What if you can’t time travel?
I’m a little late in joining the Harry Potter party. I don’t usually gravitate towards fantasy, preferring historical fiction or mysteries when I do read fiction. But somehow a preview of the new full cast audiobooks found its way into my Audible feed a few months ago, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
The other day, as I was listening to a climactic scene play out while tending to some rather uninspiring laundry, when I was so struck by a particular sentence I had to set down the shirt I was folding to listen to it again.
Hopefully without giving too much away to anyone else who’s new to the Hogwarts world…Harry had been practicing a particular charm for a while. While he was making slow progress, better each time, he still hadn’t performed it fully.
In this particular chapter, Harry and his friends were in pretty dire straits, needing this particular charm to get them out of trouble. He tried his best to make it happen, but couldn’t quite do it. About to face a fate worse than death, someone else comes in to save the day, performing the charm and saving young Harry and his friends. But who had done it?
A few hours later, Harry finds himself traveling back in time to that exact moment, realizing that it’s now up to him to perform the charm and save his past self. And he does so with great success!
“It was me!” He later recounted to his friend. “I knew I could do it this time, because... well, because I'd already done it!"
That was the part I had to listen to again.
“I knew I could do it this time, because I'd already done it!"
Have you ever seen this shift in your own confidence?
So often, we tend to think confidence needs to come before doing.
We tell ourselves we’re not ready, we need to know we can do it first.
We don’t step up to give the talk because we think we’re not good at public speaking.
We don’t apply for the dream job because we don’t think we have all the qualifications nailed.
We don’t sign up for the open mic night because we don’t think we have the skill.
And yet, confidence usually comes FROM doing, not before.
So how do we get the confidence we need to do the thing?
Here are three ways that might help:
Look for the evidence you already have
While you may not be able to time travel like Harry, you may already have evidence that you can do the thing, it’s just in disguise. Where have you done the thing in a different role, different situation, with different people. If you look hard enough, you may find that you already have the experience you need, it just looks different than you expect.Create the evidence you need
Perhaps this really is a new thing you’re trying to do. How can you create the evidence you need to feel like you’ve already done it? Maybe it’s visualizing yourself doing the thing, writing a letter to yourself as though you’ve already done it, or closely watching someone else do it. Anything that helps you feel like you’ve already done the thing.Build it up, block by block
If that’s not enough, start by building up to doing the full thing with smaller steps. What’s one thing you can get great at now, that helps you build experience and confidence towards the thing that feels a bit too scary? Get good at that first, then take the next step, and the next, until taking that final step doesn’t feel as overwhelming.
Confidence comes from taking action, not from waiting until it magically appears. They only way you’ll actually know you can do it is by doing it, so what can you do to make that happen?
What action will you take today?
Send me a message and let me know. I’d love to hear from you.
April 9, 2026
About the author:
Christina Von Stroh is a leadership coach who helps her clients become wildly successful by applying iterative software development practices to achieve their dreams. Want to work with Christina to help you iterate towards the person you’re becoming?
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