A job that’s always plain sailing, where your performance is perfect, emails are never annoying and projects are always a complete success… is not a reality for most of us. It doesn’t matter what sort of work you do, issues – whether of the minor mess-up variety or massive problems – are inevitable. But despite us all knowing this on a logical level, when things do go wrong we tend to take it very personally. Who among us hasn’t had a knockback at work and immediately spun into a classic ‘I’m terrible at everything’ spiral?

“If something doesn’t go our way or what we expect to happen doesn’t happen,” says Julie Smith, leadership coach and author, “we can feel disappointment, embarrassment and frustration.”

These emotions, says Smith, are normal and natural. They’re a sign that we care about the work we do and want to do a good job. But what can be damaging is when we wallow in this emotional reaction and let it hold us back, rather than allowing it to propel us forward. 

“I worked really hard on the proposal, but it didn’t get signed off becomes I really messed it up; I should have anticipated all of their questions, which then turns into I’m hopeless at presentations,” notes Smith. “What started as a knockback becomes a large dose of self-doubt. What we want to avoid is adding a self-kicking to the emotional swirl. It’s kicking ourselves that turns a knockback from ‘a disappointing thing that happened’ into a painful dent to our confidence.”

How do we go about skipping the self-flagellation and diving straight into moving forward? How do we deal with a ‘no’, a knockback, a mistake, without it snowballing into a major crisis of confidence? Smith outlines the steps to take ahead. 

“There’s an unavoidable truth that we all have disappointments: decisions not going our way, projects turned down, promotions denied,” Smith says. “Knockbacks aren’t pleasant, but they are part of being human so there’s no need to go hunting for the particular personal deficit that caused this thing to happen to you. It happened and now you have a choice about how you respond to that fact.”

Smith explains: “We weave stories around the event itself, increasing its significance in our mind. Try writing down the story that you’re telling yourself and then separating out the facts from the fiction. What actually happened, what exactly was said – these are your facts. The stories that you are telling yourself about what is going to happen as a result of the setback is pure fiction. You are imagining a version of the future when you don’t actually have a crystal ball. If you find yourself imagining what other people now think of you, that’s fiction too. You cannot know what is going on in someone else’s mind unless they tell you.”

So maybe your project proposal didn’t get signed off, but the leadership team liked parts of it that you can rework and reuse. Perhaps you didn’t land the job you went for, but you got some good feedback from the hiring manager. What can you take from each knockback to help you go forward?

Smith recommends: “Look at the knockback from the perspective of a week, a month, a year in the future. How significant does it look from there? Mental time travel offers a way to see the knockback for what it is: a tricky episode in a much longer story, not a moment that defines who you are or what you’re capable of.”

You know what they say about getting back on the horse? It’s true. A knockback can only turn into something bigger if you stay down on the ground. The longer you go without giving it another go, the harder it’ll be to jump back in. 

“It’s tempting to retreat in the face of a knockback, but stepping back will only diminish our confidence further,” says Smith. “It’s stepping forward and taking action that demonstrates (to ourselves) what we’re capable of. It didn’t work out last time, but that doesn’t have to stop you from trying again. Take the learnings and the increased chance of success that comes from the experience you gained with that first attempt, and invest them into having another go.”

While you’re dusting yourself off, give yourself a pat on the back, too. Whatever happened was tough, but you handled it. That’s worth celebrating. 

Smith says: “We can tend to focus on the thing that went wrong, not on what we did in response. Was it a knockback? Yes. Did you cope? Yes. Give yourself credit for what you did next – how you resolved a tricky situation, how you acted on tough feedback, how you found the motivation to try again.”

Smith encourages us to take every knockback as the dip we need to rise again and embrace those ups and downs as a natural part of our journey. “Everyone has ups and downs in their confidence, and sometimes the lows can trigger a confidence gain,” she says. “Sometimes you might surprise yourself with an ability to find your way through a tricky situation. Things didn’t go as expected, but you kept on going. You found another way. 

“If you use this as a trigger to recalibrate your sense of self, then you can expand your understanding of what you’re capable of and fuel your confidence with the idea that if I can get through that, I can get through anything. In the end, the knockback has boosted your confidence – you came through it with a greater level of trust in yourself.”

Julie Smith is a sought-after leadership coach, author of Coach Yourself Confident: Ditch The Self-doubt Tax, Unlock Humble Confidence (Practical Inspiration Publishing, out now) and founder of  Talent Sprout, a highly respected leadership consultancy.  

Images: Getty