235. What Progress Really Looks Like
Often we mistake a setback for proof of our own inadequacy, when it's really evidence of a biased system and a belief we haven't questioned. Real progress shows up quietly, in how fast we recover, what we learn, and the small actions we take before we feel ready. Confidence follows us once we act, so momentum, not certainty, is what carries us forward.
But there’s a difference between feeling the sting of unfairness and letting that unfairness rewrite how you see your own capability.
Are you replaying a recent setback, like a promotion that went to someone else, and wondering what's wrong with you? Are you waiting to feel confident again before you apply, speak up, or put yourself forward at work? Are you trying to figure out whether a setback is on you, or a sign of a biased, dysfunctional system?
You'll learn that progress in a low-confidence season rarely looks like a highlight-reel win—it looks like catching a limiting belief early, processing disappointment instead of looping on it, and shortening your recovery time after a setback.
WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
Why limiting beliefs are so sneaky, quietly turning one setback into a stacked strategy of playing small and staying under the radar
3 practical tips to rebuild confidence after a setback
Why validating your own progress internally matters, since the external system won't always confirm your growth in a timely, fair way
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Stop Sabotaging Your Success podcast, episode two hundred and thirty-five. I'm your host, Cindy Esliger. This is the podcast focusing on what we can do today to take control of our careers and overcome the inevitable barriers to success that we encounter along the way.
Maybe this sounds familiar. You find out—maybe in a meeting, maybe in a slack message, maybe in a hallway conversation you weren't even supposed to overhear—that the promotion you were after went to someone else. Someone else got the fancy new job title, the corresponding raise, maybe even the new office you'd been quietly, privately picturing for yourself for months. And in that moment, something strange happens. It's not just disappointment. It's this fast, quiet recalibration where your brain starts asking a very specific, very dangerous question: what's wrong with me? But I think that's the wrong question to be asking.
In this episode, we're going to explore a better reframe by asking yourself a better question, which is: what does progress actually look like right now, in this exact season, when my confidence has taken a hit? Because I promise you, progress in a low-confidence season may not look like what you see in someone's highlight reel. It could be much more subtle, which makes it hard to recognize when you're in the midst of it.
But first, let's talk about what could be holding you back. And most of the time, it's not a skills gap or a knowledge gap; it's more of a belief gap.
Limiting beliefs are sneaky because they don't announce themselves. Nobody wakes up and thinks, "Today, I will believe I'm not ready for that role". Instead, it shows up as hesitation. It shows up as talking yourself out of applying for a new position, or negotiating for a raise, or even raising your hand to share an idea, while explaining it away as just "being realistic". It shows up as over-preparing for a hard conversation because some part of you doesn't trust that you should be confronting the issue at all.
Let's go back to that promotion scenario we started with. Here's what actually tends to happen in the aftermath. There's the event in which the facts are that you didn't get it. And then there's the story you build around that event, usually within about forty-eight hours, usually without much actual evidence, and usually much harsher than the facts support. It might sound like, "I'm not cut out for leadership", or "I'll never get taken seriously where I am", or "Maybe there's nowhere for me to go here". None of that is data. That's a limiting belief being reinforced.
The work isn't to eliminate all second-guessing or self-doubt. It's more about catching it fast enough to question whether what we're telling ourselves is, in fact, true or if it's just familiar. A lot of what holds us back isn't new information about where we see our limits—it's old information about our fears, simply resurfacing.
And with limiting beliefs, once one takes hold, it tends to foster more of the same, only amplified. What starts out as, "I'm not cut out for leadership" quietly becomes, "I probably shouldn't ask for feedback right now, it'll just confirm my worst fears", which then becomes, "Maybe I should just focus on being reliable instead of making my capabilities more visible to the powers that be, since I will just get disappointed". Each one sounds reasonable on its own. Stacked together, they form a whole strategy for playing small and staying under the radar—and it can feel from the inside, like we're just exercising appropriate caution, even wisdom maybe, when really it's just fear that's starting to sound very rational.
The thing nobody tells you about growth is that it feels almost identical to danger. Your body genuinely cannot tell the difference between feeling unsafe and that feeling you get when you're doing something unfamiliar that's important to you. Both show up with similar sensations, such as a tight chest, a racing mind, and an urge to retreat to what's more comfortable.
