‘A sense of trusting one’s self’: how to start building confidence

‘When you accept yourself, it’s so much easier for other people to feel like they can accept themselves and be themselves as well.’ Illustration: Carmen Casado/The Guardian

When I was in middle school, my father told me 80% of how people see you is how you see yourself. This was terrible news at the time, because I was deep in the depths of puberty, self-loathing and figuring out how to part my hair.

Though he pulled that number out of thin air, in the intervening years I’ve found he was on to something – projecting confidence can sometimes be the key to success, professionally and personally. But how does one actually cultivate confidence? And what if our understanding of what confidence is skewed?