Snap Back: The Confidence Rebound

Has your confidence ever taken a hit? Ever felt less self-assured than usual? What about questioning yourself? If your answer to any of these questions are yes, rest assured you’re human and you’re not alone on this.

I generally consider myself a confident person. I mean I’m the person with affirmations on the bathroom wall and my work desk, who is often giving encouragement to others. But earlier this year my confidence took a hit and I didn’t immediately bounce back like I expected myself to. I went from feeling on top of the world and that my life was right on track to replaying negative experiences on a loop and questioning if I had what it takes to conquer my next goal. Then on top of that, I judged myself for feeling this way. Why did I allow the negative thoughts to linger? Why didn’t I just “get over” the hurtful words from someone I admired that contributed to my negative self-talk? Why was it so hard to feel confident again after feeling discouraged?

There’s probably a million and one answers to all these questions, but instead of focusing on them, I want to share a few lessons I was reminded of on my confidence snap back journey.

You won’t always feel this way. Yes, in the moment, however long that moment may be, you might feel like you are in a deep hole you won’t be able to climb out of, but give yourself time and grace. Love on yourself. It gets better.

Confidence partially stems from past success. Remind yourself of all the hard things you’ve accomplished and the great things that you have done. Try to remember how you felt when first faced with the last hard thing you achieved. Chances are you had the exact same feelings you’re experiencing now and you persisted in spite of them and you did the hard thing. Remember your track record of success!

Encourage Yourself. Don’t depend on others to validate you. It can feel really good when people compliment, encourage and support you, but what happens when they don’t? A lack of affirmation from others can really sting, especially if they used to very vocally support you. Other people’s encouragement should be the cherry on top of your own personal celebration and validation. Be sure you tell yourself everything you are hoping someone says to you. “I’m AH-MAY-ZING.” “I’m doing a great job.” “I got this.” If you’re telling yourself all the things you need to hear, you won’t feel bad about not hearing them from someone else.

Keep it Real. It’s cute to think we will be confident all the time, and maybe there is someone out there who has never experienced self-doubt, discouragement, fear or anything other than total, complete confidence. For the rest of us, it’s not unusual to experience self-doubt to some degree, more than once throughout our lives. In fact, for many of us, confidence is not the absence of all doubt, but rather belief in one’s self (and God) that outweighs the doubt. Acknowledging this helps lessen the self-judgment you may experience in those tentative moments.

Focus on God. The moment I stopped focusing on my problems, challenges, goals, other people and redirected my focus to God was when I started feeling like the confident me again. In hindsight, I realized I had spent so much time magnifying those hard things that it didn’t leave much room for focus on God. Confidence for me is not solely about my ability, it’s about God’s too. What I can’t do, He can. So even if I’m not confident in my own abilities, I am confident in His.

Rebuild Confidence. Sometimes you might have to intentionally rebuild your confidence. Start trying things you’ve never done before or that you think might be hard and see how they turn out. The more you do them successfully, your confidence will build and that same confidence can be transferred to other things you’re looking to tackle. I started baking from scratch. First, I made homemade cinnamon rolls, something I thought would be way too hard to do for a novice baker like me. They were delicious, then I tried homemade biscuits. Heavenly. I realized that some things that seem hard and complicated in fact are not. I now more confidently google recipes to things I want to eat at home. Perhaps, I’ll try scones next.

Snap back is a reference to be stretched, somewhat like a rubber band. You might think you’re going to break, you might think you’ve reached your limit. But when you dig deep inside of you, you find a new resolve to conquer whatever you’re up against. I started writing this blog post when I was in the thick of insecurity and negative self-talk. Now firmly on the other side, I feel confident clicking “publish” on this post. To anyone on your own confidence snap back journey, I am rooting for you. You got this!