By the same token, failure can often seem to turn up more often the more confident you feel. That’s because failure is often a by-product of your increased risk-taking that confidence inevitably brings. FAFO, as they say on Twitter.

So I’m asking myself, what’s brought about this change? And as I got into it, I realised that I wanted to formulate a path towards confidence for you, too, and make a list of tips and hints. Cue an appropriate challenge: to post a Confidence Trick per day on LinkedIn (Follow at www.linkedin.com/company/the-offer-bank/ . Search #TheOfferBankConfidenceTricks for all 30 posts.

When I'm coaching people to greater confidence when speaking in public or in groups, they always ask me how they can be 'fast-tracked'. "What's the secret?" they say. What they really mean is: "How do I get to achieve this immediately without any feeling of discomfort?" This scary, brain-frying headspace – known in psychological terms as 'conscious incompetence' – is there for a reason: so that you can be creative, learn your craft, practice a heap of strategies... and become satisfyingly resilient along the way.