How to build your confidence — and spark it in others | Brittany Packnett Cunningham (re-release)

Summary

---

Episode Overview

Podcast: TED Talks Daily
Episode: How to build your confidence — and spark it in others | Brittany Packnett Cunningham (re-release)
Release Date: November 1, 2025
Speaker: Brittany Packnett Cunningham (TED 2019 Talk)
Main Theme:
This episode features educator and activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham as she explores the “code of confidence”—what it is, why it’s essential, and how to both cultivate it in yourself and help spark it in others. Drawing on her experience as a Black woman, a teacher, and a leader, Brittany shares memorable stories and actionable strategies to develop what she calls “revolutionary confidence,” making a compelling case that confidence is not just a “soft skill” but a vital ingredient for turning dreams into reality, especially for those whom society often sidelines.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Meaning and Importance of Confidence

• Personal Definition:
  Brittany opens with a memory of a book featuring activist Septima Clark, whose image defined confidence for her, saying,

  “Confidence is something that we underestimate the importance of. We treat it like a nice to have instead of a must have.”
  ([04:41])

• Beyond Knowledge and Resources:
  Despite society’s focus on knowledge and resources, Brittany argues,

  "If knowledge and resources were all that we needed, we wouldn't still be here. And I believe that confidence is one of the main things missing from the equation."
  ([05:06])

• Why It Matters:
  Confidence is described as the vital “spark” before action, essential for moving from inspiration to implementation and for persisting despite failure.

  “Confidence is the difference between being inspired and actually getting started, between trying and doing until it's done. Confidence helps us keep going even when we failed.”
  ([06:02])

Classroom Stories: Building and Breaking Confidence

• Jamal’s Story:
  Jamal, a brilliant but unfocused student, initially struggled with participation. Brittany negotiated alternative ways for him to work, ultimately building his confidence to share his writing aloud for the first time. The class’s reaction was powerful:

  “The entire class erupted into applause. A standing ovation for our brave friend Jamal, who finally showed up as his most confident self for the first time that year.”
  ([08:44])

• Regina’s Story:
  Regina finished her work early and became a distraction; Brittany admits she chose control over support, resulting in extinguishing Regina’s spark of confidence:

  “My approach communicated to Regina that she herself was a distraction. I watched the light go out from her eyes... I have literally prayed that I did not do irreparable harm.”
  ([10:07])

The High Stakes of Confidence for the Marginalized

• Confidence as a “Revolutionary Choice”:
  Many students were the last people society invites to be confident, but Brittany insists their confidence is crucial:

  “For some of us, confidence is a revolutionary choice, and it would be our greatest shame to see our best ideas go unrealized and our brightest dreams go unreached, all because we lacked the engine of confidence.”
  ([11:27])

The Confidence Code: Permission, Community, Curiosity

• Three Pillars:
  Brittany lays out her formula for confidence:
  1. Permission – Needed to exist
  2. Community – Nurtures confidence
  3. Curiosity – Affirms and strengthens it
• Permission:
  Story of Brittany’s mother negotiating at car dealerships:

  “What she was actually doing was giving me permission to defy expectations and to show up confidently in my skill no matter who doubts me. Confidence needs permission to exist.”
  ([12:38])

• Community:
  Experience with Team Lioness, all-female Maasai rangers, showing how confidence is sustained by others:

  “I asked Purity … do you ever get scared? She said, ‘Of course I do. But I call on my sisters. They remind me that we will be better than these men and that we will not fail.’”
  ([13:39])

• Curiosity:
  Example of a manager debriefing a failed event, opening with,

  “‘What was your intention?’ … that question invited me to learn from my own mistakes instead of damage my already fragile confidence, curiosity invites people to be in charge of their own learning.”
  ([14:24])

Vision for a More Confident World

• Building the World We Dream:
  Brittany paints her vision:

  “A world that knows that that kind of confidence is exactly the key we need to unlock the future that we want. I have enough confidence to believe that that world will indeed come to pass and that we are the ones to make it so.”
  ([15:37])

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Confidence is the necessary spark before everything that follows.” ([06:06])
• “A lack of confidence pulls us down from the bottom and weighs us down from the top, crushing us between a flurry, of can'ts, won'ts, and impossibles.” ([10:27])
• “Permission births confidence, community nurtures it, and curiosity affirms it.” ([12:04])
• “If I am ever in doubt, I need you to be there to restore my hope and to rebuild my certainty in confidence I can find in community.” ([13:55])
• “None of us are free until all of us are free.” ([15:17])

