How to get out of your confidence crisis at work.

Hey, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Erin Foley, professional development speaker, here to talk to you about confidence. So let me start off with this. A lot of us have this perception that confidence is either something we have or something we don't have. And I want to challenge that perception. Saying that confidence is either something we have or don't have would be like saying joy is something we either have or don't have. Sadness is either something we don't have or have. Confidence is an emotion. It's an emotional state based on your brain's reaction to a particular circumstance. And there are times in our life, times in our career where we feel confident and times when we do not feel confident. So unless you are someone who is sociopathic and you just sort of have a delusional confidence all the time, chances are at some point in your life, you're going to move from feeling confident to not feeling confident. And that's because the brain reacts to a change in circumstance and it certainly reacts when it perceives the circumstance to be a threat in some way. So if you clicked on this video, chances are you have something in your career that has shaken your confidence. It could be that you're in a brand new job. It could be that you are working with a boss that you haven't worked with before. It could be that you got feedback that is something you didn't expect. You got some negative or critical feedback and that has shaken your confidence. It could be that you are working on a different team or a different project or you have a different coworker that has changed the dynamics. There's so many different things that can take us from a state of feeling pretty confident in who we are and what we're doing to feeling rather insecure and experiencing a lot of second guessing. So I want you to know that confidence is something that will shift in your life. We move in and out of it, particularly if you are moving through your career with a sense of progressing, allowing yourself to shift and change, allowing yourself to possibly level up. Anything that would allow you to change at all as opposed to just staying in one very specific role or task that you never shift. If it shifts at all, you are likely going to experience a change in your level of confidence. So one of the things that I find that people will do when this happens, particularly people who have had a state of confidence in something else that they've done or people who have been doing, maybe you're someone that does a lot of self-help or you try to stay positive. There's this tendency to find ourselves in a state where we're questioning our confidence. We're feeling insecure. We're second guessing. And you start to feel bad about yourself because you feel bad. So you start to mentally shame yourself for feeling like your confidence is gone away or not feeling confident. Like I should be confident. Why am I not confident? Why am I questioning my confidence in this world? Why do I feel this way? This is what I call in the coaching world like a double negative. It's like if you felt sad about a breakup and then you're mad at yourself for feeling sad. It doesn't make any sense. It's not productive. And it just takes the initial emotion that you're experiencing and it doubles it down even more intensely. So erase any shame you have over feeling a lack of confidence in the position that you're in right now or in whatever it is that's sort of shaking your confidence. It's a human reaction to any kind of minute change or shift. And you're not broken because you feel that way. It's not something that I want you to willpower yourself out of feeling by telling yourself that you shouldn't feel this way and you should be tougher and you should understand your value and all of those things. What's happened is that something has shifted and your brain is seeing it as unfamiliar and it's seeing it as dangerous and it's questioning your capabilities in that setting and it sends off alarm signals and it starts to panic. So that's the circumstance that will create the confidence crisis most of the time. So here's what I want you to do instead. First thing I want you to do is to recognize the circumstance shift that has led to this feeling of feeling shaken in your confidence. Think of the circumstance and just name it. My boss shifted. My coworker shifted. I'm in something new. I want you to just start to recognize this is my brain's reaction to a change. Now, I don't want you to start attaching the circumstance automatically causes the confidence crisis. What actually happens is there's a circumstance. You're in something new. You have a new boss. You got critical feedback. The way your brain perceives it and reacts to it is what actually creates the confidence crisis. That's why two people can experience the same circumstance and one person starts to panic and spiral and another person has no reaction to it. It's because it's really dependent upon what your brain does, what it makes that circumstance mean. So I want you to just name the circumstance as a way to start to recognize this is just my brain's reaction to something external that's happening. I'm not broken. This isn't because I haven't will-powered myself enough into feeling confident. This is just my brain seeing something as fearful and dangerous. Then I want you to shift your focus on what you're going to be confident around, particularly if what is shaking your confidence is something that is new in any way. It might be a new job. It might be a new project. It might be a presentation that you're giving, something that you just don't feel like you've had an incredible amount of time or practice at, and it's really shaking your confidence. Instead of deciding I need to will myself into feeling confident about this thing, I want you to think about your confidence in your ability to become confident. I'm going to say that again. Confidence in your ability to become confident. One of the things we really underestimate is that what makes people feel really strong and resilient is that they believe they're capable of moving from a state of being unsure, not feeling capable, not knowing exactly what they're doing, to being capable and confident. When you're confident in that process, hey, I know I'm going to feel like a lot of second guessing. I know I'm going to feel like I don't exactly know what I'm doing. I know this is going to feel really uncomfortable, but I believe in my ability to get confident. One of the things I often talk about is that you start with the courage to step into the thing that's making you feel insecure. When you are consistently in the thing, and you're practicing the thing, and you're becoming familiar with the thing, you then gain capability. From that capability, you start to feel really confident. You start with the courage and the willingness to step into the thing. You don't have to start with confidence. You don't have to come out the gate feeling like you're confident. Imagine if tomorrow you and all your friends played a brand new game where you had to throw a ball up in the air and spin around three times and catch it on your nose. You don't just start that game with a feeling that you have to be confident at the get-go and that if you're not, something's wrong with you. What you want to do is be confident in your ability to become confident through the courage, the consistency, the practice, becoming familiar, feeling capable, and then becoming confident. Shift your focus. Then I want you to connect to why it's worth it for you to show up to this thing that's shaking your confidence even though you feel unsure. Why is it worth it? Why is it worth it to push through with this new job? Or why is it worth it to work through the criticism that you got from your boss? Why is it worth it to figure out how to work with this coworker? Whatever it is that's shaking your confidence, connect to why it's worth it to show up and become confident in that situation. And don't underestimate how much we gain from not feeling confident in something and becoming confident in something. How much we gain in feeling uncomfortable in a new circumstance and learning how to adjust to that. The idea that successful people are always confident is such a myth, right? The idea that people showed up confident is such a myth. So many people who are in positions of success or confidence that you view, even if they truly are confident, chances are when they started that or at a certain point in that they've had absolute confidence crises. The smartest, most successful people have had moments in their life, months in their life, even years in their life where their confidence has been really shaken. But the key is that they were willing to show up for it to feel uncomfortable, to become consistent and persistent, to figure out how to become familiar with the situation and to feel then capable, which leads them to feel confident. So I wanted to do this video because I really want people to stop shaming themselves for having a confidence crisis. I really want you to understand that everybody experiences moments in their life, months in their life, times in their life and in their career where their confidence gets shaken. And the key is knowing you can build confidence. Becoming confident in your ability to become confident versus assuming I have to always show up and always feel like I'm confident in something. The brain knows when something's unfamiliar or something has shifted, so it's gonna tell you we don't feel capable. It's fine to not feel capable around something. The key is showing up for the thing so that you can build capability. So that's my message today for you around confidence. Let go of the shame. Do not give yourself a double negative. Name it. Connect to the why it's worth showing up for it and make sure that you don't underestimate the power of being willing to be uncomfortable and move through something that you don't feel confident in. If you want more information on me, on my programs, I help people get out of these confidence crises fast. I help them build their confidence. I help them work well beyond their potential. Check me out, Erin M. Foley dot com. I'll be back with more information for you.