How to Become a Confident Singer: The Truth About Building Singing Confidence
If you’ve ever dreamed of singing with total confidence but felt held back by nerves, self-doubt, or the fear of what others might think, you’re in excellent company. Confidence lies at the heart of every singer’s journey.
The truth is that becoming a confident singer isn’t about having perfect vocal technique, being born with natural talent, or “just believing in yourself.” It’s about learning to trust yourself and cultivating the mindset and skills that allow you to sing the way you want to.
In this post, I’ve distilled confidence-building down to four important cornerstones that you can immediately incorporate into your singing practice. We’ll explore what it means to be a confident singer, what might be holding you back, and specific skills you can practice to feel more comfortable and self-assured every time you sing.
How Will You Know When You’re a Confident Singer?
Let’s start from the end. Imagine that when you open up your mouth to sing, you have no doubts. Your voice expresses exactly how you want it to. Your mind and body are in sync. Perhaps you hear thunderous applause. You are a confident singer! Yay!
How do you know? What are the clues in your mind and your body that tell you you are confident?
Without articulating confidence, it’s difficult to know where you are on the journey toward it. Confidence is one of those elusive, amorphous concepts, similar to “sounding good.” What does it actually mean?
“Confident singing” is inherently subjective. Confidence could be the bravery it takes to stand up and sing in front of an audience, the ability to recover from mistakes, or an attitude of self-assurance that permeates every aspect of a person’s voice and body language.
If you can imagine what confident singing might look and feel like, it will be easier to achieve for two primary reasons: you’ll have something specific to coordinate towards in your practice, and you’ll be able to recognize when it’s actually happening.
(Thank you to Dr. Shannon Coates for first introducing me to the question “How will I know” as a learning tool!)
Here are some questions (with possible answers to get you started) you can ask to begin defining confidence for yourself. Be as specific as you can.
What will it feel like when I can sing confidently? (free, open, rooted, powerful, reliable, adaptable, playful)
What will I be able to do as a confident singer that I can’t do now? (choose different vocal colors, feel playful, take risks, adapt in the moment)
If I had more confidence, what would an audience feel or hear when listening to me? (presence, steadiness, expression, variety)
What does it look like and feel like when I watch a confident singer? How do I recognize it? (presence, self-assurance, flow, playfulness, choice, expression, gracefulness)
Jot down your reflections in a practice journal or in the Notes app on your phone. Your answers can serve as a compass to guide your practice, as well as checkpoints to measure growth.
But I’m scared! you might be thinking. I’ll know I have confidence when I don’t feel scared!
Let’s get curious about that assumption, shall we?
The Truth About Singing: Confidence Does Not Equal Fearlessness
The biggest myth out there is that fear and confidence cannot coexist. This couldn’t be further from the truth! People “do it scared” all the time.*
As the psychologist Susan David says in her book Emotional Agility, “Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is fear walking.”
Fear is a normal, acceptable, and necessary emotion, even if it can show up at inconvenient times. The goal isn’t to get rid of fear. It’s to walk with it as a friend–and not allow it to plan the route!
There are lots of ways fear shows up in singing. Whenever we try something new or step outside our comfort zone, the primal part of our brain registers this unfamiliarity as danger. Even if you know, rationally, that there’s nothing to be afraid of, your body’s fear response is going to say otherwise.
This is why auditions can feel legitimately threatening and why singing high notes can feel high-stakes.
There’s more. As singers, sharing our voices can be highly personal and vulnerable. Repeated criticism and/or apathy and emotional exposure without appropriate resources will chip away at our self-efficacy over time.
On top of that, you may also have an internal running commentary of criticism that ramps up whenever you do something new. So if you’re performing a song memorized for the first time or your voice cracks unexpectedly in an audition, your brain may start screaming at you to stop.
Fear is not a light switch that magically flips off, and then BOOM! You’re confident! It takes intention, time, and support to shift your relationship to fear, to grow your capacity to handle discomfort, and to build self-trust over many cumulative, small moments.
