Episode 258: 5 steps to Overcome a Crisis of Confidence

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 Dr. Melissa Smith 0:00
Maybe you’re not feeling the love if you’re experiencing a crisis of confidence. Today, I want to share with you five steps to overcoming that slump. Let’s help you get your groove back.

Dr. Melissa Smith 0:15
Hi, I’m Dr Melissa Smith, welcome to the Pursue What Matters podcast where we focus on what it takes to thrive in love and work. So hopefully you joined me last week where we looked at the question, Are you experiencing a crisis of confidence? And hopefully, if you haven’t listened to it, you might want to pause and just go back and take a listen. It will definitely inform our episode today, but some of the things that I talked about are, first of all, experiencing a crisis of confidence at different points in your life. Is pretty normal. It’s it’s a pretty normal part of the human experience. And we talked about some of the symptoms to help you understand if that might be showing up for you. And then we really looked at helping you to better understand what you can about that confidence crisis.

Dr. Melissa Smith 1:31
So what are some of the factors, both internally and externally, that might put you at a little little higher risk for experiencing that crisis of confidence, because, of course, that’s not a pleasant place to be, and we want to make sure that your head is on straight relative to facing challenges and growth. And so that’s what we talked about last week. And then today, we’re going to be talking about five steps to help you overcome a crisis of confidence. And again, it’s pretty normal to experience that from time to time, but I want to just start by sharing the five steps to really help you overcome a confidence of crisis.

Dr. Melissa Smith 2:15
So the first step is to get compassionate. Right? These are hard times, and compassion is what we want to lead with. Second is get quiet. That really helps us to reflect and better understand. Third, get scale. So we really want to understand what we can do to help ourselves, and so we want to break the issue down a little bit. Four is get help. We weren’t designed to do things alone, and we all need help from time to time and always, right? And five is get feedback, right? So we want to identify if there are gaps. We want to know that so that we can help ourselves. So those are the five steps, and now we’re going to do a deep dive into each of those.

Dr. Melissa Smith 3:01
So the first step to help you overcome a crisis of confidence is to get compassionate, right? Primarily we, I mean, we always want you to be compassionate with other people, but here we really want you to get compassionate with yourself, recognizing that having that kind of confidence crisis is such a hard place to be. It can be really painful. I have certainly been there before where it’s like, gosh, like the person I thought I was, I don’t know, I don’t know if she’s still in there. I don’t know if I can do hard things. I don’t know if I can take on these challenges. And you know, there were times in my life where I really felt like, gosh, I’ve lost my resilience. And that was very troubling to me. It worried worried me a lot, and of course, it made it more difficult for me to cope with the challenges that I was facing. And so always and forever, compassion is a really important skill to lead with. And so, you know, we want some gentleness towards ourself. That doesn’t mean self indulgence. It doesn’t mean, you know, lazy being laissez faire or anything goes. But we always need to have room for compassion, because experiencing a crisis of confidence is very painful.

Dr. Melissa Smith 4:22
The second step is we want to get quiet, which is probably the last thing you feel like doing when we feel like we’re failing, when we feel like we can’t be as effective. We can’t be successful. If you’re a lot if you’re like a lot of leaders, if you’re like a lot of high achieving individuals, the last thing you want to do is get quiet. You want to get busy. You want to take action. You want to you want to move faster and do everything you can to you know, to make success happen, or to you know, to bring the desired results and. And I’m not saying that there’s not a place for action, like I always, uh, talk to people about having a bias towards action, but Right? That’s this is why it’s the second step as you are kind of recognizing this confidence crisis, it’s really essential that you get quiet, right? So we get compassionate, and then we get quiet, because, you know, if we simply jump into action and try and fix, fix, fix, or, you know, outwork our challenge that we’re facing, you know, we might not be on the right path. And so part of the function of getting quiet is so that you can give your chance, yourself a chance to reflect and really look at what can I understand about this situation? Why is this situation really throwing me so off kilter as it as it relates to confidence? So we want you to get curious. Curiosity is always a really important skill as well, just like compassion.

