I was signing books at Barnes & Noble in Tampa last week, and something struck me. People would walk right past my table, eyes down, moving fast, like making eye contact might cost them something. A few even did that thing where they angle their whole body away, just in case I might say hello.

At first I thought, okay, maybe they think I’m going to sell them something. And sure, some of that is probably true. We’ve all gotten defensive around anyone standing behind a table with a stack of books and a smile. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized this isn’t really about book signings at all. It’s about something bigger that’s happening to all of us.

We’ve stopped looking at each other.

TL;DR: People increasingly avoid eye contact and small talk with strangers, not because they dislike connection, but because they consistently overestimate the risk of rejection and underestimate how much they and the other person will enjoy the interaction. Research from the University of Chicago backs this up. Simple habits like making eye contact, saying hi, giving a genuine compliment, and asking one real question can reverse the pattern.

What I Noticed

It wasn’t just the avoided eye contact. It was the absence of small things that used to be automatic:

• A simple “hi” as someone walks by
• A compliment tossed out just because
• A moment of small talk with a stranger
• Genuine curiosity about the person next to you

I started paying attention a few days later on my flight home from Scotland. An entire row of people sat shoulder to shoulder for hours without a single word passed between them. Everyone had headphones in, eyes on a screen, present in body only. And I get it. I’ve done the same thing. But it made me wonder: when did we decide that connection with strangers wasn’t worth the risk?

Why This Is Happening

I don’t have a perfect answer, but here’s what I think is going on, and it turns out there’s real psychology behind it too.

We’re protecting our energy in a world that already asks too much of it. After a full day of notifications, meetings, and decisions, a stranger’s small talk can feel like one more demand on a tank that’s already empty.

We’ve been trained to expect an angle. Somewhere along the way, a lot of us learned that when someone approaches us with a smile, they usually want something. A sale, a signature, a follow. So we’ve built a reflex to protect ourselves from it, even when nothing is actually being asked of us.

Screens gave us permission to disappear. A phone in hand is the modern version of crossing your arms. It signals “I’m not available” without anyone having to say it out loud.

We’re wired to expect rejection that almost never comes. A meta-analysis of over 2,300 people by psychologists Gillian Sandstrom and Erica Boothby found people consistently underestimate how much they would enjoy talking to a stranger, how interested a stranger would be in talking to them, and how much a stranger would end up liking them. A separate University of Chicago study found commuters who talked to a stranger on their train ride had a more positive experience than they expected, and were almost never rejected. In other words, the awkward, unwanted conversation we’re all bracing for almost never actually happens. We’re avoiding a risk that exists mostly in our own heads.

None of this means people don’t want connection. It means we’ve gotten remarkably good at predicting rejection that isn’t actually coming, and that fear is enough to keep us looking down.

What We’re Actually Losing

Here’s the part that stays with me. Every person we don’t look at, don’t greet, don’t ask a question of, is a door we never open. And you genuinely never know what’s behind that door.

The stranger next to you on a plane might be a client you’d never have met, or the biggest cheerleader you’ve never had, or someone who says exactly the thing you needed to hear that day. The person browsing the shelf next to you at a bookstore might become a friend, a collaborator, or just a five-minute conversation that reminds you people are actually pretty wonderful when you give them a chance.

We’re not just losing small talk. We’re losing possibility.

How to Do This Differently

You don’t need a personality transplant to change this. You need a few small, repeatable habits.

Look up first. Before you reach for your phone or glance away, try just looking at the person in front of you. Eye contact is free, and it’s the first sign of “I see you.”

Say hi, even if you don’t have to. At the checkout counter. In the elevator. Next to you at the gate. A simple hello costs nothing and often gets one back.

Give the compliment. If you notice something, say it. Great shoes, great energy, great laugh. You don’t need a reason. A genuine compliment can be the best part of someone’s day, including yours.

Ask one real question. “What brought you here today?” “Where are you headed?” “How’s your day going, really?” People light up when someone shows real curiosity about them.

Stay curious instead of guarded. Not everyone who approaches you wants something from you. Most people just want to be seen. Give them the benefit of the doubt before you give them the cold shoulder.

The Real Shift

This isn’t about becoming an extrovert or talking to everyone everywhere all the time. It’s about remembering that the people around you, in line, on a plane, at a bookstore, are not obstacles to get through. They’re opportunities to learn something, feel something, or make someone’s day a little better.

That day in Tampa taught me something I wasn’t expecting to learn. The people who walked past without looking up weren’t rude. They were protecting themselves from something that probably wasn’t even a threat. And I think a lot of us are doing exactly the same thing, walking through our days a little too guarded to let anyone in.

So here’s my challenge, to you and to me. Look up. Say hi. Give the compliment. Ask the question. You never know what you’ll learn, who you’ll meet, or what one small moment of connection might turn into.

The post Why We’ve Stopped Making Eye Contact (And What It’s Costing Us) appeared first on Simone Knego.

