How to Build Confidence Before You Feel Ready

In this episode of This Is Nothing New, Michelle breaks down why "I want to be more confident" is too vague to actually act on — and what to do instead. She unpacks the three types of confidence that matter most: skill confidence (built through practice and repetition), situational confidence (your ability to figure it out on the fly using past experience), and self-confidence (built by keeping the promises you make to yourself). 

From Disney events to software boot camps to chess grandmasters, Michelle brings it all together with real stories and a simple challenge to take away. Get back to the basics — confidence is built one step at a time.

Connect with Michelle:

Website: michellegruening.com
Instagram: @michellegruening
LinkedIn: Michelle Gruening

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to This Is Nothing New, the podcast where we get back to the basics and drop the trends. I'm your host, Michelle Grooning, and today we are diving into the concept of confidence. In every corner of the world, you hear people say, I wish I was more confident. I want to have more confidence. But it's way too vague. Confident in what? Confident how? So today I want to really break down the three most important types of confidence, I think. And they all impact you in different ways. They all are built from different places. Because a lot of times when people say they want to be more confident, they are really saying, I wish I believed in myself a bit more. And so we're going to talk about three types of confidence today. They are going to be skill confidence, situational confidence, and self-confidence. So the first one is skill confidence. Skill confidence is something that you gain through practice, through training, through experience. I think back to when I first started working in the special events industry. So technically, you could say I've been working in events since college. I worked on the intramural staff at Clemson University, Go Tigers, where we would put on big tournaments, and there was an element of event planning to that. I was also the head panelytic counselor for sorority recruitment at Clemson, Go Kai Omega, where I was in charge of dozens of what were called pie ties, which means panalytic counselor, as we oversaw all of the women that were rushing through the program to join a sorority at Clemson. And so that also involved event planning. But where I really got into it was when I was working at Walt Disney World and I got involved with Festival Disney, which was this massive middle and high school choir and band competition. And my internship role was an event coordinator. So I was responsible for the actual execution of the events. And after Disney, I went and worked special events at a couple other places for another several years with weddings, galas, political events, fundraisers, proms, bar and bot mitzfahs, all of the things. And I bring that up in this area of skill confidence because I was not always really great at managing events. It was something I had to work at. There are going to be times when you are working in some type of special event, or even if you are volunteering at an event, or even if you're hosting a baby shower or a bridal shower for a friend or a family member, the more you practice the art of kind of executing events, the more skilled you become at it, the higher your confidence rises in those things. So if you are someone who never hosts parties at your home, who never volunteers to host events for big milestones for family and friends, and that's not shade, by the way. You do you. But if that's not something you typically do, and then you are asked to or volunteer to host some type of party, it can really pump up the anxiety because it's not something you're skilled in. It's not something you have practice in. So of course you would feel a little lack of confidence in that. And so throughout my decade plus that I was in special events, I got sharper, I got faster, and I got more intentional in my responses to crises. And let me tell y'all, there were plenty of crises, but my time in Disney's fairy tale weddings is a topic for another episode. So thinking about this idea of skill confidence when it applies to the special events industry, let's say. When I first started, I didn't know how to handle a drunk guest. I didn't know how to handle a flustered bride or groom. But the more I experienced it, the more confident I became in my skills to handle it. Now, let's say you could give two rases about special events. Let's bring it back to something a bit more relatable for, I don't know, most people. Let's say exercise. Let's say running. I personally am not a runner. I don't care for it. But let's use running as an example because it's it feels like a pretty easy thing for people to grasp. So a lot of running, technique, endurance, stamina, strength, it's a skill that you build. It's literal muscles that you build, but also metaphorical muscles with your mental fitness, your willingness to show up for yourself, all of those things. So the first time you step out onto a path to go for a run, your first time ever, you might suck at it. Unless you know you're my husband who is just naturally gifted at cardio. But you may suck at it. You may not be able to go very far, you may struggle, you may be breathing heavy, all of those things. But the more you show up for it, the more skilled you become, the longer you can go, the faster you can go, the more excited you are to actually do it because you're building that skill. Skill confidence comes from training, it comes from repetition, from consistency, from dedication, from discipline, from devotion. Skill confidence is something that you can continuously work on day in and day out. It's something that you can always