What makes this observation valuable is its insistence that confidence is a skill rather than an innate trait—which means your awkward teenage self or your fumbling first day at work need not define your future. Most people treat self-doubt as a permanent personality flaw, a character defect they're stuck with, when Davenport is arguing for something far more empowering: that you can become confident the same way you learned to drive or cook, through deliberate effort and repetition. A manager who stays quiet in meetings because she's always felt she "wasn't the speaking type" might discover, through small acts of preparation and practice, that she can actually command a room—and that each successful contribution rewires how she sees herself. The promise here isn't magical thinking; it's the harder, truer promise that you're not locked into whoever you were last year.