Healing Leadership Wounds: How to Recover from Confidence Setbacks

Confidence crises happen to even the most successful leaders, but they're actually opportunities for healing deeper wounds that have always limited our potential.

• Confidence challenges often amplify insecurities that were already present beneath the surface
• High-achieving leaders tend to compartmentalize their insecurities to reach their current positions
• External achievements can only take you so far before inner work becomes necessary
• Current triggers usually mirror unresolved wounds from our past experiences
• Confidence is our natural state—we don't need to build it, we need to release what's blocking it
• Many high achievers are driven by feelings of "not-enoughness" seeking external validation
• Trying to fix confidence through more achievements perpetuates the unhealthy cycle
• Professional support helps identify blind spots and precise healing approaches more efficiently
• Unaddressed confidence issues impact everything from leadership presence to business decisions
• The outcome of this deeper work isn't just restored confidence but quantum leaps in performance

If you'd like support with this work, please visit my website and book a call to discuss private coaching or the Magnetic Leadership Accelerator program.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro: Tap Into Your Inner Power
• 20:55 ] Breaking Your Ceiling Through Healing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

uh. Tap into your inner power. You got this. Now go get it living up to your full potential. Your energy is magnetic. Big dreams believe in it. Wisdom, we seeking it, everything that you're looking for, brought to you by lisa jeffs, the magnetic leader. It's time to soar. Tap into your power of an entrepreneur. Level up. Step it up because Find your purpose. Time to be a magnetic leader.

Speaker 2: 0:33

Welcome to the show leaders. I am super excited that you're here with me today. This episode is for the leader who looks powerful on the outside, is powerful, but may not feel like that anymore Because something has affected your confidence. Whether that is a person in power, a person in power saying something to you, whether that is critical or absolutely completely out of line, whether it's a circumstance where you felt that you were overlooked. Maybe you have experienced something that you were passed over, minimized, questioned, or it could just be that something in your environment is currently making you feel like you're not being seen, you're not being valued. You're putting a lot of work in but you're not seeing it reflected back, and this can have a huge impact on someone's confidence, even if they were wildly confident in the past. So if that is you, or you're experienced something like that, know that you're not alone. In fact, I've had a multitude of people come to me who were exceptional leaders. I am talking top of their game, not only in their organization, but in one case I can remember top in Canada. This was a top leader. She was a top leader in her profession in Canada and she experienced this. So what do you do if you have experienced a level of confidence and then suddenly it's all shaken and you start questioning everything.

Speaker 2: 2:43

First, let's talk about the fact that when these let's say these cracks happen, it's often just amplifying what was already there. When we have a insecurity, that insecurity can be pushed down and we can be in our zone. We can be in our zone of genius. We can even be just ignoring the fact that we have an insecurity, which is fine. Right, we don't have to always highlight all of our insecurities. Insecurities are a part of human nature. It's fine. But we can get into a state where we're almost performing day to day. We're not really tuning into what's happening inside of us. I work with a lot of leaders who they kind of have had to push a lot of that down because they needed to to get to where they are right To achieve.

Speaker 2: 3:52

But to get to that next level, we have to deal with the internal stuff. It's all about that. Especially if you're going, you're using your mind, you're using your wisdom, your intellect, you're using effort, you're using all these things that you have control over to dictate. It only gets you so far. And to get to that next level we got to do the inner work, because everything external is a reflection of what's happening internally and a lot of times it is dealing with the wounding, the insecurities, where we feel not enough, where we feel unsafe, and these instances where our confidence can get completely rocked. It's often just highlighting what was already there anyways. So it's not like you've been completely thrown off your game and something is wrong with you and you need fixing or you're or what any of the other stories that we can start telling ourselves. It really just is simply a mirror of healing and dealing with what is already inside of us.

Speaker 2: 5:18

Because, let's be honest, life isn't just about achieving. While it's all well and good and part of a life and can be a healthy life, some of us are here to achieve great things. Also, what is part of our purpose, our reason for coming here, is to heal, it's to learn, it's to grow and it's to expand. So this is an opportunity to do the work necessary to fulfill your full potential here in this lifetime that you are experiencing. So, when we can see it with a lens of this, is an opportunity to do work, to do healing, to do very effective, meaningful, deep, purposeful work on ourselves. It can shift the energy from feeling like, oh shit, something happened. Now I'm all messed up and I got to fix what's broken.