improve. So for me, one of the things I'm really skilled at is public speaking. But I certainly wasn't always that way. It's something that I work at. It's something that every time I step off a stage, I give myself space to one, celebrate myself because it's always a win. But two, reflect and figure out where I can improve. And through the act of reflection, when you are actually digging into the lessons that can be pulled out of your experience, that's when you give yourself an even higher level up to be able to increase those skills. So I talked about three types of confidence. That was the first one, skill. Now the second one is called situational confidence. And situational confidence is in the realm where you don't have any experience, or at least you don't have any specific experience. So situational confidence is all about your ability to just figure it out on the fly. You are relying on your resourcefulness, you are relying on your resilience, you are relying on all of the problems that are behind you because you overcame them at one point. Whenever I talk with uh people, and I'm really trying to bring home the concept of situational confidence, I use this when it comes to people who are parents, whether that is parents of human children, or even if you have animals. When you bring home a human child, especially if it's your first child, you are literally tapping into situational confidence in almost every experience you have. Now, I don't have children, so this is a bit of an assumption, but whenever you bring home a child for the first time, everything is new. You maybe have learned through reading or through uh discussions or conversations with fellow first-time parents. But a lot of times you just do not know what's going to happen until you live through it. And every one of you out there who has had children, or you've brought home a new puppy or a new cat or whatever, when you enter into a new realm where you have no experience, that's all situational confidence, baby. You're figuring it out on the fly. And sometimes with situational confidence, what's really cool if you pay attention to the threads is you can hear echoes from past experiences that may not seem relevant or relatable in the moment, but they can come flashing back and help you in that moment. So let's do an example. Back when I worked at Walt Disney World, one of the first things I did was I worked at Pinocchio's village house in the Magic Kingdom, but that's within Fantasy Land, just behind the castle. And during peak seasons, we had to do crowd control. And so we would be positioned at the entrance to each dining area, and we had to refuse to let people sit down if they did not have a tray from our restaurant. You can imagine that people did not like that. I got yelled at, I got screamed at, I got complained about. Somebody even handed me a tray full of vomit once, which really helped toughen up my skin back then. But a decade later, here I am working at a software development boot camp called the Iron Yard, which still remains one of my favorite jobs of all time. Now, thankfully, no one was throwing vomit in my face or handing me trays full of vomit, but I experienced another moment where a student was incredibly frustrated with me, with the staff. They didn't like how things were happening, they didn't like being refused. And I could hear the echoes coming back in. So in that moment where I'm being shouted at by a student at this development boot camp, I could rely on some of my past experience also being shouted at because spoiler alert, if you have never worked a frontline customer service job, I'm talking fast food restaurants, um, anything that deals with the general public at the grocery store. Um, it could be at a gas station, at a concession stand, at a family entertainment center, like a laser tag arena or a bowling alley. If you have never worked a frontline customer service job, I'm sorry, but you do not truly know what it means to be yelled at by a stranger. I digress. So when I'm currently being yelled at by that person in the software boot camp, I can reflect back on all of the times that I have been shouted at. And I could tap into what can I do right now? I cannot solve what has already happened. That is in the past. I can't change the past. I can only figure out what to do moving forward. So I had to tap back into my skills of a decade plus in special events with high stakes, high pressure events. I had to listen for what wasn't being said. And in retrospect, I can see that that student was right. But in the moment, I didn't know that. So I had to tap back into my situational confidence that I had it, that I could figure it out. And maybe I didn't come up with the perfect solution, but I came up with the next right step. And sometimes that's all you need to do. Stop looking for the perfect plan. Having things perfectly figured out is a myth. That's not where clarity comes from. Clarity comes from taking action. And so in those moments where your situational confidence is being stretched, it's all about what is the next right step you can take? What is the next action you can take to move the situation forward, to gain some sort of progress. Now, this also reminds me of a story that I heard about a grandmaster who plays chess. Now, I can play chess. I wouldn't say I'm good at it by any stretch of the imagination, but I do enjoy it. So there's a story about a grandmaster. He was playing in, you know, one of those big parks like in New York City, where there's just chess boards everywhere. A grandmaster himself was simultaneously playing six games, himself against six separate opponents. And he would walk up to the board, look at the board, make the next move, move to the next board, look at the board, make the next move. He was moving so quickly and confidently