CONFIDENCE ISN'T A PERSONALITY TRAIT.
Hi, I'm Molly. Founder of Tools for Tomorrow, facilitator, and someone who spent her teenage years learning the true meaning of resilience and confidence.
This is the story of how that became a social enterprise.
WHEN I WAS 13, I WAS DIAGNOSED WITH SCOLIOSIS.
From that point until I was 18, I wore a back brace every single day - under my school uniform, under my clothes, wherever I went.
Nobody could see it. But I knew it was there. And I spent years becoming an expert at not being seen.
I wore different clothes to hide it. I stood differently. I avoided anything that might draw attention - a hand raised in class, a question asked out loud, a moment where someone might look at me too closely.
While everyone else was figuring out who they were and finding their confidence, I was quietly disappearing.
What I didn't know then - and what nobody ever told me - is that confidence is a skill. Not a personality trait. Not something you either have or you don't. Not a reward waiting for you on the other side of feeling better about yourself.
Confidence is a skill. One that can be practised, built, and taught.
I could have been learning it the whole time - even with the brace on, even while I was hiding. That realisation changed everything.
SOMETHING CLICKED WHEN I FOUND LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT
I shopped around a lot in my early career - trying different roles and industries. I didn't think I'd ever find my 'thing'. Then I found L&D.
I designed and delivered training for early-career professionals, interns and work experience students. I watched young people arrive uncertain and leave with something they hadn't walked in with. I got to be the person in the room who created that shift.
It was the first time in my working life I thought: this is it. This is what I'm supposed to be doing.
And then I was made redundant.
Like so many young people in the job market today, I suddenly faced the loss of something I'd built my identity around. It knocked my confidence in a way I hadn't expected.
Here I was - someone who had spent years helping other people find their voice - and I felt like I'd lost mine.
But there was a difference between me at 26 and the young people I'd been working with. I had something they didn't: I knew that confidence is a skill. I'd seen it built from scratch in rooms full of uncertain people. I knew it could be rebuilt.
That knowledge - and the anger at not having had it when I was 14 - is what became Tools for Tomorrow.
Not a business plan. A response to something I'd felt myself, twice, and refused to accept was inevitable for the young people coming behind me.