Ever think something will be easy, only to find out it’s way harder than you expected? 

In this lighthearted episode of Her Unshakeable Confidence, Simone and Olivia Knego swap stories about the everyday tasks that turned out to be surprisingly difficult, from boiling eggs and stripping furniture to recording an audiobook and battling laundry stains. 

Along the way, they talk about laughing at yourself, learning through trial and error, and giving yourself grace when things take longer than planned.

Actionable Takeaways

• Give yourself grace when tasks take longer than expected.
• Laugh at your mistakes instead of letting them frustrate you.
• Trial and error is part of learning any new skill.
• Small annoyances don’t have to define your whole day.
• Complain a little if you need to, then move on.
• Celebrate finishing something, even when it wasn’t perfect.

Chapters

00:01 – Introduction 

00:23 – Boiling Eggs and Kitchen Mishaps 

02:25 – The DIY Furniture Stripping Disaster 

03:43 – Recording an Audiobook: Harder Than It Looks 

06:51 – The Unexpected Art of Laundry 

09:45 – Bed Making, Duvet Covers, and Instagram vs Reality 

10:59 – Cast Iron Pans and Kitchen Knives 

12:47 – Hydro Flasks, Straw Cleaners, and Gross Discoveries 

14:10 – Mold, Washing Machines, and Sink Drains 

16:45 – Giving Yourself Grace

Connect with Us

Don’t forget to subscribe to Her Unshakeable Confidence for more empowering stories and actionable insights. Leave us a review, share your favorite moments, and tag us on social media!

Take our new QUIZ and discover what’s really holding you back and how to break free.

Get Free AUDIOBOOK

Order Simone’s New Book 

REAL Confidence A Simple Guide to Go from Unsure to Unshakeable

Order Simone’s The Extraordinary UnOrdinary You Book

Connect with Simone Knego:

• Instagram: @simoneknego
• Facebook: @speakersimoneknego
• LinkedIn: simoneknego
• Website: www.simoneknego.com
• Book a free call with Simone

Connect with Olivia Knego:

• Instagram: @oliviaknego
• LinkedIn: oliviaknego

Looking for more?

Visit Our Etsy Shop: theunshakeablestudio

Check out our inspirational mugs, shirts, and more at The Unshakeable Studio. These items are filled with gratitude and designed to inspire personal transformation in one’s life.

Listen to Episode on:

The post From Exploding Eggs to Audiobooks: A Mother-Daughter Take on Life’s Small Struggles appeared first on Simone Knego.

I’m writing this from Scotland, where I’ve spent the past two days helping my daughter Emma move into her new flat. Today, she starts a new job at Falkland Palace, where she’ll spend the next year working in art conservation.

Her path here wasn’t a straight line. And that’s exactly the point.

From Pre-Med to Art Conservation

Two years ago, Emma took a risk and moved to Wales to pursue a master’s degree. Her original plan had been medicine. She’d triple majored in biology, psychology, and neuroscience to get there, years of coursework built around one goal. She’d spent her college years in labs and lecture halls, building toward a future in medicine that made sense on paper and looked impressive on any resume.

But somewhere along the way, she realized medicine wasn’t her calling. Art was.

That’s not a small thing to admit after years of coursework across three demanding fields pointed you in one direction. It would have been easier to finish the path she’d already invested so much in. Most people, once they’ve put in that much work, keep going simply because stopping feels like waste. Emma didn’t. She looked honestly at what she wanted and made a different choice, even though it meant starting over in a field she hadn’t trained for.

She applied to the master’s program in art conservation at Cardiff University. She got in. This past week, in Wales, she finished it.

A New Country, A New Chapter

Now she’s in Scotland, a country where she doesn’t know a single person, starting an entirely new chapter. She had two days off between finishing her program in Wales and starting her new job here. Two days to pack up one life and step into the next.

I’ve watched her do this before, and I still find it remarkable how calmly she handles the in-between moments, the ones with no certainty attached. There’s no roadmap for moving to a country where you don’t speak the local shorthand yet, don’t know which grocery store has what you need, and don’t have a single friend to call if something goes wrong. She’s building that from scratch, starting today.

Even the everyday logistics look completely different here than they would back home. Her commute to Falkland Palace is an hour each way by bus. Getting a car isn’t really an option either, since a UK driver’s license isn’t something you can just walk in and get. So she’ll be walking to the grocery store and the pharmacy, and relying on buses and trains to get to nearby cities when she wants to explore. It’s a smaller, slower kind of life than what she’s used to, and she’s stepping into it without hesitation.

Today she begins a yearlong role at Falkland Palace, working in art conservation, the field she chose for herself after realizing medicine wasn’t it.

Is It Worth the Risk?

Was this an easy move? No.

Is it worth the risk? Absolutely.

Will there be hard days? Absolutely.