---

Key Timestamps

• [03:09] – Opening anecdote: The portrait of Septima Clark and the lesson in confidence
• [06:02] – Confidence as the spark: why it is foundational
• [08:00] – Jamal’s story: creativity in nurturing confidence
• [10:00] – Regina’s story: realizing the cost of extinguishing confidence
• [11:27] – The revolutionary importance of confidence for marginalized people
• [12:04] – The Confidence Code: permission, community, curiosity
• [12:38] – Mother’s car dealership negotiations and the lesson of permission
• [13:39] – Team Lioness: sisterhood as a source of strength
• [14:24] – Learning from failure: the power of curiosity and supportive management
• [15:37] – Vision for a confident, just, and inclusive future

---

Tone & Language

• Brittany’s style is warm, emotionally resonant, candid, and empowering. She uses vivid storytelling and sincere self-reflection, inviting listeners to recognize both the vulnerability and the strength involved in the pursuit of confidence, especially for those excluded by typical power structures.

---

Conclusion

In this TED Talk, Brittany Packnett Cunningham makes an impassioned argument that confidence is essential—not optional—for achieving change, both personal and societal. By breaking down how confidence is granted, built, and affirmed via permission, community, and curiosity, she provides both practical advice and galvanizing inspiration for anyone seeking to empower themselves or others. Her storytelling—from classroom lessons to cross-cultural sisterhood—makes a clear case: the world we dream of requires radical, inclusive confidence, and it’s both our right and our responsibility to realize it.

---

Transcript

[Sleep Number Representative]

Why Choose a Sleep Number Smart Bed.

[Customer]

Can I make my site softer?

[Sleep Number Representative]

Can I make my site firmer?

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

Can we sleep cooler?

[Sleep Number Representative]

Sleep Number does that cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side your Sleep number setting Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night and now max out your savings. The more you buy, the more you save on beds, bases and more. Plus get free home delivery on any smart bed with base limited time. Check it out at a Sleep Number store near you [e-mail] today.

[Wise App Advertiser]

This podcast is brought to you by Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. With Wise, you can send, spend and receive up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps and save up to 55% compared to major banks. Plus, wise won't add hidden fees to your transfer. Whether you're buying souvenirs with pesos in Puerto Vallarta or sending Euros to a loved one in Paris, you know you're getting a fair exchange rate with no extra markups. Be Smart join the 15 million customers who choose Wise. Download the Wyze app today or visit wise.com Learn more by visiting wise.com US Compare Ts and Cs Apply.

[Podcast Host Elise Hu]

This episode is sponsored by Framer. Every creative project starts with an idea, but too often the tools we use get in the way. Framer is changing that. Framer already built the fastest way to publish beautiful production ready websites and it's now redefining how we design for the web with the recent launch of Design Pages, a free canvas based design tool. Framer is more than a site builder. It's a true all in one design platform. From social assets to campaign visuals to vectors and icons, all the way to a live site, Framer is where ideas go live, start to finish, and Framer is completely free. That means unlimited projects, unlimited pages, and unlimited collaborators with powerful features like vectors, gradients, 3D transforms and wireframes built right in. Ready to design, iterate and publish all in one tool. Start creating for [e-mail] design and use code TED for a free month of framer pro. That's framer.com design promo code TED framer.com design promo code Ted rules and restrictions may apply. You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. It's an English phrase that many of us have heard or said to each other in moments of doubt or struggle, fake it till you make means to act with confidence, even if you don't feel that way initially in the hope that it will eventually become your reality. But the question is, how do we find the confidence to act? In this inspiring archive talk from 2019, educator and activist Brittany Paknet Cunningham shares three ways to crack the code of finding, develop and embodying what she calls revolutionary confidence to turn your most ambitious dreams into reality.

[Brittany Packnett Cunningham]

