The layoff headlines just keep on coming. My LinkedIn feed is filled with posts from people who have been let go or offering help to people who have been let go, whether it’s offers to make introductions, provide mentorship or just a safe space to kvetch. 

You work long enough, live enough years on the planet to ride the tide of economic upturns and downturns and chances are good that at some point you’re going to be shown the door through no fault of your own. 

So why does it feel so bad and why doesn’t some of the best-meaning, well-intentioned and so-called “wisdom” out there make us doubt ourselves and feel even worse?

In this episode of Real Confidence, I’m talking with Maureen Cidzik who, as it happens, is an ACI-certified Confidence Coach, heads up marketing for ACI and whom I wouldn’t know at all if she hadn’t been laid off right before the pandemic and had her own confidence rocked. 

Between the two of us, we’ve racked up enough pink slips to cover, well, a good-sized window? And not all of them hurt less than the one before – sometimes they hurt more.

Listen into our conversation on job love and loss as we talk about:

Maureen Cidzik is a Life Coach, Corporate Ex-pat and marketing consultant. If your self-help feels more like self-judgment she’s the coach for you. You can find her on the web at muddylotuscoaching.com, on Instagram @muddy.lotus.coaching or follow her on LinkedIn. 

I go on about perfectionism a lot, I know. Someone out there is probably rolling their eyes and thinking, “Alyssa, you gotta get over this.” 

My relationship with perfectionism and competition, well, it’s partly how I was raised and partly the educational and professional environments I put myself in. So needless to say, this expectation of performance, perfect performance, has been kind of drummed into me. And subsequently, I have a real dilemma with it.

I want to ask you what I’ve recently been asking myself: 

Have you ever stopped to wonder if the high bars of achievement you set for yourself are really yours? Or alternatively, if your relationship with high performance is sending a message to your family members that they’re only as good as their last win? 

Every day we send and receive signals about performance and productivity and our brains use that data to guide our decisions about education, career paths and even what we eat, where we live and how we dress.

I got to thinking about this on a recent vacation with my husband. We met another couple, both doctors, whose children were following in their footsteps. Were they proud parents? Of course. But when the wife/mother started wondering aloud what her life would have looked like if she’d chosen another path of study in life, it occurred to me that one day her children may be wondering that, too. 

Is it bad to have high standards? To be driven? Absolutely not, but where we can get into trouble is when we reach a point where nothing is “enough”, that point where we say to ourselves, “You know what? I’m badass. I did it and I did it on my terms.” 

We are perfect together when we make the decision that we – and our family members - are enough and that’s what I’m talking about in this episode of Real Confidence.

You know, despite its ups and downs, even on the really shitty days, I love my life. But it wasn’t until I sat down with Lino Martinez, author of A Little Less Fear, that I fully got what it means to love LIFE. All caps. Full stop. 

This episode of Real Confidence truly is unlike any I’ve recorded before. In our time together, Lino not only shares his incredible story of medical complexities, mental health challenges, and gender identity but we get INTO IT ALL:

Psychology.

Spirituality.

Buddhist philosophy.

Neuroscience.

Higher selves.

And of course, the nuances of fear, our relationship to it and how the experience of pain does not automatically lead to suffering. 

What does this have to do with confidence? You’ll just have to listen to find out. 

To learn more about Lino visit alittlelessfear.com where you’ll find information on his book, podcast and how to connect with him on TikTok and Instagram.

Raise your hand if you like making mistakes. Anyone? I didn’t think so. Whether we identify as perfectionists or not, no one wants to find themselves in error.

Now, mistakes come in all sizes. Sometimes the consequences are nil or maybe mildly embarrassing. Other times the cost is high, and we may be humiliated or traumatized. 

So what is it about getting something wrong that causes us to skip over the lesson while we watch our confidence go down the drain?

For starters, we like to make it about us – what we did or didn’t do – and when we do that, we forget to look at the anticipated result of our action or inaction. We get caught up in blame - maybe even shame - and we lose sight of what we can and should do with the result. 

Here’s my mantra: The only mistake is to allow a mistake to uncontrollably drive your future behavior and decisions. 

What do I mean by that? When we’re tired, cognitively depleted or stressed out, even a normally unremarkable oops activates the caveperson reaction inside each of us. Even if no one else notices the error, our brain kicks into survival mode which does not allow us to be conscientious or in control. As a result, we respond harshly, make rash judgements, act passively-aggressive or take out our failure in uncompassionate, inconsiderate and undeserving ways.  We wind up treating ourselves and others unfairly and then add a bonus of regret.

And this accrues so that the next time we need to make a decision, our confidence gets kicked just by remembering that we messed up last time.

That’s why I’m pulling from my own personal library of gaffes and, in this episode of Real Confidence, share how I finally figured out a way to more productively - and actually confidently - deal with failure.

Back on Podcast 31, I was soaking up the many gems from my guest expert,  Aidan Miller about how to deal with a toxic boss. But towards the end, Aidan said something that literally stopped me in my own internal talk track. Do toxic people even know they are?! What if ‘I’ am toxic to others? How can I tell?

Caring whether you are or aren’t toxic demonstrates honest self-awareness and a genuine interest in working with or leading others well. 

As Aidan said to me, “If you spot it, you got it. Then you’re paying attention.”  She got my attention for sure, and I wanted to know more than one episode would allow!

So please join me and the truly awesome Aidan for this encore episode of Real Confidence to detect and detox your own behavior.

