Finding Your Inner Confidence Again After Being Let Down
(This post was written while listening to Beyonce’s album - Renaissance and some epic movie scenes - read on to know which ones!)
I think we can all agree that being let down never feels good. You get your hopes up about that job, relationship, living situation, opportunity, whatever it is…and then bam! The universe has other plans for you. So how can you find your inner confidence again after being let down?
Besides listening to your favorite jams, I have four lessons-learned to share from my own life and career let downs.
1. You have to feel your emotions after a let down.
Believe me, I get wanting to numb out after bad news. It’s so tempting to avoid and distract yourself from negative feelings, especially if you have been socialized to swallow them, “get over it, “look on the bright side,” and move on. This is what I was taught.
What I’ve had to learn over and over is this: when you don’t process your emotions, you don’t actually move on. Feelings are action informants. When you avoid them, you can’t learn from them.
Anger, sadness, jealousy, guilt, and even relief are some of the emotions that can come up when you’ve been expecting good news and you receive bad news. We experience all feelings in our body. They are physical sensations. That lump in your throat, thumping in your chest, and knot in your stomach is your body’s way of telling you there’s a negative threat and to take action about it.
How do you process your feelings?
When I first heard about processing feelings, I didn’t get it. In her article, The Key Skill We Rarely Learn: How to Feel Your Feelings, Victoria Lemle Beckner Ph.D., explains:
“First, notice that emotions pull for quick, reflexive action to meet immediate goals and avoid or satisfy the feeling in the moment. They are not designed to move you toward your longer-term goals, values, or well-being. Thus, you may find yourself snapping at your partner even before you consider asking why she didn’t call you back, and this ends up creating more distance instead of the connection you really want. If you don’t know how to stay with uncomfortable emotions and therefore must give in that short-term drive toward or away, there is no opportunity to consider how you want to act in a situation. You won’t have that emotion-muscle to move toward meaningful goals in the face of difficult feelings.”
Bottom line: If you don’t slow down long enough to understand what is behind a feeling, you risk taking an impulsive action (or inaction) that may not serve you very well. This is a sure way not to build your inner confidence again.
2. The journey built your inner confidence - not the result.
Every great movie has a scene where the protagonist faces a setback. As the viewer, is it the final result that makes the movie memorable or the journey to get there?
It’s the journey that is exciting! We get to watch the protagonist be challenged, take risks, make good and poor decisions, learn about themselves, and find their inner confidence to achieve what they once thought was impossible.
I was a teenager when the movie Save The Last Dance came out and while it wasn’t an amazing flick by any means, I remember loving the montages of Julia Stiles’ character rehearsing for her big audition for The Juilliard School. (If you want a laugh, check out her final dance - I thought this was totally amazing back then. So much hopping and hand motions!)
Or Dirty Dancing! Yes, the final dance scene is incredible (and I just watched it 3x while writing this), but c’mon - all the hot scenes where Johnny and Baby practice in the water and balance on beams?! The part where Johnny blows out his back car window while Overload by Alfie Zappacosta plays?! The practice scene during Hungry Eyes?! Okay… calming down now.
My point is this: it’s good to have a result to aim for - and - it’s the journey that helps you grow and evolve as a person.
NEVER put Baby in the corner.
3. There’s always something to learn when you’re let down.
When you’re let down, it’s so easy to discount every step it took you to get there.
Remember: you are not the same person as when you were first starting out. The person you are now took a risk, challenged themselves, learned new skills, talked to new people, stretched in ways you thought you’d never stretch, danced in ways you didn’t think you could (okay, that last one may not apply). But you get my point!
Take what you learned from the experience to inform your next steps. You know so much more now!
4. A “no” is a “yes” to something else.
You may not be able to let this in because your inner confidence has been shaken, but here’s what I know to be true: something else is waiting for you.
The space that has been created due to the rejection, the silence, the unanswered email, the ghosted text thread, the bad timing - whatever it is - will be filled. By a new opportunity. A new idea. That’s just how the universe works. But that doesn’t mean you get to sit on your arse.
In the words of Elizabeth Gilbert, “...ideas spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing human partners…”
“When an idea thinks it has found somebody – say, you – who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit. It will try to get your attention. Mostly, you will not notice. This is likely because you’re so consumed by your own dramas, anxieties, distractions, insecurities, and duties that you aren’t receptive to inspiration.
You might miss the signal because you’re watching TV, or shopping, or brooding over how angry you are at somebody, or pondering your failures and mistakes, or just generally really busy. The idea will try to wave you down (perhaps for a few moments; perhaps for a few months; perhaps even for a few years), but when it finally realises that you’re oblivious to its message, it will move on to someone else.”
The next time you’re let down (and it WILL happen again), know that your inner confidence is getting stronger. Let downs are part of life. They are part of the journey. That’s how you know you’re on THE journey. Careers aren’t meant to be linear and perfect. Life isn’t either.
Keep going.
