The only place to buy real confidence is on your calendar.

You get confidence from the sweat of your own brow. You can’t borrow confidence from someone else. You know this, right? I mean, you can watch Peaky Blinders all day long and feel like you’re Thomas Shelby. And while you’re in the delusion of your computer screen you can feel pretty cool.

But eventually you’re going to have to close that computer, get up and go outside where the real test happens.

Which means that no matter what you are doing right now, you could be working on your confidence. Seriously. Take a moment right now. Push back your chair, open your eyes wide and ask yourself, “Am I building my confidence right now? Or am I coasting on someone else’s confidence?”

Does confidence take hard work?

What do you think?

After all, remember what confidence is. Confidence is the elimination of errors. How do you think you’re going to eliminate errors except to get up every day, face squarely what worked yesterday (and what didn’t) and make adjustments?

And this is not just hard physical labor, although in the end you will feel better as a man when you move your body through space, conquering. (Hoorah!) But you can also develop confidence by actually considering how well you engaged with your romantic partner last night. Or how you don’t actually have a romantic partner, and how you’re not going to get one by sitting on the couch.

Can I be both confident and nice?

This is a big question for guys.

The common wisdom (CW) says, “Nice guys finish last.” But is that true? And why is this question so important for the development of your own personal confidence?

Here’s why: Because you can’t buy real confidence on Amazon. You also won’t find it in the best self-help book you can find. Think about all the podcasts and self help books you’ve listened to and read. When you’re listening to that audiobook you feel great. Wow! What a great insight! But until you actually put that insight into action, you’re just kidding yourself. You’re going to have that same argument with the same person until you actually try something new, and then modify and change your behavior. In fact, you can’t buy real confidence anywhere except through personal experience.

And what you’ll find is that the more confident you become, the more genuinely nice you’ll become. Because you won’t be the pretender you’ve let yourself slip into being by using someone else’s method without personal modification and ownership. Check it out. The most genuinely confident men you know are also genuinely nice, because they don’t have to pretend anymore.

Where do I have to go to get it?

No big surprise here: Your calendar is waiting.

In the end, you are what you do. So ask yourself: Am I just treading water here? Doing the easy stuff, picking the low-hanging fruit? Because if you are, you’ll reap the benefits of that for awhile. Your lazy hazy daze could keep you in tasty, easy living for some finite amount of time. But eventually, your time will run out and you’ll find yourself wondering what happened to your life. You’ll wish for those precious weeks, minutes and even seconds when you were pretending to be confident by riding on someone else’s ticket.