Well there is good confidence and bad confidence. :-) If you are like me you are rational and skeptical, willing to be proven wrong, but stubborn in holding op

Well there is good confidence and bad confidence. :-) If you are like me you are rational and skeptical, willing to be proven wrong, but stubborn in holding opinions you believe in. If you are slow to form opinions, you may not seem very confident, at least until you are sure about something. And even then sometimes you may be confident about an opinion but you're uncertain what will happen if you express it, so you keep quiet. If you're like this, then I think a lot of the advice in this thread is good. Your confidence will improve with practice and familiarity. Try politely disagreeing with your boss. Try inviting some women for coffee. Choose low-risk circumstances until you get used to it and prove that nothing terrible will happen and you'll survive. The good news is that as you get older it gets easier, sort of automatically. I'm 37 and there is a lot more I'm confident doing now than when I was 25. I still have a hard time looking people in the eyes. Maybe it's confidence, but mostly I think it's just too hard to think about doing that and think about what I'm saying at the same time. I don't know how others do it! I look at people while they're talking, but as soon as it's my turn I forget. What I'm trying to say is that most likely there is nothing wrong with you. Probably you are just fine as you are. Thank goodness for self-doubting, open-minded, thoughtful people! So instead of trying to change your personality, try changing your basis for being confident or not. Be patient and don't feel bad at it. It gets easier.