When the Rain Teaches Us How to Rebuild Self-Confidence

There’s something strange that happens as we grow older: we lose a bit of the lightness that once lived in us. What made us laugh or run around as children becomes, in adulthood, a reason to complain. Rain is the perfect example. As kids, we jumped in puddles and splashed everything around us, to the great despair of our mothers. Today, just a few drops are enough to put us in a bad mood. And one day, standing under a particularly stubborn downpour, I realized the problem wasn’t the rain, it was the way I was looking at it.

Ever since I’ve had Polo, my joyful, slightly clownish barbet, I no longer have the option of choosing my outdoor days. We have to go out, whether the weather is gentle or frankly unpleasant. And it’s often in those moments, when every part of me would rather stay sheltered indoors, that I’ve learned something precious: self-confidence isn’t rebuilt only through big, bold actions, but through our ability to shift the way we perceive what surrounds us.

Rediscovering the Lightness We Thought We’d Lost

Walking with Polo in the rain, I suddenly had a flash of the child I once was—the one for whom rain wasn’t an inconvenience but an adventure. The memory struck me: it wasn’t the weather that had changed. It was me.

Over the years, we build mental barriers, automatic reactions, and negative expectations. We associate rain with discomfort, heaviness, and the feeling that a day is “off” before it even begins. We forget that deep inside us still lives that kid who knew how to find freedom in whatever was unexpected.

Polo, on the other hand, never forgot. In the rain, he dances, sniffs around, jumps in puddles as if each one were the discovery of the year. And by following him, little by little, I began to let go of some of the seriousness adulthood tends to place on our shoulders. He made me smile at moments when I would normally have grumbled. He reminded me that lightness isn’t a luxury, it's a choice.

It’s Not the Rainfall That Weighs on Us, but How We Prepare for It

This reflection took on its full meaning the day I finally decided to equip myself to enjoy these forced walks. A simple felt hat changed my entire relationship with the rain: my face protected, my hands free, no more wrestling with an umbrella. Add a Barbour-style coat, waterproof pants, and warm lined boots, and suddenly the rain was no longer an enemy.

It became an experience. That day, I understood something I had never put into words before: we don’t hate the rain, we hate being unprepared for it. And the same thing happens with self-confidence. Often, it’s not the outside world that scares us, but the feeling that we are not equipped to face it.

Since I’ve started going out in the rain properly protected, I’ve almost become a kid again. I walk with pleasure, I sometimes laugh to myself, and I watch Polo do his ridiculous little things that bring me back to a simplicity I had forgotten.

What once felt like a heavy, burdensome rain has become a reminder: life changes when we change the way we approach it. And that small adjustment, that permission to rediscover a sense of lightness, nurtures something very steady inside, the quiet confidence that we can transform our daily life, one shift in perspective at a time.

How Self-Confidence Erodes… and How It Finds Its Way Back

When I look around, I see that the question of self-confidence doesn’t affect only a few sensitive people. Younger generations especially are growing up in a world where everything is compared, measured, and viewed through a screen. Recent studies show that teenagers and young adults are far more sensitive than we were to feedback, comments, “likes,” and even silence. A hurtful remark or a visible failure can make their sense of self-worth drop much faster than we imagine.

For adults, the story is different, but the result is surprisingly similar: perfectionism, the fear of not being “enough,” and the constant feeling of being out of sync with what life expects.

We compare ourselves to filtered, polished lives, successes that are easier to showcase than doubts. We only see other people’s storefronts, never the backrooms. And over time, we end up believing we’re the only ones who feel overwhelmed, tired, or less steady than what we present to the world.

All of this may seem insignificant, but it slowly wears down our confidence, the way a fine rain eventually seeps through fabric. The economic climate, the crises, the feeling that everything is moving too fast… none of that helps either. So we retreat. We start doubting ourselves. We avoid anything that might test us. We think we’re fragile, when in reality we’re often just tired, overstimulated, and bombarded with comparisons and images that have nothing to do with real life.

Rain, for me, became a symbol of all this. For a long time, I treated it as bad news, a day ruined before it even began.

And then I realized my reaction was disproportionate: it wasn’t a threat, just discomfort. A bit like when we dramatize a project, a look, or a comment until we give it a weight it doesn’t deserve. Self-confidence begins to crack the moment we confuse discomfort with danger, when everything starts feeling heavier than it truly is.

What helps me, and what I want to share, isn’t a method, but a way of relating to these moments. When I feel something shaking my confidence, I try to do what the rain has taught me : first, I take a tiny pause. Just long enough to ask myself :

Is this really that serious, or is my mind turning it into a whole story?

Sometimes that simple question is enough to release a bit of tension. We don’t change the situation itself, but we remove one layer of drama from it.

Then I try to see if I can “equip” myself differently, just as I did with my hat and coat. When confidence is shaken, that equipment can be something very concrete and very simple:

• taking a break from social media for a few days to stop comparing myself to everyone else,
• focusing on one small doable thing in the day instead of drowning in an endless to-do list,
• asking someone I trust what they see in me when all I can see are my flaws.

These small adjustments don’t change who we are, but they change how everything feels: we feel a little less trapped, a little more able to breathe.

Over time, I’ve come to realize that confidence doesn’t come back by repeating to ourselves that we’re capable, but by gathering small, quiet proofs that we can make it through things. Going out in the rain and noticing that, in the end, the walk feels perfectly manageable. Saying no once and surviving the other person’s reaction. Trying something new with the possibility of failing, and discovering that even if it doesn’t work out, we’re still whole. These gestures are tiny, but the body records them. It remembers: “I got through that.”

The problem today is that we often look at ourselves through the eyes of others. We measure our worth the way we measure a post: how many reactions, how many visible signs that it “means something.” Yet the moments that truly rebuild confidence are never spectacular. No one sees them. They happen quietly, on a couch, during a walk, in a kitchen, in a moment of silence. The rain reminded me of that: what changes my life will never make a good “before and after” for Instagram. And that is perfectly fine.

If I had to sum up what I’ve learned, it would probably be this: self-confidence doesn’t return when life becomes easy again, but when we stop telling ourselves that we’re incapable of facing what is difficult.

We don’t need to become fearless, just a little gentler with ourselves when we feel small. A little better equipped. A little more curious about what might happen if, despite the fear, we go forward anyway.

The rain didn’t make me braver. It showed me that I could remain myself even when the sky starts to fall. And maybe that’s what real confidence is: knowing that there is something in us that doesn’t collapse at the first downpour, and that we can, step by step, relearn how to walk with ourselves instead of walking against ourselves.