Building confidence isn’t about avoiding hard days. It’s about being willing to walk into them anyway. This is the heart of my REAL Method®: real confidence gets built by embracing the failures and uncertainty along the way, not by waiting until everything feels safe.

I won’t pretend this is easy for her. Emma is stressed. She’s anxious. Moving to a new country, starting a job she’s never done, and doing it all without a single familiar face nearby is a lot to carry at once. But she’s showing up anyway, stress and anxiety along for the ride. That’s what confidence actually looks like.

Think about the last time you did something before you felt ready for it. Maybe it was a new job, a hard conversation, a move of your own. Chances are you didn’t feel prepared going in. You figured it out by doing it. That’s the same thing Emma is doing right now. Readiness isn’t something you wait to feel. It’s something you build by moving.

Emma’s version of that is a career change and a move across an ocean. Yours might look completely different. The principle stays the same.

The Confidence to Change Course

When I look back at who Emma was a few years ago, I see someone who was unsure of what she wanted and afraid of the future. When I look at her today, I see a woman who’s figuring it out as she goes, one bold decision at a time. She’s willing to take risks because that’s where the biggest growth happens.

We never know exactly where our decisions will take us. But if we sit still and never try, nothing happens at all.

What strikes me most is that Emma didn’t wait for permission or certainty before she moved. She didn’t need every detail figured out. She trusted that the next step would become clear once she took the current one, and that trust is what real confidence actually looks like in practice. It rarely looks like fearlessness. It looks like moving forward anyway.

The Takeaway

So if you’re standing at the edge of a decision right now, wondering if you should take the risk: the answer is yes. You never know where it’s going to take you until you try.

If stories like this one resonate with you, you can hear more conversations about building real confidence on Her Unshakeable Confidence, the podcast I co-host with my daughter Olivia.

The post You Don’t Have to Feel Ready to Take the Risk appeared first on Simone Knego.

What if courage has to come before confidence, not after? 

In this episode of Her Unshakeable Confidence, Simone and Olivia sit down with Stephanie Richardson, a public speaking and executive coach, certified world class speaking coach, and international best-selling author of The Power of Coaching, Volume 2. A former licensed professional counselor with a master’s in psychology, Stephanie brings a rare mix of clinical training and real world grit to the conversation, sharing why comfort keeps more people stuck than fear does, how to take your next best step instead of waiting to see the whole staircase, and why reframing a negative thought with real evidence can change the story you tell yourself.

Actionable Takeaways 

Start Small: Take small, low-stakes risks. Confidence comes from reps, not from waiting until you feel ready.

Find Your Next Best Step: You don’t need the whole staircase mapped out. Just identify the one next step you’re willing to take.

Jump and Build Your Wings on the Way Down: You can learn as you go. Waiting to know everything before you move only keeps you stuck.

Surround Yourself with People Moving Forward: The people around you shape what feels normal. Seek out relationships that push you, not just ones that feel comfortable.

Catch and Reframe the Story: When a negative thought shows up, name it, flip it to the opposite, and back it up with real evidence.

Chapters 

00:00 – Introduction 

01:19 – How Stephanie’s Coaching Business Began 

02:33 – Counseling vs Coaching: The Rearview Mirror and the Windshield 

06:35 – Coaching vs Therapy: How to Know When It’s Time for a Change 

12:48 – Small Risks and Finding Your Next Best Step 

17:10 – Surrounding Yourself with the Right People 

22:22 – Catching and Reframing Negative Thoughts 

24:36 – Understanding DISC and Communication Styles 

28:10 – The Best Advice from a Woman in Her Life 

29:24 – Closing Thoughts and Where to Find Stephanie

About Stephanie Richardson 

Stephanie Richardson is a public speaking and executive coach, a certified world class speaking coach, and international best-selling author of The Power of Coaching, Volume 2. She holds a master’s in psychology and spent years as a licensed professional counselor before moving into coaching and speaking.

While building her clinical career, Stephanie was also a single mom growing a direct sales organization that has since grown to nearly sixteen hundred members. She works with people who feel anxious about public speaking as well as business owners and executives who need help shaping a clear, engaging message, whether for a webinar, sales presentation, board meeting, or keynote.

Stephanie is also a certified DISC consultant and a John Maxwell certified coach, using both tools to help individuals, couples, and companies communicate more effectively.

Connect with Stephanie Richardson: 

Website: stephanierichardsonuyp.com

Instagram: @coachstephanierichardson 

LinkedIn: Stephanie Richardson 

Book: The Power of Coaching, Volume 2

Connect with Us

Don’t forget to subscribe to Her Unshakeable Confidence for more empowering stories and actionable insights. Leave us a review, share your favorite moments, and tag us on social media!

Take our new QUIZ and discover what’s really holding you back and how to break free.