One of the most useful skills you can build in a season when your confidence is low is learning to sit with that discomfort long enough to determine what it's actually telling you. Sometimes, discomfort is a real boundary being crossed. But much of the time, especially after a setback, that discomfort is just the sensation of doing something your nervous system hasn't yet deemed as safe, yet. This can show up when you consider sending that follow-up email that feels a little too bold, speaking up in the meeting after you've been quiet for weeks on end, or perhaps in applying again for a role that seems like a big step up after being turned down.
Discomfort, in those moments, isn't a stop sign. It's proof you're doing something that matters enough to your growth that it makes you feel vulnerable in doing it.
I want to draw a hard line here because these two things get tangled up constantly: processing disappointment and beating yourself up are not the same activity, even though they can feel very similar.
Processing disappointment might sound like: "That really stung. I wanted that very much. I'm upset about this." It has an end point. We move through it as we process the feeling.
Beating yourself up might sound like: "Of course I didn't get it, this is just how it goes here. I should have seen this coming. It's probably never going to happen for me." It has no endpoint. It just loops. And every loop erodes a little more of your baseline confidence, which makes making the next attempt to go after what you want that much harder, which also risks the next disappointment feeling even more devastating. That's the trap.
So, here's a simple way to keep yourself on the processing side of that line instead of the self-punishment side. Give the processing of that disappointment a container, whether it's an evening, one whole day, the length of a long walk, or whatever works for you, where you're allowed to feel the full weight of it without editing yourself. Try saying what you're really feeling out loud, such as, "I really thought this was mine" and acknowledge that the disappointment you're feeling hurts.
But remember, most of the time, a single setback is evidence of exactly one thing, and that is that this particular outcome didn't happen this particular time. It is very rarely proof that it will never happen.
Sometimes, we don't get the promotion, the high-visibility opportunity, or the 'yes' to our request—not because we weren't ready, and not because we did anything wrong, but because we're operating inside a dysfunctional system. That's not an excuse. It's just an honest acknowledgement about how bias, structural barriers, and unequal access are alive and well in most workplaces.
Naming that is important, because if you don't name it, your brain will fill in the blank with something else—usually something about your own inadequacy, because that's the story that's easiest to reach for. It feels almost safer to believe, "I wasn't good enough" than "the process wasn't fair", because at least the first one feels like there's something you can do about it.
But recognizing systemic bias is not the same as handing over your agency. You can acknowledge that your work environment has patterns that work against people like us and, at the same time, reaffirm that you are still going to work on your strategy, track your growth, and not let that dissuade you from making your next move. Those two things are not in tension.
Naming the barriers you're facing without internalizing them means you're recognizing that it's not personal and it's not a verdict on your worth. The system can be dysfunctional, but that doesn't mean it's the final word on what's possible for you.
Practically, that might look like not defaulting to questioning what's wrong with you and instead, focus on the patterns you're noticing, and start asking around to see whether other people are noticing them, too. Look at who tends to get chosen, who tends to get the benefit of the doubt, whose ideas get implemented, taking note of how and when they were shared. That's not paranoia—that's pattern recognition, and it's a far more accurate diagnostic tool than your own self-doubt on a bad day.
Once you can see the pattern clearly, it stops being internalized as a personal flaw and more of an observable condition of the work environment you're in, that you can then decide to plan around or push against, before you determine that the only option available to you is to leave. While it might not feel like it, you do have options.
So, if a setback isn't proof you're failing, what is it then? This is where I think most of us need a completely new definition of progress, because the traditional scoreboard doesn't always capture the nuance.
The old definition of progress is measured by external factors like increasing responsibility reflected in your job title, but is sometimes beyond your control.
The new definition of progress is measured by how quickly and how skillfully you recover from a setback, because your resilience can be an important metric.
Here's how that works in practice. After you've processed your disappointment—where you've let yourself really feel it and you haven't buried it—it's time to identify the specific lesson to be learned here. Maybe it's that you need more visible sponsorship, not just good performance reviews. Maybe it's that your manager doesn't know about all the great work you've actually delivered this year, and that's a communication gap, not a competence gap. Maybe it's that the success criteria for the role you're in was never as objective as it was presented to be, and you need more clarity before you can demonstrate your readiness for the next level.
Whatever the lesson is, you have to integrate it into your strategy going forward. A lesson that stays as an insight and never gets implemented won't help you move ahead. Put some form of it into your next conversation with your manager. Put it into action in how you document your wins. Or maybe it's something you need to put in your calendar as a follow-up.
And then, notice how long it took you to get from the gut-punch that would have sidelined you, to being ready to take the next deliberate move. The first time you got passed over, maybe it took you three months to even want to try again. This time, maybe it took you just three weeks. That difference is important because it shows a measurable increase in your resilience. That's you getting stronger at the exact skill this season is asking of you. Track it like you'd track any other metric that matters.