Dr. Melissa Smith 5:58
So for example, as you get quiet and reflect on the situation, can you see that maybe you had unrealistic expectations? Can you see that maybe you put too much pressure on yourself or too much pressure on others? Did you leap before learning did you kind of get get out over your skis a little bit with this situation. So Right? Often when we’re experiencing a confidence crisis and really facing any sort of big stressor, we really can default to all or nothing thinking, right? So it’s like yes or no, is there I’m a failure or this will be a raging success. And as in as is the case with most things in life, these situations are much more nuanced than that. So no, it’s not true that you are, you know, a total failure. But are there things about the situation that that you can understand that can help you to be more successful, right? Like I would say, one of the lessons for me at different points in my life is recognizing that I I leaped before I took the time to learn and really have a plan, and that’s because of that bias for action, right? That’s kind of that, let’s get moving, and that’s really served me well in other areas. But when we’re doing something new, when we’re taking on a challenge, we do really want to to learn and understand the situation. And so when you get quiet, you can start to kind of uncover maybe some of those hidden agendas, some of those stealth expectations. Maybe you again added too much pressure to yourself or others. Did you tie success to your identity or to your sense of self worth? If you do that, that’s always a recipe for a crash with confidence. Are you? Do you notice that you’re comparing yourself to others, that you’re really locked in some pretty toxic competitions.

Dr. Melissa Smith 8:06
Competition can be a great thing, depending on how we use that, but when you get quiet, you can start to explore some of these things. And really, you know take a more holistic view towards yourself and the situation. You’re still responsible for all of it, but it really helps you to know where to focus your efforts. And here’s the other thing, to learn the lessons, right? Because if one of your tendencies is to leap before you learn well, that’s that’s good to know, because then as you approach other projects, you can kind of slow yourself down, get quiet on the front end, to help yourself to really be set up for success. And so as we get quiet, and you know, we start to understand these things a little bit better, then we are in a better position to unhook ourselves from some of those traps, right? And that allows us to move back to purpose, to really be grounded on, you know, why am I doing this? Why does it matter? And what about it matters? What doesn’t matter, right? And I can tell you, right, as a business owner, I have to, I have to remind myself of that all the time, because there are times where I just want to burn it all down, right? And, like, not literally, obviously, but it’s like, this is, like, the stress is too much. Or, you know, this is, this is such a hassle. And whenever I have that experience, I’m like, Oh, I really got to slow down. I got to get quiet, and I need to remind myself of why this matters and what about it matters. Because here’s the other thing, we can make a mountain out of a molehill and really start focusing on on things that just don’t matter that much. And you know, if we have some unrealistic expectations about those things, that’s such a setup, not only for. Failure, but also frustration and that confidence crisis. And so as we get quiet, we can unhook ourselves, and we can reground ourselves on purpose and meaning and shift our focus right, like we put those those eyes back on the prize of purpose and meaning.

Dr. Melissa Smith 10:18
Okay, so the next step, the third step to help you overcome a crisis of confidence is to get skill. Okay, what does that? What does that mean? We want you to really get the scale of the landscape. We want you to create a map of the situation. So, first of all, right, when we get scale, one of the first things we want to look at is whether you’re doing too much, because if you’ve overloaded yourself, right, obviously you’re not going to be able to do it all. Obviously, there’s going to be some failure, and that can be a recipe for a confidence crisis. So when we can get skill, we can really we take a step back, we see the landscape, right? And we can start to ask these questions of, Am I doing too much? And, you know, as a leadership coach, this is one of the areas that I work with leaders on a lot, because it’s a pretty common issue, and that is, they do too much. So they’re they over function, right? And then they get burned out. They get resentful, they get frustrated. That’s when they kind of want to burn it all down, or they feel like they just have to keep grinding away. And it’s, you know, it’s not always a natural response to take a step back and scale the situation and say, Well, wait, should I even be doing this? Should we even be doing this, right? Like at the level of an organization, and so really assessing whether you’re doing too much, and I think this is a good question to ask yourself in in whatever area of life, so, like, at home, right? Like, I know, for me, I had so many assumptions about what needed to be done on what timeline, and, you know, it was pretty rigid. And it’s, it’s been such a relief, really, to be able to say we don’t need to do that, or we don’t need to do it that way, or, you know, no one’s gonna die if we don’t get it done today. And so really just relaxing some of those rigid expectations and looking at like, maybe this doesn’t even need to be done right? Or maybe it doesn’t need to be done by me, maybe it can be done in a different way.