Get Free AUDIOBOOK

Order Simone’s New Book 

REAL Confidence A Simple Guide to Go from Unsure to Unshakeable

Order Simone’s The Extraordinary UnOrdinary You Book

Connect with Simone Knego:

• Instagram: @simoneknego
• Facebook: @speakersimoneknego
• LinkedIn: simoneknego
• Website: www.simoneknego.com
• Book a free call with Simone

Connect with Olivia Knego:

• Instagram: @oliviaknego
• LinkedIn: oliviaknego

Looking for more?

Visit Our Etsy Shop: theunshakeablestudio

Check out our inspirational mugs, shirts, and more at The Unshakeable Studio. These items are filled with gratitude and designed to inspire personal transformation in one’s life.

Listen to Episode on:

The post Courage Before Confidence: Stephanie Richardson on Jumping First and Building Your Wings on the Way Down appeared first on Simone Knego.

So we were flying from Miami to London. Originally booked as a direct flight. Then the airline decided to make it a connection through New York instead. When we asked to fix it, they told us that it would cost extra. A change we didn’t even ask for, and we’d have to pay to undo it. Never made sense to me, but oh well.

Then Miami hit us with a four-hour delay. Bad weather, the kind that had flights landing at random airports all over the place. Which of course meant we missed our connection in New York.

At the gate, they told us there was only one seat left on the next flight. So we waited, and the gate agent kept working the problem for us the whole time.

She thanked us. Three separate times. For being nice.

I’m not kidding. Three times she looked up from the screen and said some version of “thank you so much for being so patient with me.” In an airport, mid weather event, surrounded by people losing it, apparently just being decent had become memorable enough to comment on. Three times.

While we waited, I also called the airline directly myself. Guess what? They found a second seat within minutes. Same airline, same flight, totally different answer, just because I stayed on the phone, stayed nice, and stayed persistent.

The real lesson wasn’t about travel at all

It would be easy to turn this into a “be nice to airline staff” post. That’s true too, but it’s not really the point I keep coming back to. The point is what made it possible for us to stay calm through all of it in the first place.

Here’s the thing though. We didn’t predict any of it. Not the reroute, not the storm, not standing at a gate for four hours. Nobody sees that coming.

Staying calm through it wasn’t a decision we made that day. It’s more that patience is a muscle, and it’s one we’ve been building for years, one delayed flight and one frustrating phone call at a time. By the time we got to that gate, staying steady wasn’t something we had to think about. It’s just what we do at this point.

Confidence under pressure isn’t about predicting what’s going to go wrong. It’s a muscle you build, the same way you’d build any other one, through reps.

A few things I’d tell you to do differently

Here’s what I mean, practically speaking, whether you’re stuck at a gate or dealing with a mess at work:

Don’t count on a cushion, because you don’t always get one. We didn’t have extra time built into that schedule. We didn’t have a choice about any of it, the reroute, the storm, the four hours at the gate. None of it was something we planned around. Which is kind of the point. You can’t buffer your way out of everything, so the muscle you actually need is the one that handles it when there’s no buffer left.

Treat every annoying moment as a rep. Staying calm didn’t show up out of nowhere at that gate. It showed up because we’ve practiced it, plenty of times, in plenty of situations way less pleasant than a delayed flight. The more you practice it, the less it feels like effort in the moment.

Stay persistent, and stay kind while you do it. “There’s only one seat” wasn’t the end of it for me. I got on the phone and just kept being nice and kept being persistent, and a seat showed up in minutes. Staying calm doesn’t mean you sit there and accept the first answer. It means you can keep advocating for yourself without losing that calm while you do it.

Separate what happened from how you react to it. The storm wasn’t ours to control. Neither was the airline’s decision to reroute us through New York in the first place. Our attitude toward the person trying to help us? That part was entirely up to us.

Why this matters way past the airport

Delays and detours and blown up plans aren’t just a travel thing. They show up in launches that slip, meetings that fall apart, plans that unravel with zero warning. The people who stay grounded through that aren’t just naturally patient. A lot of them have just had more reps at it, in more situations, over more years.

That gate agent didn’t need us to fix the weather for her. She just needed us to not make her day harder than it already was. Staying steady cost us nothing, and based on how surprised she seemed, that’s apparently rare.

The takeaway

You can’t predict every delay or curveball life is going to throw at you. But patience isn’t just something some people have and others don’t. It’s something you build, the same way you’d build any other muscle, one annoying moment at a time. It’s the difference between feeling rattled and feeling ready, and it gets easier the more you practice it.

So next time your flight gets delayed, or your Monday falls apart before 9am, treat it as a rep. That’s really all it is.

The post Flight Delayed? Here’s How to Stay Calm appeared first on Simone Knego.

What happened to common courtesy?

In this episode of Her Unshakeable Confidence, Simone and Olivia Knego riff on the manners meltdown they keep running into everywhere, from elevator etiquette and messy hotel bathrooms to parking lot chaos and airplane frustrations. They talk about fake service dogs, headphone-free video calls, road rage, and why karma always seems to catch up.

The takeaway: confidence shows up in how you treat other people, and a little kindness goes a long way.

