Confidence Isn’t Something You Build. It’s Something You Remember.

The moment you stop trying to fix yourself is the moment your confidence begins.

Most women I work with don’t see it that way. They assume they need to be braver, clearer, more consistent, more certain. They look for confidence as something to acquire.

I’ve been there. Every year I tried to be a better person. Tried to compete. Tried to fix the many things I thought were wrong with me. Until I found my truth in the most unexpected place.

A prison.

I’d been inspired to walk away from my career in IT and build a programme to help inmates uncover their wellbeing. One sunny day I was sat in the group room inside the prison, listening to women talk about who they thought they were.

Sunlight crept through the iron bars at the window. I could see birds atop the barbed wire outside.

I could see clearly that the women were talking about who they believed they had become because of their worst moments, not who they really were.

Wendy, dirty blond hair, sad blue eyes, sat with her head in her hands. She spoke about her past as if it were a life sentence in itself. Every sentence began with “someone like me”, someone broken, dangerous, beyond repair.

And yet, as she spoke, what I saw was humanity. Humour. Insight. Care.

That moment cracked something open in me.

If she wasn’t her crime.
If she wasn’t her past.
Then maybe I wasn’t my trauma either.

That work, sitting with people society had written off, taught me something no personal development book ever could. When you strip away labels, mistakes and stories, what remains is not damage. It’s wisdom.

That understanding changed how I saw myself, and it changed how I work with women.

For years, I’ve met extraordinary women doing meaningful work who were stuck. Women with impact, experience and depth, yet second guessing themselves constantly. Giving generously. Hesitating to be seen. Working hard but feeling disconnected from their own power.

They weren’t lacking confidence.

They were identifying with stories that weren’t true.

I recognised it because I’d lived it.

I’d followed the rules, when I understood them. I’d learned the frameworks. I’d kept pushing, even when something inside me felt flattened and tired. Outwardly, things looked fine. Inwardly, I was overriding my own knowing.

What changed everything wasn’t another strategy. It was realising that confidence doesn’t come from fixing yourself, it comes from remembering who you are beneath the noise.

That’s why I created Impact Activator.

Not as another programme telling women who to be, but as a space to strip things back. To quieten the pressure. To reconnect with clarity that already exists. To share what I’d learned and teach through insight, connection and clarity. And then, to support women to act from that place in the real world.

I’ve seen what happens when women stop believing they need to earn their worth. They move. They decide. They speak. They activate. They are powerful beyond words.

The prison work showed me this truth early on. We are not our worst moments. We are not our past. And we are not the stories we repeat under pressure.

If you’re reading this and feeling tired, overlooked or lost, let me say this clearly.

You are not broken.
You are not behind.
And you do not need fixing.

Your confidence isn’t missing. It’s buried under noise, expectation and misunderstanding.

The world doesn’t need you tougher or louder.
It needs you anchored.
It needs you aligned.
It needs the work only you are here to do.

And that begins not by becoming someone new,
but by remembering who you’ve always been.

With love and activation,
Jacqueline (Mama J) Hollows