Cherisse Moe

On Tri­cia Cony­ers’s jour­ney to com­plet­ing her de­but book, Con­fi­dence Is Ac­tion, her biggest op­po­nent was Pat.

When­ev­er she sat down to work, that voice was right there, whis­per­ing: “Nah, that sen­tence is weak, delete it. No one is gonna re­late to that. In fact, just delete the whole thing.”

At one point, the self-doubt grew so loud that she near­ly called it quits al­to­geth­er.

Pat was the in­ner crit­ic she de­cid­ed to name.

Ad­dress­ing close to 100 women in­side the Re­nais­sance Club Room in Shore­lands on Sep­tem­ber 17 for her of­fi­cial book launch, Tri­cia, a per­son­al de­vel­op­ment coach and founder of In­spire Her Coach­ing, shared how she pushed past un­cer­tain­ty to at­tain her goal.

Years of coach­ing showed her that con­fi­dence and in­ter­nal hes­i­ta­tion do not op­er­ate as op­po­sites, but can co-ex­ist like two sis­ters shar­ing a sin­gle bed­room. De­feat­ing fear, she said, re­quires much more than talk.

The event cel­e­brat­ed Tri­cia along­side eight con­tribut­ing co-au­thors from her Em­pow­er Her pro­gramme, whom she de­scribed as pas­sion­ate about liv­ing their best lives: An­abel­la Di­ni, Arielle Cowie, Do­minique Himiob, Hay­ley Knag­gs, Jo­di Mathu­ra, Lau­ra Narayans­ingh, Sarah Cabral and Saman­tha Cony­ers.

Choos­ing every­day Caribbean women rather than dis­tant celebri­ties en­sured read­ers could see them­selves in fa­mil­iar strug­gles, rang­ing from en­tre­pre­neur­ship to cre­ative am­bi­tions.

The book went live on Ama­zon on Sep­tem­ber 14, be­com­ing an Ama­zon best­seller in sev­er­al cat­e­gories.

Draw­ing on Al­bert Ban­dura’s re­search on self-ef­fi­ca­cy, the book ar­gues that ac­tion builds the ev­i­dence need­ed to cre­ate self-trust. With­in days, it se­cured the pri­ma­ry New Re­lease spot in Dreams Self-Help, along­side promi­nent rank­ings in Women and Busi­ness and Suc­cess Self-Help. It ranked sixth in Kin­dle and 33rd in print, and 76th in Kin­dle for Suc­cess Self-Help.

“It was in­cred­i­bly ex­cit­ing. Dis­cov­er­ing and cel­e­brat­ing it to­geth­er made it even more mean­ing­ful,” Tri­cia told We Life in a sub­se­quent in­ter­view. “Af­ter years of think­ing, re­search, writ­ing, rewrit­ing and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, the rank­ings felt like a per­son­al and col­lec­tive win.”

The book was con­cep­tu­alised in 2024 and grew out of a pat­tern she kept hear­ing in her coach­ing ses­sions, work­shops and con­ver­sa­tions with women. They knew they were ca­pa­ble of more and could see who they want­ed to be­come, but fear and self-doubt were hold­ing them back.

“They were wait­ing to feel ready, cer­tain, or con­fi­dent be­fore tak­ing ac­tion.”

Look­ing at her own life—more than 20 years in or­gan­i­sa­tion­al change and lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing over a decade as vice pres­i­dent of learn­ing and de­vel­op­ment at Evolve Part­ners, a bou­tique change man­age­ment firm in Hous­ton—she ap­peared from the out­side to be the epit­o­me of suc­cess.

But she yearned for some­thing more mean­ing­ful. Tak­ing the leap as an en­tre­pre­neur, she found out first-hand what it means to move to­wards some­thing im­por­tant with­out hav­ing all the an­swers.

“It felt like the right time be­cause every­thing had come to­geth­er: years of in­sights from coach­ing con­ver­sa­tions, my prac­tice in change man­age­ment, my own ex­pe­ri­ences, and the Con­fi­dence Wheel frame­work I’d de­vel­oped. I felt that to­geth­er they could gen­uine­ly help women. I want­ed to show women how to build con­fi­dence in­stead of stay­ing stuck in a cy­cle of wait­ing.”

She con­sid­ered Brave As You Are for the book’s ti­tle, but it did not quite cap­ture the cen­tral idea. Con­fi­dence Is Ac­tion hit the nail on the head for her, as she be­lieves ac­tion does not have to be big, dra­mat­ic or dis­rup­tive.

The small­est mean­ing­ful step out­side your com­fort zone, such as start­ing a new hob­by or say­ing yes to an op­por­tu­ni­ty, mat­ters too.

As a coach, she has seen women strug­gle with the three thieves of progress: fear of judg­ment, per­fec­tion­ism and com­par­i­son, es­pe­cial­ly in the age of so­cial me­dia, where hes­i­ta­tion can keep po­ten­tial locked away.

In the book, the Mar­aval na­tive, who al­so co-hosts the Every Lit­tle Mod­el pod­cast, de­scribes three com­mon myths about con­fi­dence that show up in the way women talk about them­selves.

The first is that con­fi­dence is some­thing you ei­ther have or do not have. Ac­cord­ing to her, it is not DNA or a fixed per­son­al­i­ty trait. It is more like a mus­cle that needs ex­er­cise to de­vel­op and be nur­tured.

The sec­ond is that con­fi­dence has one par­tic­u­lar look—some­one who is loud, com­mand­ing, ex­tro­vert­ed or in­stant­ly no­tice­able. How­ev­er, some of the most con­fi­dent peo­ple are calm, pa­tient and de­lib­er­ate.

The third is that con­fi­dence has to come be­fore ac­tion. In re­al­i­ty, it grows as we act, learn, adapt and gath­er ev­i­dence.

With The Con­fi­dence Wheel, she ad­vis­es women on how to be their bril­liant, brave and bold selves—some­thing she knows first-hand. Each new en­vi­ron­ment and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty has brought both ques­tions and strength.

At Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, where she earned both a bach­e­lor’s and a mas­ter’s de­gree in en­gi­neer­ing, she some­times won­dered whether she be­longed among so many ex­cep­tion­al­ly ac­com­plished peo­ple.

Lat­er, as she moved in­to se­nior lead­er­ship, fresh doubts about her readi­ness sur­faced. A line she kept see­ing on In­sta­gram fi­nal­ly pushed her for­ward: “If you’re not liv­ing your life, you’re liv­ing some­one else’s.”

It struck a nerve. She knew it was time.

At­ten­dees at the launch in­clud­ed busi­ness­women, me­dia pro­fes­sion­als, for­mer Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon, and fash­ion de­sign­er Anya Ay­oung-Chee.

The el­e­gant­ly dec­o­rat­ed venue felt more like a cock­tail re­cep­tion than a tra­di­tion­al book launch, with drinks and hors d’oeu­vres flow­ing through­out the evening.

Each guest re­ceived a name tag fea­tur­ing the words “bril­liant”, “brave” or “bold”, set­ting an up­lift­ing tone across the room.

Speak­ing to We Life, Di­rec­tor of Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr Rhon­da Jaipaul-O’Gar­ro, said she loved the event.

“I think it was a love­ly evening. Taste­ful­ly put to­geth­er. I es­pe­cial­ly liked the con­tra­dic­tion be­tween con­fi­dence and fear. Most times your doubt over­rides your con­fi­dence. I felt em­pow­ered to take that step even in the midst of doubt.”

Be­fore wrap­ping up her vote of thanks, Tri­cia cracked up the room by shout­ing out her hus­band, adding with a grin that he “was not in­vit­ed.”