Actionable Takeaways

• Wait for people to exit before you enter
• Clean up after yourself, always
• Keep pets leashed and don’t misrepresent them as service animals
• Use headphones for calls and videos in public spaces
• Treat people how you want to be treated, even in traffic
• Model good behavior for the people around you

Chapters

00:00 – Intro and Today’s Topic: Etiquette
00:30 – Elevators, Parking, and Everyday Rudeness
05:27 – Airport and Airplane Meltdowns
11:23 – Off-Leash Dogs and Fake Service Animals
14:04 – Losing the Ability to Disagree Respectfully
16:16 – Confidence Reflected in How You Treat Others
18:37 – What’s the Resolution? Modeling Better Behavior
21:52 – Closing Thoughts: Kindness and Not Being Someone’s Subway Story

Connect with Us

Don’t forget to subscribe to Her Unshakeable Confidence for more empowering stories and actionable insights. Leave us a review, share your favorite moments, and tag us on social media!

Take our new QUIZ and discover what’s really holding you back and how to break free.

Get Free AUDIOBOOK

Order Simone’s New Book 

REAL Confidence A Simple Guide to Go from Unsure to Unshakeable

Order Simone’s The Extraordinary UnOrdinary You Book

Connect with Simone Knego:

• Instagram: @simoneknego
• Facebook: @speakersimoneknego
• LinkedIn: simoneknego
• Website: www.simoneknego.com
• Book a free call with Simone

Connect with Olivia Knego:

• Instagram: @oliviaknego
• LinkedIn: oliviaknego

Looking for more?

Visit Our Etsy Shop: theunshakeablestudio

Check out our inspirational mugs, shirts, and more at The Unshakeable Studio. These items are filled with gratitude and designed to inspire personal transformation in one’s life.

Listen to Episode on:

The post Why Is Everyone So Rude Lately? A Mother-Daughter Breakdown appeared first on Simone Knego.

More than ten years ago I stood at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. This experience showed me the connection between Potential and Performance in unexpected ways. I was a stay-at-home mom of six. I’d never hiked anything harder than a neighborhood trail. Nobody who knew me would have picked me to summit a 19,000 foot mountain. Including me.

I trained for months to get up that mountain, and the training mattered. But plenty of people train and still talk themselves out of the summit push when it gets hard. What got me to the top wasn’t just the conditioning. It was that somewhere on that climb I stopped caring what people thought I was capable of and started trusting what I actually was.

That gap, between what a person can do and what they let themselves do, is the same gap I see in almost every organization I walk into. And the data backs me up.

The Numbers Behind the Gap

Global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, the lowest it’s been since 2020. Gallup says that costs the world economy about $10 trillion in lost productivity. Read that again. Four out of five employees are clocking in every day and never bringing their full self to the work.

Nearly one in four employees is now sitting on what researchers call unused capacity. Burnout’s easing up in a lot of places, but something quieter is taking its spot: people who are present, capable, and completely checked out from their own potential. The average worker is only productive for about six hours of an eight hour day.

I don’t call that a productivity problem. I call it a confidence problem wearing a productivity costume.

What’s Actually Holding People Back

Ask people why they hold back a good idea, stay quiet in a meeting, or turn down a stretch assignment, and it almost always traces back to self-doubt. 43% of U.S. workers say they feel like impostors at work, like their success is undeserved and they’re one slip away from being found out. Two-thirds say they feel pressure to look more confident than they actually feel. There’s a name for that now: confidence theater. And here’s what keeps it running. Nearly two-thirds of workers say their leaders rarely or never talk openly about their own doubts or mistakes. When nobody at the top admits they’re figuring it out too, everyone below them learns that uncertainty is something to hide, not something to say out loud.

58% of workers say self-doubt has straight up hurt their career growth. Globally, an estimated 62% of employees deal with impostor syndrome. And it hits emerging leaders hardest. Leaders between 24 and 44 report frequent impostor thoughts nearly twice as often as leaders between 55 and 74. So the people you’re counting on to run things in ten years are often the ones most convinced they don’t belong in the room right now.

Managers aren’t off the hook either. Manager engagement dropped from 30% to 27% in a single year, and that uncertainty trickles down to everyone who reports to them. A team almost never outperforms the confidence of the person leading it.

I say this to every HR and L&D leader I talk to. You can train skills all day long, and you should. But skill without belief doesn’t turn into output. Someone convinced they’re one mistake from being exposed will underperform every single time. Not because they can’t do the work. Because they’re too busy managing the fear to actually do it.

Belonging Changes the Math

A quarter of employees say they don’t feel like they truly belong in their organization, and that shows up directly as performance dips and one foot out the door. I’ve seen this up close. People who don’t feel secure in where they stand rarely take the risks great performance requires, they won’t raise the idea nobody else wants to say out loud, they’ll let a mistake sit instead of owning it early, and they’ll wait until something’s an emergency before they ask for help with it.