Dr. Melissa Smith 12:35
So getting scale helps us to really ask to answer that question of, are you doing too much? And then as we get scale right, we can start to take a step wise approach. So we want to break it down, right? We want to make a map. We want to make a timeline, and really look at what are the steps. Now, obviously, when you’re working on, you know, growth or facing a big challenge, you’re not going to know all the steps, but anything that you can frame up will be helpful because it helps you to manage uncertainty, right? We don’t want you to feel overwhelmed, but even if it’s just a skeleton of a timeline that can be helpful, and some of those items on that timeline you don’t even have to worry about for six months a year, whatever, but getting them in place can help to manage some of that overwhelm and some of that sense of uncertainty. And so with that stepwise approach, we really kind of start to draw the map so that, you know, we have a plan. We we have a picture of the landscape, and really looking at what does the path look like? What’s going to be required? And again, you won’t always know everything that’s required, but you start to build a frame for yourself. And this is so helpful. So breaking it down and asking, what is the next step, and depending on the level of crisis, or, you know, a heightened stress response you’re experiencing, or the degree of overwhelm you’re experiencing. That’s where we want to break it down into really bite sized pieces. Small steps, the smaller, the better. That is a really good tool for managing overwhelm. So really looking at what’s the next step and then focus your attention on just the next step. Don’t try to take in the whole map. Don’t try to take in the whole landscape. When you’re taking action, we know it’s there, right? We know we can refer to it, but we’re going to focus on doing the next step well. And taking action really helps to calm anxiety. So this is a truth of human functioning.

Dr. Melissa Smith 14:45
Taking action helps to bring anxiety down. There’s nothing worse for anxiety than anticipation, right? And for most of us, the moments we have the highest anxiety. Is in anticipation of something, and so as much as possible, we want to take that out of the equation. That’s why a bias for action. One of the reasons a bias for action can be very helpful, but we don’t want to try and do it all right. So break it down into very small steps, focus on the next step, and that can really help bring that anxiety down pretty quickly. This taking action really helps us to manage overwhelm much more effectively than you know, feeling like we have to have it all figured out in our head before we can take action. So Right? We want to get scale, and it getting scale really is a balance of planning and taking action. So we want both to happen, and we want that to happen in a step wise approach, so it’s manageable and we’re not stuck on go okay.

Dr. Melissa Smith 15:54
And that takes us to our fourth step for overcoming a crisis of confidence, and that is to get help. This is another issue that I see a lot of times with leaders, is they try and do it all on their own. So you’re not Superman, you’re not Superwoman. So don’t try and go it alone. Everyone needs help. Everyone needs support, and especially when we think about the world of work, we’re not designed to do it alone. That would be a solo endeavor. And so we want to have respect for our team members. We want to we really want to support people in doing their best work. And so we this is where we think about delegation, right? Are you delegating? I’ve got some good podcasts on that, because that’s a big challenge for a lot of leaders, we want to use a task map so we’re setting people up for success, so we have some accountability in place that’s really important. You might you might benefit from some therapy so you know, if you’re having a hard time with nervous system regulation and just stress management, this is a situation where therapy could be very helpful, because it kind of helps you to make sense of things. It gives you some skills, and that’s a great resource. You might also consider leadership coaching. I think one of the things that can be most helpful about leadership coaching is the gift of perspective, right to know that we’re not alone and that other people have struggled in the ways that we have struggled, and there’s a path forward. And you know, it’s not that a leadership coach tells you exactly what that path is, but really kind of helps you to develop a process for for figuring out that path forward, because you know your challenges, you know your company, you know those needs. And so really getting the gift of perspective to help you to really take those next steps, sometimes that help is you need to hire someone, right? So