Speaker 2: 6:29

You see the difference of perspective here and again, it's not about fixing anything. It's about healing and letting go. So, in some of the cases where I've worked with clients and they've come to me I'm thinking of one client right now who is absolutely brilliant it's for me in my journey as a coach, it's been such a healing journey. For me as well, because I get to work with people who are absolutely extraordinary literally the top performers and for me, being able to work with them and seeing that, oh, everybody has insecurities, everybody has these things In my own healing journey, it's been very powerful, because often we feel isolated when these things happen. We can start looking externally and we're like we're seeing everything from the Instagram filter. Right, everyone's has a perfect life, everyone has a perfect career, everyone's making so much money and they have perfect bodies and perfect wardrobes and perfect relationships and everything. And I'm the dysfunctional one. And perfect relationships and everything, and I'm the dysfunctional one, which is so far from the truth, which is absolutely ridiculous. And for my own journey, it just made me realize that, oh, a lot of people are going through this silent journey and especially for a lot of leaders, who are the ones that other people look up to it can feel very isolating, because it's almost like you get into a place where you ask yourself am I even allowed to feel like this? Everyone else is looking to me as the person who has it all together and has all the answers and suddenly I feel like I'm crumbling inside and it can be a real kind of head right, head mess going on.

Speaker 2: 8:29

Going back to what I was saying previously, I'm thinking about one client who was absolutely phenomenal skilled at his craft and he had a person of authority within his organization that was quite toxic, right. Sometimes our confidence can get hit just by something that happens where it was nothing malicious, but it was how we perceived it. In this case it was actually malicious, it was toxic, it was abusive. Malicious, it was toxic, it was abusive. And the real reason that it triggered my clients so much when we did the work and we really got to the root of it to understand. So we weren't just working on surface level stuff, but we really got to the real core of what was happening in my client's situation. It was a trigger from his childhood and this person reignited wounding from this person's father. So the authority figure at work was basically mirroring what had happened at a much younger age with my client's father. So the healing work that we did around it was related to that first instance.

Speaker 2: 9:57

And I want this to be clear for you because again, a lot of times it's something that has already happened that this new situation is just shining a light on and the purpose that it's doing that is to heal a deeper wound. So we actually go to the deeper wound and we do the healing. Does that make sense? So in my client's case, for him it was a lot of work around shame. It was a lot of work to reprogram the self-identity that he was still carrying from childhood, the self-concept that he could never be enough, that he was never enough for his father figure, that no matter how much he achieved, he would never be enough. This was his self-concept. This wasn't truth of the situation. This was what he experienced and he internalized. And so when this authority figure at his work started doing what he was doing, it sent my client back to basically what he experienced in childhood. So we did a lot of that work. We did a lot of the healing work and then his job was to set those very firm boundaries within his working environment, and what he actually did was he left his working environment. He was placed somewhere else.

Speaker 2: 11:52

If you're experiencing something that has shaken you to your confidence and suddenly you're feeling like you are not as confident as you were before, realize that this is just a moment as you were before. Realize that this is just a moment. It's just an experience that you're experiencing to do the work, to do the healing work and to recalibrate back into your authentic power state. This is a concept we talk a lot about in the Magnetic Leadership Accelerator is your authentic power state and this is how you authentically are. This is the core of who you are, and we are all at our core, our authentic core, confident beings. We don't have to learn confidence. Confidence is our natural state. It's who we are before the world tells us differently. So, for if you are someone who is feeling like you, your confidence has been shaken by an experience.

Speaker 2: 13:05

I want you to do some internal questioning on. Is this mirroring something that has happened already in my past, an insecurity that I already have? Sometimes it's not necessarily one instance that happened in your past. Sometimes it can just be a recurring theme that you feel recurring theme that you feel. So it could be highlighting that you have a core wounding around not feeling enough. And if you do, I don't think I've ever worked with a client that doesn't have at least a little bit of this wounding that they're not enough. In fact, it's often something that drives high achievers right To achieve so much because they internally feel like they are not enough and they use the validation they get from achieving. And I've definitely been in that pattern myself. In fact, it wasn't until a few years ago that I really was able to release that pattern. So it's understanding that it's a highlight.

Speaker 2: 14:12

And what is the healing that you're going to choose to do? To either release this insecurity or shift your perception enough that it is no longer a hindrance. And this is where you can either do it on your own, which is fine and dandy. It can often take a long time, it may not be as efficient, it may actually end up costing you more or you can get professional support, which I recommend because we all have our own blind spots, and having someone who is able to support you and helping you to move through and understand exactly what to work on, so you're not trying to put pieces of a puzzle together and try to figure it out Makes it a lot easier. So doing the healing work and then, externally, what are the now? The things you are not going to tolerate anymore?