We’re digging deep into:

Aidan Millar is an Organizational Development and Learning Specialist in Ontario, Canada and has spent the last decade engaging with various organizations across Canada to help develop individuals, teams and leaders to optimize their potential. Aidan is also certified in a variety of psychometric assessments to assist in promoting insight and awareness. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Big changes, small changes. Changes that you want and make, changes you don’t want, that happen to you. Changes that excite you, changes that turn your world upside down. Changes of heart, of scenery, of pace. 

What do they all have in common? The ability to derail our confidence. 

What? Yes. I’m saying confidence gets at least a little shaken anytime you sense a change - for better or worse. You take a new dream  job, move to a fav city, find your ideal mate -  these are positive, desired changes, versus undesired, less controllable ones like a work re-org, losing a loved one or learning how to operate in a post-pandemic world.

No matter what flavor of change is being served up, your brain is still wired to crave certainty. It prefers situations that are predictable, that it can count on. To your brain, what is familiar feels safe and anything new, no matter how progressive, will be perceived as a potential threat to your ego or wellbeing. 

So how can we hold onto our confidence when we decide to take on something new or life takes an unwelcome turn?

I’m glad you asked. 

In this episode of Real Confidence I’m going to walk you through the 5Cs of Confidence that we use at the Institute in our Self-Coaching class and Confidence Coach certification program. They’re not hard to learn and they’re the easiest way I know to move through changes with our confidence intact.

Lights, Camera, Confidence Crisis with Michele Moreno

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. When I signed on to be the Confidence Educator for L’Oreal and IT Cosmetics Confidence at Work campaign and was scripting the videos we were going to film, I called in an expert to coach me on how to be a rock star on camera. 

Even though I've presented hundreds of times live on stage and over Zoom.

Unless you’re on camera full time for a living, there’s just something about that C word that freaks us all out. Me included.

Enter Michele Moreno. Hiring Michele  is one of the best decisions I’ve made. She’s a cool chick. I love her. And if the phrase lights, camera, action makes you want to barf you’re going to love her, too. 

Listen into our conversation where Michele, who’s been on sound stages with likes of Big Bird and William Shatner, shares her own on-camera freakout story and shares her top tips for being confident on camera.

Episode highlights include:

After an epic freak-out on National TV (in front of millions), she learned from every hard knock and developed a camera presence Hollywood could not ignore. Her credits include acting on hit shows like FX’s The Shield, ABC’s Boston Legal and NBC’s Parenthood. Now she helps executives and entrepreneurs become clear, concise and compelling — on camera or off. You can learn more about Michele at her website michelemoreno.co.

Everyday Emotional Murders

Of all the ways our confidence can get kicked - failure, regret or rejection - it’s rejection that hits us the hardest. If we fail at something or make a decision that didn’t turn out anywhere near the way we hoped, we at least know we had some impact on the result, right?

Not with rejection. Now I know I talked about rejection and how we could all use a little bit of it in another podcast, but the kind of rejection I’m talking about in this episode is a little different. 

I call them Everyday Emotional Murders and, if you’re human, it’s likely you’ve been both the victim and the villain committing them. 

The “You can’t sit with us,” comments. The “Thanks, but no thanks,” rebuffs. The “I have to wash my hair,” excuses. 

Click the play button and let’s talk about Everyday Emotional Murders are, what we can do when we experience one or realize we’ve committed one and listen to the story about the impact one bad boss’ comment from almost 20 years ago still has on me today.

How to Deal with a Toxic Boss with Aidan Millar

Listen, I know this is a hot topic, but let’s get one thing out of the way: there’s no single, clear-cut definition of a toxic boss. The person who destroyed you may be beloved by others and vice-versa.

It’s a matter of interpretation. 

Any time our interpretation of a boss’ behavior threatens our self-worth, self-confidence or emotional well-being in a given moment, we’re in a toxic work relationship. Our lizard brains get triggered and we experience a neurological threat response.

Looking at this way, toxicity can be interchangeable with distrust or even fear – two things no one wants to feel or experience at work (or anywhere for that matter).

But when this is our reality, what can we do to mitigate that stress response and communicate, conduct ourselves and even connect with our boss with confidence?

Learning and Organizational Development pro Aidan Millar  joins me in this episode of Real Confidence to spill the tea on exactly how we can begin to build emotional resilience, confidence and be in control over our reactions to the jerk we work for.

We get into:

There’s a flip side to this coin, though and it’s not pretty. How do you know if YOU’RE a toxic boss? I’ll be having Aidan back in just a few weeks to help us answer that question. You might want to buckle up.

Aidan Millar is an Organizational Development and Learning Specialist in Ontario, Canada and has spent the last decade engaging with various organizations across Canada to help develop individuals, teams and leaders to optimize their potential. Aidan is also certified in a variety of psychometric assessments to assist in promoting insight and awareness. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

The Confidence to Own Your Health with Andy Storch

If you’ve been hanging around in my orbit for a while, you probably know my confidence crusade origin story and how ACI came to be. It started when my older son was diagnosed at eight years old with a neurological condition many, many doctors didn’t know what to do with. After years of poking and prodding and not getting any solid answers, I reached a point where I was like, “I gotta take ownership of this.”

It was scary, right? I’m not a researcher, don’t have a medical degree, but I was confident in one thing: I wasn’t going to let that get in the way of helping my son.

My guest on this episode has a similar story. Andy Storch, life-long personal development devotee and author of Own Your Career, Own Your Life thought he knew a thing or two about resilience and overcoming adversity until he had to put his well-honed mindset skills to the biggest test of all: testicular cancer that spread to his stomach and neck.

 Listen in as we talk about:

Andy Storch has been cancer free since early 2022. Learn more about his health journey at AndyStorch.com/cancer and check out his book at ownyourcareerownyourlife.com.