This question arrived in my email this morning and the question is, “how do I regain my self-confidence when it has been shaken?”
First of all, we all get our confidence shaken or tested at one time or another. It is part of life and can happen at any moment whether it is you are not performing in your job as you thought you were. It could be that you are madly in love and your partner wants to end the relationship. It could also be a life event such as moving to another part of the country and having your certainty all of a sudden vanish.
Regardless of any event and outcome, life is always moving forward even when we are not ready to move with it. That is okay at least for the moment. However, we can be left standing still forever and need to eventually move forward as well.
Here are four quick steps in order to help you regain confidence after it has been shaken:
- Step away from the set back and do something enjoyable. Your focus and energy will likely be stuck on the event and feeling on losing your confidence. The best thing to do is to move away from the focus and do something fun and will recharge your batteries. That could be playing golf, spending a day at the spa, or see certain family and friends. These activities will remind us what we truly live for.
- Reflect by being honest with yourself and create an empowering meaning. Tony Robbins states, “it’s not the event that matters, it is the meaning we give to the event’. We party when we succeed and we ponder when we fail. The truth is that life happens for us not to us. Identify your role and responsibility on this setback occurring. By getting real with yourself, you will find that the event or setback is actually a great thing because it prepares us for the next level we need to get into our lives. A lost job means that we are getting ready for the job we always dreamed about happening or the perfect relationship.
- Take small actions to create momentum. Once we have created an empowering meaning, we can get back to taken action. We want to create small wins and build upon that. According to Entrepreneur Magazine when we win at something — no matter how big or small — your body releases higher levels of dopamine that create the “addiction” for more success. As the small wins accumulate, the larger the snowball grows and we progress slowly to larger goals.
- Whenever you get down, change your state. It is natural for us to lose our confidence at any time. The quickest way to get that confidence back is to change our state by moving our body, elevating our shoulders, and feel your feet are planted in the ground. It is said that emotion is created by motion. Confidence or a lack of confidence is nothing more than an emotion.