Speaker 2: 15:29

So I'm thinking about another client that I had who, again it was a very toxic person in the workplace. There's a lot of and I use that word with a caveat, because really I don't like to call people toxic, although there are some people that you know are we're not going to help them in this lifetime but most people that are quote unquote toxic just have their own wounding and own patterns going, and a lot of times they're not aware, so that they're not doing anything about it. That doesn't give them an out. They're absolutely responsible for this. But I digress.

Speaker 2: 16:16

This client had a person of authority that she was working with that was not healthy at all and she knew that she needed to put boundaries in place for herself or else she would keep going into the pen. Right, if we're going into the lion's den and expecting not to get bit, that's a little insane. So what do we do here? What are the boundaries that we need to put in place. Sometimes it is leaving the entire den. Sometimes we don't have that ability and we need to put boundaries in place that are going to serve us and if you're struggling to understand.

Speaker 2: 17:09

They're going to cost you a lot more effort and time and you're likely going to be us, and if you're struggling to understand how to do that and you're likely- going to be at the same place at another Again.

Speaker 1: 17:15

this is one of the reasons why we want to get professional help because you get an outside view.

Speaker 2: 17:22

So this is where you use another achievement to make yourself feel better. Oh, maybe I just need to get this title or this degree or this certification and I'm going to feel better. Maybe I just need to do this thing that's external, that's outside of me More strategy, all this things that I can do to prove that I'm confident, to prove that I'm enough and why this won't heal, deal what's going on internally and to be very precise and efficient about it. We need to actually get to the root of what's happening, the root of why you're triggered. Because if you didn't have something already internally going on, you would brush it off like it had nothing to do with you Not including abuse, because abuse is a different story.

Speaker 2: 18:38

But let's say it was an abusive situation. Let's say it was you got passed up for a promotion. If you have an internal wounding around this that can trigger you losing confidence in yourself, because you're going to internalize that, it's going to be highlighting the wound that's already there. You're going to be questioning if you're good enough, if you did enough. It's going to be highlighting what's already in there. But if you didn't have that wounding and let's say you got passed up for the promotion, then it would be more of a okay, I got passed up, I wonder why. And you would go to work on improving what you needed to improve for the next time the promotion came around. You wouldn't. It wouldn't affect your confidence. It may not be fun, it may be a bummer, but it's not going to have this insidious effect on your confidence where you're suddenly questioning your whole existence and life and you literally can't get out of bed in the morning.

Speaker 2: 19:53

The same, I want to make it a clear distinction that when what I'm talking about when clients have come to me and their confidence has been affected, this is an extreme case. This has had a ripple effect on their work and their life and their self-esteem. This isn't just a kind of oh, I feel a little bit bummed out for a week, but then I bounce back. This is a big ripple effect. So let me know if you have questions around this. This is a big one. This is a big topic. It's also one that a lot of leaders and top performers don't feel comfortable speaking about, because they have an image and they have a reputation and they don't always like to admit that they're not feeling confident or that something has affected their confidence. So they internalize it and all that does is just make the problem worse because they build shame around it.

Speaker 2: 21:06

And part of the work that I do with clients is we work to release those heavy feelings, emotions, frequencies, because those are the ones that start dragging you down and they start really impacting your life. They impact if you have a business, they're going to impact what you're going for. If you have a business, they're going to impact what you're going for, what you're launching, the prices that you're putting out, the things that you are speaking about, your visibility If you are in a organization, the positions that you go for, how you lead, how you're leading your team, how you're just showing up every day, and it has this ripple effect of destruction moving forward. So we need to deal with those deeper issues and get you back on track. And the good thing about doing this work, the really good thing is you don't just get back on track to where you were previously. This is where we break the ceiling and we are moving forward and we're quantum leaping, healing something that just happened. It's about going deeper and seeing how what just happened is connected to something that happened a long time ago and has always been affecting your growth and your expansion, and now we get a chance to deal with it, heal it, release it, move forward and you start to really see the progress in how you are respected, how you are valued, the money you are making, your position, your business growth, and it all ripples in a positive way from that deeper level of work.

Speaker 2: 23:16

If you'd like to talk to me directly about this, please go to my website, book a call. We can talk about private coaching and if you are interested in a group format, we can talk about the Magnetic Leadership Accelerator. I do know that a lot of clients who come to me initially when they experience something like this, they like to do the private coaching first, and then some of them decide to go into the Magnetic Leadership Accelerator for continued momentum and growth. But this is something that we can do privately. Leaders, I love you, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode and, as always, let's stay connected.

Speaker 1: 24:04

Now go, get it, living up to your full potential. Your energy is magnetic. Big dreams believe in it. Wisdom we seeking it. Everything that you looking for, brought to you by Lisa Jeffs, the Magnetic Leader.