On that mountain, the guides who pushed me hardest weren’t the ones telling me I could do it. They were the ones who made me feel like I already belonged on that trail. That’s what belonging does. It gives people permission to stop performing and start actually producing.

Closing the Gap Is a Skill, Not a Personality Trait

I talk about this on stage more than almost anything else. Confidence isn’t something you’re handed or born without. It’s trainable, and I built my REAL Method® around that, four habits that anyone can actually learn.

Respect Yourself. People who’ve internalized self-respect stop waiting around for someone else’s stamp of approval. They bring ideas forward faster and bounce back quicker.

Embrace Your Failures. When a mistake becomes information instead of proof you don’t belong, you start taking the calculated risks that actually move things forward. This is the direct antidote to confidence theater, since the whole reason people perform certainty is that they’ve learned admitting doubt gets punished. A leader who talks openly about a mistake gives everyone else permission to stop pretending.

Ask Yourself What You Want. This is the one that breaks the confidence theater cycle. Once you can name what you actually want, you stop spending energy on appearances and start spending it on output.

Live Without Limits. This is where potential finally turns into performance. It’s testing the ceiling you assumed was there instead of just accepting it. It’s what got me up that mountain.

None of this is luck or a personality some people got and others didn’t. These are behaviors. And behaviors get built the way anything gets built: repetition, honest feedback, and a culture where it’s safe to practice them out loud.

What This Means for the People Building Your Teams

If your organization is pouring money into leadership development, succession planning, or high potential programs, the confidence gap deserves just as much attention as the skills gap. A brilliant leader who doesn’t trust their own judgment will hesitate at the exact moment it matters most. A high potential employee wrestling with impostor feelings instead of doing their best work is a flight risk long before anyone notices a dip in their numbers.

The organizations closing this gap aren’t the ones with the most talent on paper. They’re the ones who stopped assuming talent and performance were the same thing and started actually building the confidence that turns one into the other.

I didn’t come up with Turn Potential Into Performance because it sounded good on a slide. It came from that mountain, and honestly it comes from every organization I walk into where someone’s sitting on more than they’re using, just waiting for permission to trust what they already know.

Key Takeaways

• Global employee engagement dropped to 20% in 2025, its lowest point since 2020, costing the world economy an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity.
• 43% of U.S. workers experience impostor feelings at work, and 58% say self-doubt has directly hurt their career growth.
• “Confidence theater” describes the growing gap between how confident employees feel internally and how confident they believe they must appear at work.
• The gap between potential and performance is rarely a skills problem. It’s most often a confidence problem, and confidence is trainable.
• Simone Knego’s REAL Method® (Respect Yourself, Embrace Your Failures, Ask Yourself What You Want, Live Without Limits) is a four-habit framework for closing that gap.

Sources: Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2026; ActivTrak 2026 State of the Workplace; MyPerfectResume, Confidence at Work; Asana, Turning Impostor Syndrome into Confidence; AIHR, Employee Experience Statistics; Gable.to, Employee Productivity Statistics

The post The Gap Between Potential and Performance Is Costing You More Than You Think appeared first on Simone Knego.

Episode Summary 

What happens when your body forces you to stop pushing? In this episode of Her Unshakeable Confidence, Simone and Olivia sit down with Michelle Scott, an executive and intuitive leadership coach with over 15 years of experience helping high-impact leaders lead from clarity instead of pressure. Michelle shares how a hyperthyroidism diagnosis became the wake-up call that led her to spiritual psychology, deep inner work, and a completely different relationship with herself.

Together they unpack losing yourself in motherhood and caregiving, why awareness is the first step to change, how to actually trust your intuition (and what it feels like when you override it), and why real confidence has nothing to do with being the loudest in the room. It’s a candid conversation about self-respect, self-love, and learning to listen to the signals your body has been sending all along.

Actionable Takeaways 

Listen to Your Body: Exhaustion, illness, and stress are often nudges you’ve been ignoring. Don’t wait for a crisis to pay attention. 

Know What Brings You Joy: Losing yourself often starts with losing track of what you actually enjoy. Keep that top of mind, even as priorities shift. 

Practice Intuition Intentionally: Everyone has intuition. The work is noticing when your mind overrides your gut, and leaning in instead of dismissing it. 

Have the Hard Conversation: Avoiding discomfort now often creates bigger problems later. Say the thing, kindly and clearly. 

Redefine Confidence: Confidence isn’t volume or ego. It’s authentic, built through inner work, and shows up as knowing you’ll be okay.