Dr. Melissa Smith 18:01
if you’re if you’re overwhelmed, if you feel like, okay, we’ve had this task, and it’s taken months and months to even get any progress on that’s a really big red flag that you either shouldn’t be doing it or you need to hire more help. And so that’s always something good to consider and really pay close attention to. And of course, one of the other important ways that we get help is through a support network. And this can be informal or formal. So it could be a leadership support group, which those can be really powerful communities where it’s like, Oh, I’m not alone. We can kind of challenge, shame, that sort of thing. And yeah, that is just like such a powerful antidote to that confidence crisis. And you know, maybe you will, maybe some of that support looks like a mentor, a peer, someone in your industry that you, you know, have a great connection with sometimes, and I found this to be true, sometimes it’s helpful to connect with peers who have nothing to do with my industry and but can understand some of the challenges of leadership and can understand some of the challenges of work life balance. So that can be really helpful.

Dr. Melissa Smith 19:18
And so now that takes us to our fifth step for helping you to overcome a crisis of confidence, and that is, get feedback. Right? We all need feedback to grow. So this might be painful to look at, but the reality could be, there’s a skill gap, and you need to skill up. And if you don’t, if you don’t open yourself to feedback, how are you going to know, right? First of all, how are you going to know, and second of all, how are you going to close that skills, that skills gap, right? So this is where we really want to check our assumptions at the door, right? Like none of us have all the skills that we need to be successful in our job, and if we do. So you are probably overqualified for your job. We should always be growing and developing, which means there’s often some sort of skills gap. Now, right? We don’t want a huge skills gap, because that really points to the fact that we are probably mismatched for the position. But what’s true is we should always be growing and skilling up, and so if you’re not open to feedback, how are you going to know and how are you going to close that skills gap?

Dr. Melissa Smith 20:32
So another thing to pay attention to when we are getting feedback is really looking at whether you’re missing focus. Have you gotten distracted, right? So maybe you have a big project that you’re working on, and you know you’ve like, deadlines have fallen apart, timelines have fallen apart. Accountability is falling apart, falling apart. And so sometimes that feedback can be incredibly helpful to help us get back on track with focus and really pay attention to what we need to and so feedback, in its purest form, is a beautiful a beautiful part of accountability, and we need that to be successful. And again, another question that we can look at in these feedback opportunities is, are we trying to do too much, right? So that failure to delegate, or kind of seizing control that, and this is where also perfectionism can be, can really rear its ugly head. Is all of our work goes in a black box, and we try to keep people away. And of course, we need feedback on that, because that’s not good. That’s not helpful. And then really looking at what leadership skills do you need to strengthen in order to be successful? And so that feedback can come from from your boss, it can come from people on your team, it can come from peers, it can come from a therapist, it can come from your partner, it can come from a leadership coach. But the importance is, we do need to be open to the feedback of other people, because no one grows alone.

Dr. Melissa Smith 22:07
So I hope that these steps were helpful for you, so I will cover them quickly, just as a review of what we talked about today. So five steps to help you overcome a crisis of confidence. First, we talked about getting compassionate with ourselves. Second, we talked about getting quiet so you can really understand the situation. Third, we talked about getting scale. Let’s let’s make a map of of the landscape and really understand what we’re up against. Fourth is to get help. No one was designed to grow alone, and fifth is get feedback, and this is where we’re really thinking about skilling up and closing any potential skills gap, because of course, that’s going to take a hit to your confidence, and that is not an insurmountable barrier, but you do need to be proactive and intentional about about developing those skills.

Dr. Melissa Smith 23:03
So I hope that this was helpful for you today. Make sure to head over to my website to check out the show notes with the resources for this episode at www.drmelissasmith.com/258-overcomeconfidencecrisis. So again, that’s www.drmelissasmith.com/258-overcomeconfidencecrisis. I’d love to connect with you on my email list. You can join that at drmelissasmith.com or join up with me on Instagram @dr.melissasmith, and I hope you will consider subscribing to the show and leaving a five star review, it helps more people to find the podcast that way. So in the meantime, I’m Dr Melissa Smith, remember, love and work, work and love, that’s all there is until next time. Take good care.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai