Three ways to reconnect with your career confidence when you’ve hit a low
Confidence in our careers is never certain. As a career happiness coach I can testify that I haven’t always been happy at work. It’s about an ebb and flow, good days and more challenging days.
But there are also the longer periods of time when our confidence really wanes, and we find ourselves unable to find a way forward. We’re stuck, low in confidence, wishing there was a way out but unable to find the oomph to get going.
Confidence in our work is a multi-layered feeling: It’s not just about one thing alone, but more a combination of our output, the feedback we get, the money we’re paid, our clients and how they make us feel and a general feeling of doing well.
Being confident isn’t always easy - and it can be made a lot harder by experiences such as working with a difficult manager, or something as serious as redundancy.
When you have hit a low point, finding your confidence can be a huge challenge.
So what can you do?
There are three things you can action right now to try and find some balance and a way forward:
1) Spend time working on your values. Values can be quite simple - a set of words, or feelings. Words such as ‘respect’ or ‘community’. They can also be how you feel, for example ‘fulfilled’. Take yourself somewhere that isn’t your desk or workspace, with a piece of paper and a pen (try not to take your phone as it’ll be a distraction). Let the words flow. Write down what comes to you when you think about what matters to you in terms of work, confidence, and work happiness.
2) Have a mini self appraisal. As you’d expect, this is where you spend some time looking at the things that have gone well, and that you are successful in. It’s very easy to spend time telling ourselves we are no good, or a failure, or not successful at something to do with our careers. Instead, aim to write down five things you are good at, you excel at, and you know you are skilled at.
3) Find help from a professional. If you are in-house or staff at a company, there may be counselling you can access. You could also consider a power hour coaching session. This is where you can brain dump all the things going on for you in that moment, and be guided to finding a way forward.
Reminding yourself what you are skilled in, and what matters to you, is at the heart of re-boosting your confidence. I’ve written a blog all about what happens in a coaching session to help you find out more.