Chapters 

00:00 — Introduction & Welcoming Michelle Scott 

03:06 — Losing Yourself in Motherhood and Caregiving 

09:55 — Why Awareness Is the First Step to Change 

14:11 — Seeing Past the Physical: Honoring Who You Are 

19:13 — When Ignoring Your Intuition Goes Wrong 

25:15 — Self-Care Isn’t Something You Can Save Up 

32:04 — Redefining Confidence: It’s Not Ego, It’s Authentic 

36:16 — One Question to Ask When You Feel Out of Alignment 

41:14 — The Best Advice a Woman Ever Gave Michelle 

48:24 — Where to Find Michelle Scott

About Michelle Scott 

Michelle Scott is an executive and intuitive leadership coach with over 15 years of experience helping high-impact leaders lead from clarity and alignment instead of pressure and old patterns. She holds a doctorate in spiritual science and blends strategy with soul in her work.

Michelle’s own turning point came in 2009, when she was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, an autoimmune condition that forced her to slow down after years of pushing herself to exhaustion. That diagnosis led her to a spiritual psychology program in 2010, and by mid-2011 she was symptom-free and off all medication. The deep inner work she did along the way reshaped how she leads, coaches, and shows up in her own life.

Today, Michelle works with corporate leaders and individuals to help them tune into their intuition, build authentic confidence, and lead from a place of self-trust rather than pressure.

Connect with Michelle Scott: 

Website: https://michellescottcoaching.com

Free Quiz: michellescottcoaching.com/quiz

Facebook: Michelle Scott Coaching

LinkedIn: Michelle Scott

Instagram: Michelle Scott

Connect with Us

Don’t forget to subscribe to Her Unshakeable Confidence for more empowering stories and actionable insights. Leave us a review, share your favorite moments, and tag us on social media!

Take our new QUIZ and discover what’s really holding you back and how to break free.

Get Free AUDIOBOOK

Order Simone’s New Book 

REAL Confidence A Simple Guide to Go from Unsure to Unshakeable

Order Simone’s The Extraordinary UnOrdinary You Book

Connect with Simone Knego:

• Instagram: @simoneknego
• Facebook: @speakersimoneknego
• LinkedIn: simoneknego
• Website: www.simoneknego.com
• Book a free call with Simone

Connect with Olivia Knego:

• Instagram: @oliviaknego
• LinkedIn: oliviaknego

Looking for more?

Visit Our Etsy Shop: theunshakeablestudio

Check out our inspirational mugs, shirts, and more at The Unshakeable Studio. These items are filled with gratitude and designed to inspire personal transformation in one’s life.

Listen to Episode on:

The post The Body Doesn’t Lie: Intuition, Alignment, and Real Confidence appeared first on Simone Knego.

This Past Weekend

This past weekend, I moved my youngest daughter, Mili, into American University.

I’ve done this five times before, so I’ve got the system down. Blue packing bags, not suitcases, because they smush down to nothing once you’ve unpacked them and you’re not stuck hauling five giant bags back out to the car. I remembered basically everything this time. Except the tools. We bought furniture that needed assembling and brought zero ways to assemble it. Some things never change.

But here’s what also doesn’t change: it doesn’t get easier just because you’ve done it before. It just gets more familiar.

There’s something about dropping off your last kid specifically. It’s a chapter closing and a new one opening in the same afternoon, in the same parking lot. I was excited for her. Proud of her. And also standing in that dorm hallway trying to keep it together, because six kids in and I still haven’t figured out how to do this without getting emotional.

Full Circle

This move-in looked different than the other five. It wasn’t my husband and me this time. It was my oldest son and me.

He’s the one I moved in first, years ago, back when I had no other move-ins to compare it to and no idea what I was doing. I mostly figured that one out as I went.

And now here he was, helping me move his youngest sibling in. Hauling the same blue bags I’ve hauled five times before. Standing with me in a half-built dorm room realizing we didn’t have a single tool to assemble any of it, which meant a run to Ace Hardware before we could finish anything. It was a full circle moment I didn’t see coming: the kid I once dropped off on my own is now the one showing up to help me let go of the last one.

Every Kid Launches Differently

What gets me every single time is how differently kids handle this day.

Some are three steps ahead, unpacking their own boxes and basically waving you toward the door before the car’s even empty. They want the goodbye done. They’re ready to be the version of themselves who doesn’t need a parent in the room to feel capable.

Some want you in line with them for every last errand. The lanyard pickup, the dining hall tour, walking the dorm room from every angle. They’re not embarrassed to want you there, and honestly, neither am I.

And some make it very clear, without saying a word, that they’d prefer you not be visible at all. Because god forbid you embarrass them by existing too close to the elevator.

Six kids in, I’ve seen every version, sometimes from siblings who couldn’t be more different. And here’s what I believe: every version is right. There’s no correct way to walk into your next chapter. There’s only your way. My job was never to make them all launch the same. It was to let each one launch as themselves.

The Launching Pad

Driving away from campus, this time with my son next to me instead of a car full of siblings, that’s what kept coming to mind. Move-in day is a launching pad. It’s the moment a kid stops being a passenger in their own life and starts flying it. Whether they feel ready or not. Whether I feel ready to let them or not.

Launching pads aren’t comfortable. They’re not built for comfort, they’re built for liftoff. That’s true for the one taking off and for the one standing on the ground watching.