So when I was a little girl, a book sat on the coffee table in our living room, just steps from our front door. And the living room is a first impression. Ours had white carpet and a curio of my mother's most treasured collectibles. That room represented the sacrifices of generations gone by who, by poverty or by policy, couldn't afford a curio of collectibles, let alone a middle class house to put them in. That room had to stay perfect. But I would risk messing up that perfect room every day just to see that book. On the COVID sat a woman named Septima Clark. She sat in perfect profile with her face raised to the sky. She had perfect salt and pepper cornrows plaited down the sides of her head, and pride and wisdom just emanated from her dark skin. Septima Clark was an activist and an educator, a woman after whom I'd eventually model my own career. But more than all the words she ever spoke, that single portrait of Septima Clark, it defined confidence for me before I ever even knew the word. It may sound simple, but confidence is something that we underestimate the importance of. We treat it like a nice to have instead of a must have. We place value on knowledge and resources above what we deem to be the soft skill of confidence. But by most measures, we have more knowledge and more resources now than in any other point in history. And still, still injustice abounds and challenges persist. If knowledge and resources were all that we needed, we wouldn't still be here. And I believe that confidence is one of the main things missing from the equation. I'm completely obsessed with confidence. It's been the most important journey of my life, a journey that, to be honest, I'm still on. Confidence is the necessary spark before everything that follows. Confidence is the difference between being inspired and actually getting started, between trying and doing until it's done. Confidence helps us keep going even when we failed. The name of the book on that coffee table was I Dream a World. And today I dream a world where revolutionary confidence helps bring about our most ambitious dreams into reality. That's exactly the kind of world that I wanted to create in my classroom when I was a teacher like a Willy Wonka world of pure imagination. But make it scholarly. All of my students were black or brown. All of them were growing up in a low income circumstance. Some of them were immigrants, Some of them were disabled. But all of them were the very last people this world invites to be confident. That's why it was so important that my classroom be a place where my students could build the muscle of confidence. Where they could learn to face each day with the confidence you need to redesign the world in the image of your own dreams. After all, what are academic skills without the confidence to use those skills to go out and change the world? Now is when I should tell you about two of my students, Jamal and Regina. Now I've changed their names, but their stories remain the same. Jamal was brilliant but unfocused. He would squirm in his chair during independent work. And he would never stay still for more than three or four minutes. Students like Jamal can perplex brand new teachers because they're not quite sure how to support young people like him. I took a direct approach. I negotiated with Jamal. If he could give me focus work, then he could do it from anywhere in the classroom. From our classroom rug, from behind my desk. From inside his classroom locker, which turned out to be his favorite place. Jamal's least favorite subject was writing. And he never wanted to read what he had written out loud in class. But we were still making progress. One day, I decided to host a mock 2008 presidential election in my classroom. My third graders had to research and write a stump speech for their chosen candidate. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or John McCain. The heavy favorites were obvious, but one Student chose John McCain. It was Jamal. Jamal finally decided to read something that he had written out loud in class. And sure enough, Jamal stunned all of us with his brilliance. Just like Jamal's dad, John McCain was was a veteran. And just like Jamal's dad, protected him. Jamal believed that John McCain would protect the entire country. He wasn't my candidate of choice, but it didn't matter because the entire class erupted into applause. A standing ovation for our brave friend Jamal, who finally showed up as his most confident self for the first time that year. And then there was Regina. Regina was equally as brilliant but active. She'd inevitably finish her work early. And then she'd get on about the business of distracting other students. Walking, talking, passing those notes that teachers hate, that kids love. Despite my high ideals for our classroom, I would too often default to my baser instincts. And I would choose compliance over confidence. Regina was A glitch in my intended system. A good teacher can correct misbehavior but still remain a student's champion. But on one day in particular, I just plain old chose control. I snapped. And my approach didn't communicate to Regina that she was being a distraction. My approach communicated to Regina that she herself was a distraction. I watched the light go out from her eyes, and that light sparked joy in our classroom. I had just extinguished it. The entire class became irritable, and we didn't recover for the rest of the day. I think about that day often, and I have literally prayed that I did not do irreparable harm. Because as a woman who used to be a little girl just like Regina, I know that I could have started the process of killing her Confidence forever. A lack of confidence pulls us down from the bottom and weighs us down from the top, crushing us between a flurry, of can'ts, won'ts, and impossibles. Without confidence, we get stuck. And when we get stuck, we can't even get started. Instead of getting mired in what can get in our way, confidence invites us to perform with certainty. We all operate a little differently when we're sure we can win versus if we just hope we will. This can be a helpful check. If you don't have enough confidence, it could be because you need to readjust your goal. If you have too much confidence, it could be because you're not rooted in something real. Not everyone lacks confidence. We make it easier in this society for some people to gain confidence because they fit our preferred archetype of leadership. We reward confidence in some people, and we punish confidence in others. And all the while, far too many people are walking around every single day without it. For some of us, confidence is a revolutionary choice, and it would be our greatest shame to see our best ideas go unrealized and our brightest dreams go unreached, all because we lacked the engine of confidence. That's not a risk I'm willing to take. So how do we crack the code on confidence? In my estimation, it takes at least three permission, community, and curiosity. Permission births confidence, community nurtures it, and curiosity affirms it. In education, we've got a saying that you can't be what you can't see. When I was a little girl, I couldn't show confidence until someone showed me. My family used to do everything together, including the mundane things like buying a new car. And every time we did this, I'd watch my parents put on the exact same performance. We'd enter the dealership, and my dad would sit while my mom shopped. When my mom found a car that she liked, they'd go in and meet with the dealer. And inevitably, every time, the dealer would turn his attention and his body to my dad, assuming that he controlled the purse strings and therefore this negotiation. Reverend Packnett, they'd say, how do we get you into this car today? My dad would inevitably respond the same way. He'd slowly and silently gestured toward my mother and then put his hands right back in his lap. It might have been the complete shock of negotiating finances with a black woman in the 80s, but whatever it was, I'd watch my mother work these car dealers over until they were basically giving the car away for free. She would never crack a smile. She would never be afraid to walk away. I know my mom just thought she was getting a good deal on a minivan. But what she was actually doing was giving me permission to defy expectations and to show up confidently in my skill no matter who doubts me. Confidence needs permission to exist. And community is the safest place to try confidence on. I traveled to Kenya this year to learn about women's empowerment among Maasai women. There I met a group of young women called Team Lioness. Among Kenya's first all female community ranger groups, these eight brave young women were making history in just their teenage years. And I asked Purity, the most verbose young ranger among them, do you ever get scared? I swear to you, I want to tattoo her response all over my entire body. She said, of course I do. But I call on my sisters. They remind me that we will be better than these men and that we will not fail. Purity's confidence to chase down lions and catch poachers. It didn't come from her athletic ability or even just her faith. Her confidence was propped up by sisterhood, by community. What she was basically saying was that if I am ever in doubt, I need you to be there to restore my hope and to rebuild my certainty in confidence. I can find in community. Rather, I can find my confidence and your curiosity can affirm it. Early in my career, I led a large scale event that did not go exactly as planned. I'm lying to you. It was terrible. And when I debriefed the event with my manager, I just knew that she was going to run down the list of every mistake I had ever made, probably from birth. But instead she opened with a what was your intention? I was surprised, but relieved. She knew that I was already beating myself up. And that question invited me to learn from my own mistakes instead of damage my already fragile confidence, curiosity invites people to be in charge of their own learning that exchange. It helped me approach my next project with the expectation of success, permission, community, curiosity. All of these are the things that we will need to breed the confidence that we'll absolutely need to solve our greatest challenges and to build the world we dream. A world where inequity is ended and where justice is real. A world where we can be free on the outside and free on the inside because we know that none of us are free until all of us are free. A world that isn't intimidated by confidence when it shows up as a woman, or in black skin, or in anything other than our preferred archetypes of leadership. A world that knows that that kind of confidence is exactly the key we need to unlock the future that we want. I have enough confidence to believe that that world will indeed come to pass and that we are the ones to make it so. Thank you so much.