Again, the goal isn’t to get rid of fear. It’s to loosen fear’s grip.
So if you’re waiting to feel unafraid before you go to the audition or sing in front of your best friend, you’re probably going to be waiting a LONG time.
So how do we cultivate confidence while experiencing some degree of fear? How do we get our fear walking?
(*There is a difference between discomfort that arises from growth vs. a true lack of safety. Discerning the differences for yourself between unfamiliarity and danger takes wisdom, time, and support and is well worth the work.)
Action Builds Clarity
“When you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” ~Rumi
If you are waiting to feel confident before taking action, I encourage you to flip the script. One of the ways we grow confidence is through values-aligned action, ideally when our skill sets and the challenge(s) are well-matched and grow in proportion to one another.
In other words, we can’t think our way to confidence first and then begin. We must begin while cultivating our confidence.
The key to beginning is to choose the smallest possible step. Make the step so small that it almost feels like it doesn’t count. If you’ve never dared sing before, maybe choose a song you enjoy listening to and hum along to a tiny portion of it in the shower.
Sometimes, the smallest place to begin is to ask yourself the question from earlier: How will I know when I’m a confident singer? If you’ve never reflected on this before, now’s the time.
When we take action, we can then reflect on it. What was successful? Surprising? Confusing? Disappointing? Did it move me closer to my goal of being a confident singer? How do I know???
This line of inquiry then invites us to take the next best (small) step. Which is followed by reflection. Which is followed by the next best (small) step.
You see the game.
It’s not about knowing the end result before you’ve begun. (That’s impossible anyway. Believe me, I’ve tried.) It’s about moving out of the hypothetical, where nothing actually changes, and into the tangible.
This will likely feel scary, and that is normal. Celebrate your micro-wins. Lean into playfulness and curiosity. Return to your values again and again to guide your decisions.
Action builds clarity.
How Do You Treat Yourself When the Going Gets Tough?
There’s an improv game I learned from a friend called “I’ve Got Your Back,” and it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Before a show, she and her cast mates spend a few minutes backstage making eye contact with one another and passing this line back and forth. The understanding is that even when someone (inevitably) makes a mistake in the performance, their cast mates are there to catch them.
I’ve got your back.
When the going gets tough, do you have your back? Do you treat yourself with respect? Do you speak kindly to yourself, even while holding high standards for your performance?
One of the most important ways you can have your back is by the way you speak to yourself. Credible positive self-talk is the foundation of confidence AND is a skill we can all develop.
Imagine if you were giving a presentation at work, and your boss was constantly heckling you. Would you feel confident about the presentation? Probably not. You’d probably want to slink into a corner and cry or punch your boss in the face.
Now imagine if your boss spent your presentation listening deeply, asking thoughtful questions, and building enthusiastically on what you share. You’d probably feel pretty accomplished after the presentation–and you’d likely be more willing to give a presentation again in the future!
Now imagine that YOU are the boss in each of these scenarios. Which version would you rather be for yourself?
Sport psychologist Michael Gervais offers an excellent explanation of how positive, credible self-talk is the foundation of confidence in this YouTube Short. He goes further in this slightly longer video (3:38) to share why “beating yourself up might get you good at something, but you may not like who you are when you arrive there.”
The skill of credible positive self-talk directly impacts how you’ll treat yourself (and feel about your potential) when you forget the words during a performance, your voice cracks, or you don’t land the audition.
If you treat yourself with dignity, acceptance, and humor, your confidence will thrive. And better yet, you’ll know that you can trust yourself, even when you do hard and vulnerable things.
Become a More Confident Singer
If you’ve been feeling the call to sing in front of others, join a chorus, or audition for a production, but confidence is holding you back, take this as your sign to take the first step.
Gaining confidence is often a natural byproduct of taking voice lessons. At Susan Davies Voice Studio, we support confidence from the get-go by offering free 20-minute Discovery Calls to help break the ice and a 4-lesson Discovery Package to get you started on your path.
Remember, action brings clarity, and confidence is built one deliberate step at a time.
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