I remember this exact same feeling with my son, the one now sitting next to me in the car, the first time around. I figured it would fade by kid six. It didn’t. It just showed up again, right on schedule.

What This Has to Do With Confidence

Here’s why I keep coming back to this when I talk about confidence: move-in day is confidence with no polish on it.

We like to picture confident people as the ones who feel ready. Who walk into the new job or the new city without a flicker of doubt. That’s not what I’ve seen, not in my own life and not in six kids heading off to six different first days.

Confidence isn’t the absence of nerves. It’s moving forward with the nerves still riding along. Mili told me twice she didn’t feel ready. I wasn’t ready to let her go either. We did it anyway, not because the fear went away, but because we stopped waiting for it to.

Readiness was never actually the requirement. Willingness was.

Your Own Launching Pad

That’s the part I want you to sit with, whatever your launching pad looks like right now.

Maybe it’s a role you were offered and immediately started talking yourself out of. Maybe it’s a conversation you’ve rehearsed in the shower for three weeks and still haven’t had. Maybe it’s a goal you keep telling yourself you’re not quite qualified for yet.

Six move-in days have taught me this: you don’t need to feel ready. You need to be willing to take the step while your stomach’s still in knots.

One Empty Bedroom at a Time

Mili is going to be just fine at American University. Not because she wasn’t scared. Because she went anyway.

And my son, the one carrying boxes and making the Ace Hardware run with me, is proof of exactly where that willingness leads. I dropped him off alone once, unsure of everything. Now he’s steady enough to show up for his mom and his little sister on one of the harder days of my parenting life.

That’s the lesson. I’ve learned it five times before, and I’m learning it again this week, one empty bedroom at a time. The launching pad doesn’t wait for anyone to feel ready. It just asks if you’re willing to go.

If this is a season where you’re trying to move forward without feeling ready, REAL Confidence: A Simple Guide to Go from Unsure to Unshakeable walks through exactly how to do that. You can find it at realconfidencebook.com.

The post The Launching Pad: What Moving My Last Kid Into College Taught Me About Confidence appeared first on Simone Knego.

What does a new beginning actually look like when you’re not forcing it? 

In this episode of Her Unshakeable Confidence, Simone and Olivia Knego catch up after a week off to talk about the flood of new beginnings hitting their family all at once, from Mili heading to college in DC and Noah trading a four-year degree for welding school, to Emma’s move from Wales to Scotland and Simone easing into her next season as a postmenopausal, semi-empty-nest grandmother. Along the way they dig into why late-summer change feels more organic than a January resolution, the freedom of not reinventing yourself just because the calendar flips, and how a new hobby (hello, raised-bed gardening) can be its own small fresh start. 

It’s a candid, funny conversation about letting change be positive, even when it’s a little bittersweet.

Actionable Takeaways

• You don’t have to reinvent yourself for a new beginning to count.
• Let go of guilt over what you didn’t get to; focus on what’s next.
• Take advantage of where you live instead of waiting for a trip to explore.
• Try something new just for you, even if it seems small (like a garden).
• Reframe uncertainty as the space where new things happen.
• Focus on what you still have and can do, not what’s changed or been lost.

Chapters 

00:00 – Welcome Back and Why Everyone’s Starting Something Right Now

03:52 – Big Family News: Grandbaby, College Move-In, and an Empty Nest

08:22 – Olivia’s Last Year in Nashville and Her Bucket List

11:39 – New Planners, Journaling, and Skipping the Reinvention

12:56 – Simone’s New Hobby: Raised-Bed Gardening

16:57 – No More Dogs (Probably) and Empty-Nest Pet Talk

20:18 – Letting Go of Summer Guilt

24:47 – Change Is Good, Even the Hard Kind

26:21 – Confidence Tips: Staying Positive and Focusing on What You Have

Connect with Us

Don’t forget to subscribe to Her Unshakeable Confidence for more empowering stories and actionable insights. Leave us a review, share your favorite moments, and tag us on social media!

Take our new QUIZ and discover what’s really holding you back and how to break free.

Get Free AUDIOBOOK

Order Simone’s New Book 

REAL Confidence A Simple Guide to Go from Unsure to Unshakeable

Order Simone’s The Extraordinary UnOrdinary You Book

Connect with Simone Knego:

• Instagram: @simoneknego
• Facebook: @speakersimoneknego
• LinkedIn: simoneknego
• Website: www.simoneknego.com
• Book a free call with Simone

Connect with Olivia Knego:

• Instagram: @oliviaknego
• LinkedIn: oliviaknego

Looking for more?

Visit Our Etsy Shop: theunshakeablestudio

Check out our inspirational mugs, shirts, and more at The Unshakeable Studio. These items are filled with gratitude and designed to inspire personal transformation in one’s life.

Listen to Episode on:

The post New Season, New Beginnings: Life’s Next Chapter appeared first on Simone Knego.