How to Regain Your Confidence and Recapture Your Mojo After a Setback

I really loved my job.

And then one day, my boss walked in and informed me that I was being laid off.

That was way back in January 2010… although it’s as fresh in my mind as if it happened yesterday. There’s a lot more to the story than that, but I want to talk about what happened immediately after I received that awful news.

I felt confused, disoriented, shocked, lost. It was around 10 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, and after going to the same office every single day for the past three years, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with the rest of my day. Or my week. Or my life.

I guess I was just supposed to go home. But the reality hadn’t really sunk in yet, and I wasn’t quite ready to face my wife with this crushing and dispiriting news.

So, I left the office at 37th Street and Seventh Avenue in NYC and meandered mindlessly up Broadway with no specific destination in mind. As I was walking, millions of thoughts went zooming in and out of my head, including this dialogue from Alice in Wonderland:

Alice:“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

The Cheshire Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”

Alice: “I don’t much care where.”

The Cheshire Cat: “Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.”

That pretty much sums up my state of mind at the time: At that point in my day, or in my life, it didn’t really matter which way I went.

But before I realized it, maybe an hour or two—and around fifty blocks—later, I somehow ended up at 81st Street and Central Park West, right in front of the American Museum of Natural History. With nowhere else I had to be, I decided to just go in and wander around Africa and Asia for a while, and then the planetarium, before settling down under the big blue whale to rest and ponder my future and my fate.

About an hour later, still in a complete daze, I decided it was time to head home and break the news to my wife. But as I was leaving, I took one last look back.

My gaze was drawn upward, toward the big dinosaur standing in the doorway. And as I did, something strange happened: a feeling of peace and calm came over me. Somehow, my meditative walk around the museum and planetarium, followed by my encounter with this gargantuan dinosaur, mentally transported me through time and space. It gave me a newfound sense of perspective that made the layoff seem as though it was, perhaps, not the worst thing in the world. And while my beloved job was now “extinct,” I myself was not. And so, it was now time for the next phase of my career and my life to begin.

Bounding down the museum steps, past the Teddy Roosevelt statue, I felt recharged and rejuvenated, with a clear head, a fresh perspective, and a burst of confidence. As I continued my walk home, I thought of the origin of the word “confidence,” from the Latin “with trust or faith”—as if, though I had no real reason to believe it, I somehow had trust and faith that everything would turn out alright.

Our lives are constantly transformed by changes—both of our own making, and from outside forces. And, as the saying goes, we may not be able to control everything that happens to us, but—as difficult as it may be—we can control how we choose to react and respond. Even if you are an inherently confident person, when you suffer rejections or setbacks, it’s natural to lose that confidence, even temporarily. You can still feel this way in the case of a layoff, which isn’t "personal” (as opposed to being fired, which is personal…and I’ve experienced that firsthand, too). And when you are let go, you lose that comfortable support network of colleagues and the guidance of a boss; it’s common to have feelings of self-doubt, vulnerability, loneliness, isolation, and fear.

But confidence is so important to our well-being and to our future successes that, after a setback, it’s crucial to do whatever it takes to regain it as quickly as possible…as it’s extremely difficult to bounce back without it. In short, I've found that confidence is often the key differentiator between those who succeed and those who don’t.

Earlier in my career, I learned the hard way that even though I possessed the requisite knowledge, intelligence, and experience, I lost out on a number of promotion opportunities simply because I lacked confidence…and it showed.

How to Get Your Groove Back

There are a lot of different ways to define confidence. I like this simple one from Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, who sums it up as “the expectation of a positive outcome.”

So what can you do to regain or maintain your confidence and increase your odds of a “positive outcome?”

Here are five quick tips that might help:

1. Build on your past successes and “keep your eyes on the prize.” Regardless of how confident you feel right now, stay focused on your ultimate goal. Keep in mind that you’ve succeeded in the past, and you will again. It’s just a matter of time and perseverance. It’s not “if ” you will bounce back, but “when.” So, remaining positive and resilient are key to your future success.

2. Leverage your strengths. Don’t dwell on your weaknesses or limitations. Be self-aware about — and make others aware of — what you have to offer. In fact, if you are “in between jobs,” this is the perfect opportunity to take the time to learn new skills and work on taking your existing ones to the next level.

3. Make everything a learning opportunity. Einstein said: “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” Be ready and willing to fail, learn, and move forward. Reflect on what you learned from trying something new and know that this is just one more life experience that will help you grow both personally and professionally.

4. Seek feedback and create a support network. Build your own personal Board of Advisors. Appreciate that feedback is a gift. A lot of times, when we’re feeling down, the tendency is to crawl under the covers until things improve. But you need to do the exact opposite! Get back out there and stay active. Work on your “3 Vs”: Visibility, Voice, and Value. Be seen, be heard, and continue to make a contribution.

5. “Act as if.” Behave as you believe, and your belief will eventually become reality. It sounds hokey, but it’s true. I use this technique all the time: If you step up to the plate in softball “acting as if ” you are a great hitter, you will, most likely, achieve better results than if you don’t. Or, if you get up on a stage to deliver a presentation—assuming that you did all your preparation—then “acting as if ” you are a powerful presenter will dramatically increase your odds of being one.

The Three Types of Confidence

Lastly, “self-confidence” is just one of what I call “The Three Types of Confidence”:

1. Self-Confidence: Your belief in yourself.

2. Other-Confidence: Your ability to make others feel confident in you (that is, in your ability and in your potential to succeed).

3. Leader-Confidence: Your ability to make others feel confident in themselves (and in their ability and potential to succeed). That is, you lead by making others feel as if they are leaders.

The most successful leaders possess and exhibit all three types. But it all starts with Self-Confidence. It’s very difficult to instill confidence in others when we don’t feel confident in ourselves. It’s kind of like the airplane instructions where they tell you that in case of emergency you need to put your oxygen mask on first, before you can help others.

And keep it in mind that confidence is not something that you either have or you don’t. Even the most confident people in the world experience nervousness, anxiety, and self-doubt at various times. Especially when pushing themselves beyond their comfort zone…and into the Zone of the Unknown.

For example, even though I am now an experienced public speaker and professor who feels comfortable presenting in front of large audiences, when I did my TEDx Talk a couple of years ago, it was more challenging and far more nerve-racking than a typical presentation. Why? Because it was a very special type of presentation experience—standing on that iconic red circular rug in front of that big red TEDx sign—with higher-than-usual stakes that pushed me beyond my comfort zone.

But I spent months, with my wife’s help, refining my script, and practicing my talk over and over and over again until I felt self-assured enough to eventually take that TEDx stage. And now that I’ve done it once, and proven to myself that I can do it, that classic red round rug is now part of my new and expanded comfort and confidence zone.

So, if or when you lose your confidence after a setback, the key to resilience and success is not to pretend that it didn’t happen or to keep beating yourself up over it...but to acknowledge that it’s a normal and natural part of work and life, and that you will succeed again if you stay postive, learn from your experience, and keep moving ever-forward.

For more on how you can "visualize" a better future, please check out my book, VisuaLeadership: Leveraging the Power of Visual Thinking in Leadership and in Life.