Many empathic people struggle with low self-confidence.

Jay Shetty points out an ancient insight: it’s actually ego.

This feels counterintuitive at first, until we see that egotism has two sides.

An egotistical person thinks they always have to be the best, and if they don’t do well they have to see themselves as the super duper worst, so that either way “nobody understands me”.

But ego pushes us to extremes, making us self-absorbed and avoiding honest self-reflection. The way out is to embrace honesty. We’re good at some things, average at others, and not so great at a few. Just like everyone else, we’ve got strengths and weaknesses.

In order not to start from a self-absorbed place, we’ve got to serve others. This is something that empathic people do all too often in an effort to please others. Just another ego trap. But we can do it differently. We can serve others, not for thanks, acceptance, or recognition, but to discover new parts of ourselves.

Jeff Bezos has said that the scale of our success depends on the problems we solve. We can shift from being self-obsessed to making a real impact. And this mindset applies to our careers and all our endeavors, not only charity.

But there’s a challenge we’ll encounter doing this, a balance to strike. We want to serve, but we can’t ignore our desire for validation. It’s natural to want some recognition, and we need some level or form of success in what we do. The more time we spend in our customers’ pain and real goals, the better we’ll be received, so the service mindset always helps.

Another challenge in applying a service mindset is focusing on the rewards we seek, rather than on doing the current step with excellence. In order to get the end result, we have to be fully present in our work.

Honest self-knowledge and a deep service mindset in our careers and throughout our lives are the key to authentic confidence.