Sit in a coffee shop alone without pretending to be on your phone. That’s a small, real kind of confidence.

The phone in that moment is a prop, and what it says is that somebody is on the way. It covers a thing that does not need covering, since being by yourself in public is not an accusation. Confidence here is being seen alone without proving it was deliberate.

Try twenty minutes somewhere public without the prop. Bring a book or bring nothing, but keep the screen in your pocket. The first five minutes feel exposed and the rest are strangely pleasant, which is the whole lesson.