before I walked out. But I remembered her advice. I didn’t try to calm my racing heart. Instead, I asked myself, “What would a confident, well prepared person do right now?” He would walk to the front of the room. He would make eye contact. He would pause for five seconds. He would start his first sentence clearly and deliberately.

So I did that. I just played the part. And a funny thing happened. About three minutes into the presentation, the actual feeling of confidence showed up. My heart rate slowed down. The words started to flow. The action came first, and the feeling followed.

Actionable Advice: Putting On Your Shoes. Before your next nerve-wracking situation, take five minutes. Don’t think about how you want to feel. Instead, define what your “shoes” are for this specific event.

Write down 3 specific, physical actions you will take. Will you make eye contact when you ask your question? Will you place your hands flat on the table to keep them still? Will you be the first to introduce yourself to the new person in the room?

Your only job is to perform those three actions. That’s it. Just focus on putting on your shoes and walking outside. The feeling of confidence follows the action. You start with the mechanics, and the emotion catches up.

REFRAME #3: Focus Outward, Not Inward

Let’s go back to the Greek restaurant for a minute. When the cameras and the lights were on me, what was really happening in my head when I froze?

My focus collapsed inward.

I wasn’t thinking about the undercooked calamari, my wife, or the waiter. I was thinking about me. My internal monologue was a tidal wave of self-consciousness. My heart is pounding. Everyone is looking at me. I sound stupid. I’m going to be on TV, don’t mess this up. When the pressure is on, we turn a microscope on ourselves, scrutinizing every flaw. This is the kill shot for confidence.

The reframe is to realize you are in control of your focus. You have to point the camera somewhere else. You must force your attention away from yourself and onto the external world. Stop being the terrified performer on stage and become a curious detective in the audience.

Your brain has a finite amount of attention. It cannot simultaneously run the “obsess over my own anxiety” process and the “be intensely curious about something else” process at full speed. By choosing to engage your curiosity, you starve your anxiety of the attention it needs to survive.

This isn’t just a mind trick; it’s a clinical technique. For people who suffer from panic attacks, a common piece of advice is to use a “grounding” exercise. They are taught to stop the internal spiral by focusing on external details: find five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, and so on. It works because your brain cannot simultaneously run the “obsess over my own anxiety” process and the “be intensely curious about something else” process at full speed. By choosing to engage your curiosity, you starve your anxiety of the attention it needs to survive.

This is a much better strategy than the old advice to “picture the audience in their underwear.” That trick is adversarial, as it tries to diminish the other people to make you feel bigger. Focusing outward is about empathy. It’s about genuinely connecting with the other people in the room, which is a much more powerful and authentic source of confidence.

I used this recently when I was a guest on a popular podcast. My old anxiety started to creep in. My focus turned inward: What if I forget my talking points? What if I sound boring? Instead of obsessing, I gave myself a new mission: my goal was no longer to “perform well,” but to “make the host’s job easy.”

The conversation flowed effortlessly. I wasn’t waiting for my turn to talk, I was listening for ways to build on his ideas. I was focused on him and his audience, not on myself. I completely forgot to be nervous because I was too busy trying to have a great conversation worth listening to.

Actionable Advice: Redefine Your Goal. Before your next scary interaction, take out a notebook. Write down your current, default goal. It’s probably something inward-focused like, “Sound smart,” or “Don’t get embarrassed.”

Now, cross it out. Write a new goal that is 100% outward-focused.

Change “Impress my boss” to “Understand my boss’s biggest problem this week.” Change “Sound smart” to “Make sure the most junior person in the room understands the plan.” Change “Don’t mess up” to “Make my teammate feel supported.”

When your goal is to focus outward, you don’t have time to be scared for yourself.

REFRAME #4: Confidence Is a Probability, Not a Certainty

One of the most dangerous lies we tell ourselves is that we need to be 100% skilled and certain to feel confident. We believe we need to have mastered every detail and anticipated every possible outcome. This is a perfectionist’s trap, and it makes confidence impossible to achieve in any real-world scenario.

The reframe is to think like a statistician. In engineering, we rarely deal in absolute certainties, instead we deal in confidence intervals. We are “95% confident” a result will fall within a certain range. We should treat our personal confidence the same way.

When I send this newsletter, am I 100% certain what the open rate will be? No. But based on the data from hundreds of prior emails, I have a very high degree of confidence it will land within a predictable range. I don’t need 100% certainty to press send.

This allows me to swat away that feeling that nobody will read what I write.

The goal can’t be to eliminate all doubt. It’s to gather enough evidence to be reasonably sure you can handle the most likely scenarios. You accept the 5% uncertainty and you move forward.

But what about those rare moments when the anxiety is so high that the mental reframes just aren’t enough?

In those cases, you can use a final, brute-force tool: you can channel that nervous energy into putting in more reps. If you are terrified of a career-defining presentation, use that adrenaline to practice it ten more times. Let the anxiety be the fuel for over-preparation.

I put this last for a reason. It’s a powerful tool, but it can reinforce the myth that the only path to confidence is obsessive work. It should not be your default. But for the 1% of situations where everything is on the line, it’s an override switch you can flip.

Actionable Advice: Find the High-Leverage 10%. Think about your next scary task. First, imagine the “brute-force” path to 100% certainty. For a one-hour presentation, this might mean rehearsing the entire talk 20 times until it’s memorized. This is often impractical and unnecessary.

Now, ask yourself the critical question: What is the 10% of this task that, if I made it absolutely perfect, would deliver 90% of the confidence I need?

For that one-hour presentation, the answer is almost always the first five minutes. A flawless opening sets the tone, engages the audience, and gives you a massive boost of momentum that will carry you through the rest. For a difficult conversation, it might be knowing your opening sentence and your key request cold.

Your mission is to focus your preparation energy on making that high-leverage 10% absolutely bulletproof. It’s not about settling for less but about being strategic. By perfecting the part that matters most, you build a foundation of confidence that makes the rest feel easier.

Conclusion: Stop Waiting for Certainty

From the frozen person in the Greek restaurant to the person writing this today, the only thing that has changed is the size of my toolkit.

Confidence is not a magical state you arrive at one day. It’s a system of practical tools you can deploy depending on the situation. You can find your strength by speaking for your tribe. You can act your way into feeling confident. You can shift your focus away from yourself. And you can trade the need for absolute certainty for a “good enough” probability.

The fear will always be there. But if you have a better process for engaging with that fear, you’ll always have options.

Enjoyed this week’s newsletter? Give it a ❤️ so I know to write similar ones in the future.

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