that other people who were playing games outside of his own six asked him to come over to tell them what the next move should be. And here's the thing: this grand chess master, chess grandmaster, whatever you call it, didn't know how those other people got into the positions they were in on the board. He didn't have all the history, he didn't ruminate about how they got there, why they got there, why the board looked the way it was or how he wished it would look. He identified where the situation was currently at and then took the next right move. And he could do this over and over and over. And this comes back to situational confidence. You don't have to have a perfect plan a lot of the times. You just need to make the next right move. Now, the final piece of confidence is self-confidence. And this is the one most people are probably talking about when they say they want to be more confident, is they want to feel in themselves, inside, that they are a more confident person. And I'm just gonna cut straight to it, y'all. The fastest way to build self-confidence is by keeping the promises you make to yourself. That's it. Show up for the things that you say matter. It's, you know, almost halfway through 2026. And I bet the majority of y'all listening set some type of goal for either 2026, for Q1, for Q2, whatever. Where are you at with those goals? I use goal setting in a variety of ways within my own personal life, in my own coaching business. But the approach to goal setting and the effort you put into planning it is going to determine what you get out of it. And so people who are like, oh, I'm just not confident in setting goals, they just never work out for me. Of course they don't, because you're setting yourself up for failure from the beginning by setting goals that are too big, they're not specific, they aren't even in alignment with what you actually want, or you're setting goals because you think you should be, or because somebody else told you they should matter. Self-confidence is built every time you do what you say you're going to do. Self-confidence and integrity go hand in hand. And integrity is again, you do what you say you're going to do. Your actions and your words and your thoughts are in alignment with what you say you value. So I have a lot of people that have come through my coaching programs and they still say they struggle with confidence. But I can look backwards and see the pattern of them breaking promises to themselves. And I'm not saying I haven't done that. Of course I've done that. I'm human after all. But every time you show up for yourself, or you show up for a habit, or you show up for something you say you're going to do, you are building your self-confidence. You're building your self-confidence and giving your brain evidence that you are somebody who follows through, that you are somebody who shows up. This could be for something, let's say you want to read more this year. It doesn't matter what you want to read. It could be personal development books, it could be romantic, I don't care. You say you want to read more. But you keep picking up your phone to scroll social media instead. Every time you choose a bad habit, every time you choose not to show up for the change you want to make, you're paying mental interest on the goals you claim you want to do but never do. So every time you say you want to read and you pick up your phone instead, you are chipping away at your self-confidence because you're giving your brain evidence that you don't actually care. So if you say you want to read more, even if you sit down to read one page, you're giving your brain evidence that you are showing up for the things you say matter. That is going to continue to increase your self-confidence. So when people say, Oh, Michelle, I just wish I was as confident as you, y'all listen, there are plenty things I'm not confident about that I am continuously working on consistently. But the key to being more confident is to understand and recognize where exactly you want to be more confident. If you want to be a more confident public speaker, get on stages and practice, or just speak to your phone or speak to your computer, kind of like I'm doing now, recording a podcast episode. If you want to be a better runner, get out and run. You cannot learn how to run by reading about running. There is only so far that you can go with theory. You gotta take action. You gotta put it into practice. And so when we think about this whole idea of confidence, I wanted to bring in these three pieces of skill, situational, and self, because confidence is too big of a thing to take on just on its own. You gotta break it down. You gotta figure out what it is you actually want to be more confident in. If you want to be more confident in handling uncertain or random situations, insert yourself into those more often. Maybe you're at a meeting and something goes wrong and you've never handled it before, but how can you step in and learn? How can you try to exert some leadership in that situation? So, with that, at the end of every episode, you know I love to give you a challenge. So, my challenge to you is what is one thing that you can show up for consistently every single day to increase your self-confidence? Maybe it's showing up for one of your positive habits like drinking more water or going to bed earlier. Maybe it's something that you want to improve your skills in. Doesn't matter what it is, but I challenge you to identify one thing, one thing that you can do every day to continue to strengthen your own self-confidence. Because it's all built step by step. And every step you take is taking you to a higher level. Now remember, everything we talked about today, this is nothing new. It's just a reminder to help you get back to the basics. I'll catch y'all next time.