Overcoming Setbacks: A Practical Guide to Rebuilding Confidence
A setback refers to any experience or event that causes you to pause, restart, or evaluate your progress along your path or process while also challenging your assumptions about where that path or process is leading. There are many ways to experience a setback; some may take place at work, in a relationship, while raising children, experiencing loss, or during recovery from an inpatient drug and/or alcohol treatment program. The reason for a setback can range from your own choices and decisions to an external circumstance, to the choices made by others. Every person will experience the experience(s) listed above as part of their normal daily living, at one point or another during his/her lifetime. Once experienced, the consequences of these experiences can lead to feelings of disappointment, fear, anger, betrayal, helplessness, inadequacy, insecurity, and a disconnect from what we previously believed about ourselves.
Understanding Setbacks and Their Impact on Confidence
Other examples of common negative experiences include fear of failure; feelings of shame; feeling overwhelmed; feeling hopeless; feeling powerless; blame-shaming others; feeling uncertain; feeling rejected; feeling inferior; feeling tempted to give up on life and stop being ourselves; and feelings of isolation. All people go through a cycle of emotions after experiencing a setback, and we typically experience self-doubt and negative self-talk as a result of our thinking about our failures. In addition, when faced with the fear of trying again, many individuals lose enthusiasm, become mentally and emotionally drained, become frustrated with their life situations, are mentally fatigued, and become more likely to reinstate negative thoughts about themselves. Because the mind begins associating failure with worth as a person, the resulting decrease in self-confidence is often reflected in the way we think, behave, feel, and respond to challenges and setbacks. Therefore, recognizing and addressing this mental association with failure is the first step toward rebuilding your self-confidence after the experience of a setback.
Why Are Setbacks an Inevitable Part of the Growing Process?
Setbacks have a place in our lives. In fact, there are many things that will happen to you in your life that you cannot control, many setbacks. However, when you make every effort to grow through the things that happen to you, and you do everything you have to do in order to grow, you are going to be faced with many setbacks. This is part of the process of growth, and you must understand that all you have to do is to continue to work through those setbacks and learn from those setbacks. The greatest difference between successful people and everyone else is that those successful people have failed over and over again, but they have always had the ability to pick themselves up and adapt. Setbacks will provide you with three things:
- Feedback
- Resilience Building
- Learning Opportunities that Success Alone Doesn't Provide
Practical Steps to Rebuild Confidence After Setbacks
1. Acknowledge What Happened Without Self-Blame
The first step to overcoming your setback is to face reality; don't hide it or put yourself down too much for having that past setback. Accept the setback and how it affected you in the best way possible and at the same time begin thinking about some questions regarding the setback that may help you determine the main cause of the setback. Example Questions:
- What mistakes led me to the setback?
- What aspects could I have controlled?
- What aspects was I unable to control?
2. Reframe Negative Self-Talk
After Going Through a Setback, the Following Will Be Your Inner Dialogue:
- "I'm not good enough."
- "I will always fail."
- "I shouldn't have even tried."
- "This was a bad experience, but I can learn from it."
- "Just because I had one bad experience doesn't mean I don't have the capability to succeed."
- "Growing and progressing will involve struggle."
3. Focus on Small, Achievable Wins
Action rather than perfection repairs damaged confidence. Rather than seeking to take big action quickly after a loss, take small actions as a start. There are multiple examples of successful small actions that can build your confidence over time:
- Completing a simple task successfully will communicate to your brain that you have some competency,
- Setting short-term, achievable goals will motivate you to take action.
- Practicing something that you are already capable of doing provides an opportunity for easy success.
4. Learn the Lesson Without Dwelling on the Past
Setbacks provide great opportunities for growth. Reflecting on them briefly and productively will help reveal what you need to do in order to improve the next time you face a setback.
After you identify your lessons from past setbacks, allow yourself to move forward. Continuing to dwell on mistakes will not build your confidence but will instead continue to erode it.
5. Reconnect With Your Strengths
Setbacks can cause people to forget about their own abilities, accomplishments, and past successes. Take a few moments to remind yourself of the great things you have accomplished, as well as the things you have done to overcome difficult obstacles.
You can do this by simply keeping a list of your accomplishments in writing or by reflecting on compliments you have received or positive remarks. You can also recall times when you effectively dealt with adversity or had a productive outcome from difficult situations.
Confidence is built by reinstating your awareness of your unique strengths and abilities.
6. Build Emotional Resilience
In conjunction with confidence, resilience helps you cope through a crisis and recover from an adverse event. The following are ways to develop resilience:
- You can cultivate resiliency through:
- Mindfully paying attention to your breathing
- Eating adequately and taking care of your body
7. Seek Support and Perspective
When you rebuild your confidence after having experienced some sort of setback, you are not alone. You have the opportunity to seek out support from trusted friends, mentors or a supportive community. It can be helpful to gain perspective from someone else to remind you that the setback you experienced is not as significant as you may have perceived it to be.
How Rebuilt Confidence Changes Your Life
Once individuals have rebuilt their confidence, they generally have begun to:
- Re-engage in taking healthy risks
- Become more decisive
- Communicate in a more effective manner
Common Mistakes to Avoid After Setbacks
To protect the progress, you make in rebuilding confidence, there are several common pitfalls, including:
- Comparing yourself to others
- Rushing to get back into life after experiencing a setback without taking time to reflect on your experience
- Avoiding challenges due to fear
- Expecting confidence to return immediately
Conclusion: Turning Setbacks into Steppingstones
Setbacks indicate an attempt to succeed, an effort to grow and develop one's self-confidence through experience, knowledge, patience and action.
The best way to develop a new sense of confidence is through understanding hardship, reframing the challenges in your life as a positive thing and taking steps to move forward. You have the capability of rebuilding your confidence after experiencing a setback, and doing so is the path to achieving your best self.
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