No matter how many times you are told to believe in yourself, there are going to be times in life when your confidence takes a knock.
This is completely normal in the competitive and sometimes harsh society that we find ourselves in today. The important thing is not to let these knocks define who you are or how you feel about yourself long-term. Getting up after a fall can actually turn into something quite positive if you decide to look at it this way.
This subject has been fresh in my own mind this week as my own confidence suffered a huge blow a few days ago. This is despite the fact that I regularly work with people on boosting their self-confidence and have given public talks on the same subject for many years!
The situation I was in left me feeling angry, hurt and rejected. If this had happened to me when I was younger, my reaction might have been to curl up in a ball to lick my wounds for a few days.
However, this time I decided to make a conscious effort to turn the situation around. The feelings I was experiencing were strong ones, so it occurred to me that if I could harness that energy and the strength in those feelings, maybe I could turn it into something positive. The same way as the power of the sea can either be seen in the waves crashing against the seashore or be turned into power which can light up a city.
I decided to turn my initial feelings of rejection and not feeling good enough into the positive feeling of ‘Actually – I do have something to offer even if you don’t see it – and now I am going to show you what that is’. I sat on the beach and channelled the feelings of disappointment and rejection I had felt into preparing a positive teaching session for a group of students I am currently working with. The ideas came easily and I ended up with a session that I am really looking forward to delivering.
In addition to this I also reached out to a couple of people I trust and asked for some time just to talk things through. This helped to quickly put things in perspective and remind me that this one event did not have to ruin my whole year or affect my value as a human being.
Once my own feelings had started to feel slightly less raw I was able to think about what had happened in a different way. Now, just a few days later, that rawness has died down and I can already see the whole event differently. In fact I have been able to come up with a whole list of positives. That doesn’t mean that the event itself didn’t hurt, it means that I have made a conscious choice as to how I am going to allow it to affect me.
Sometimes our life lessons are harsh ones, but if you are prepared to consciously look for learning, you will almost always find it in any negative situation that you go through (even if it is thinking about things you want to avoid in the future). I was able to take quite a bit of learning from my own experience and ultimately feel richer and a little wiser as a result.
Life can feel really hard at times. Sometimes we can be left with feeling that we have not been seen, recognised or valued in the way we that we had hoped for. The important thing to focus on is that a knock, whilst it may well sting a bit, does not define you as a person. It does not take away your potential, your qualities or your strengths. In fact the time after a knock might be exactly the opportunity you need to channel your energies into something amazing. If someone else doesn’t see your worth then make a positive decision to show the world what you have to offer. The best thing about being knocked down is that there are no limits to the good that can come from getting up again.