[Podcast Host Elise Hu]

That was Brittany Packnett Cunningham speaking at TED 2019. This talk was originally posted in May of 2019. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out [e-mail] curationguidelines and that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact checked by the TED Research team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene, Lucy Little and Tansika Songmar Nivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faizy Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balaurazo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feedback. Thanks for listening.

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

We're gathered here to witness the union of Boost Mobile's unlimited wireless plan to a forever price that'll never go up. Do you Boost Mobile promise unlimited talk, text and data for $25 a month forever?

[Brittany Packnett Cunningham]

Yes we do.

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

No price hikes. Just $25 a month. Forever.

[Brittany Packnett Cunningham]

I literally just said yes.

[Boost Mobile Announcer]

At a power vested in me, I pronounce this a deal that truly lasts forever. Customers may now switch at Boost Mobile.

[Brittany Packnett Cunningham]

Huh. Marriage is so easy. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers will pay $25 a month as long as they remain active on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan.

[Shark Beauty Cryoglow User]

You know Hannah and I love a good bedrotting session. Reality TV snacks nearby. And now I've leveled up with my self care game with this Shark Beauty Cryoglow. This the number one skincare facial device in the us.

[Shark Beauty Cryoglow Enthusiast]

Wait, I'm obsessed with it. I've had it for a while actually. And it's the only mask that combines high energy LEDs, infrared and under eye cooling. I really need this because nothing wakes me up in the morning. You could do four treatments in one better aging, Skin clearing, Skin sustain, and my favorite the under eye revive with Instachill Coldtech. You put it on and it just feels so good under your eyes. Like I actually feel like I got eight hours of sleep.

[Shark Beauty Cryoglow User]

It's truly like a luxury spa moment while you're literally horizontal. It's perfect for post work workouts, Sunday scaries, or when you just want to glow while rotting.

[Shark Beauty Cryoglow Enthusiast]

To treat yourself to the number one LED beauty mask this holiday season, go to SharkNinja.com and use promo code Giggly Squad for 10% off your cryo glow. That's SharkNinja.com and use Promo Code Giggly Squad for 10% OFF your cryoGLOW.

[Customer]

Taking care of your eyes shouldn't be a hassle. That's why Warby Parker is a one stop shop for all your vision needs. Our prescription glasses and sunglasses are expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Stop by a nearby store or use our app to virtually try on frames and get personalized recommendations. Did we mention we offer eye exams and take vision insurance too? For everything you need to see, head to your nearest Warby Parker store or visit warbyparker. Com today. That's warbyparker. Com.