I'd actually encourage you to write it down somewhere—as a note you refer back to in a journal or a spreadsheet. It might include a description of the setback, your recovery time, the lesson learned, and the action taken. Over a year, that record could become something remarkable: proof, in your own handwriting, that you have gotten measurably better at reducing your recovery time. Most people never build that record, so they never get to see the pattern. They just remember the setbacks and forget how much faster they've learned to move through them.
In some workplaces, the external scoreboard isn't always fair, and in those cases, you need an internal one that you can actually trust. This is what I mean by validating your own progress—not waiting for the system to confirm you're doing well, because sometimes, it won't in a timely manner. And that delay can cost you years of confidence if you let it be the only measure you have.
Build a private, accurate record of your own growth. Not a highlight reel for other people—just you. What are you doing differently than you did a year ago? Where have you gotten faster, calmer, clearer? Where have you set a boundary you wouldn't have set before? That's progress, and it counts, whether or not anyone in a position of power has noticed it, yet.
Staying grounded in the face of real inequity is genuinely hard, and I don't want to pretend there's a simple trick that makes it easier to swallow. But there's a difference between feeling the sting of unfairness and letting that unfairness rewrite how you see your own capability.
Self-assurance in an unequal system doesn't mean pretending that things are fair when they're not. It means your sense of your own worth stops being outsourced to a process that was never fully within your control to begin with.
Trying to do any or all of this on your own is one of the fastest ways to lose perspective in a low-confidence season.
So, I recommend you find your people—the ones navigating similar terrain—and with whom you can share your wins, even the small ones. There's something that happens when a win gets witnessed by someone who understands exactly what it cost you to get there. It stops being a private, easily-doubted thing and becomes a shared, confirmed fact. Collective recognition is an important kind of evidence. It's armor you build together to protect yourselves.
And here's the part I really want to emphasize: be deliberate about who you decide to share your wins with in the first place. Not everyone has earned that honor. Some people, even well-meaning ones, will respond to your good news with something that quietly deflates it, whether that's a comparison, a backhanded comment, or a flicker of competitiveness they can't quite hide. Share your wins with people who can celebrate them with genuine enthusiasm. Protect that circle. Having people in your corner matters more than most people realize.
Contrary to popular belief, confidence is not a prerequisite for action. It's the result of it. You do not think your way into confidence. You act your way into it. And the feeling shows up afterward, almost every time, as a kind of trailing indicator.
This matters enormously in a low-confidence season, because our natural instinct is to wait. To wait until you feel ready to apply again, ready to speak up again, ready to put yourself forward again. But feeling ready is mostly a myth—or at least it's an unreliable narrator. Plenty of people who look confident from the outside started before they felt anything close to ready. They just didn't wait for the feeling of confidence to arrive before they put themselves forward.
So, instead of chasing that feeling of confidence, focus on doing the smallest possible action. Micro-actions matter more than most people give them credit for, because confidence compounds the same way interest does—quietly and almost invisibly, until suddenly, it's not invisible anymore. Send the email that needs to be sent, or ask the question that needs to be asked in the meeting. Write down each and every accomplishment before you forget it happened. None of those on their own feel like much, but they stack. And a month of small, consistent actions will do more for your confidence than one great day ever could, because consistency is what your nervous system actually learns to trust.
Now, I want to bring in something here that I think gets left out of a lot of conversations about performance and motivation, and it connects directly to this idea of action before confidence.
Most of us tend to lean toward one of two engines when we're trying to motivate ourselves: a logic-based approach, or an emotion-based approach. And most workplaces have quietly told us for years that only one of those is allowed. Logic gets treated as professional. Emotion gets treated as a liability—something to manage, minimize, and leave at the door. You've probably heard some version of "there's no place for emotion in business" at some point in your career.
I think that's not just wrong, I think it's a little bit ridiculous, honestly. We are emotional creatures. Every single one of us is driven by emotional motivators, whether we admit it or not. To pretend emotion has no role in the workplace is to ignore the actual fuel source that gets people moving in the first place.
Here's how I've come to think about it. Logic is excellent for planning, but it's terrible for motivation. Logic can build you a flawless five-step plan to get you back on track after a setback, but you can still not do a single step of it, because logic doesn't light a fire under you, but it does help you draw a map.
Trying to motivate an emotional being with a spreadsheet is, at best, a rookie mistake. At worst, it just doesn't work, and then people wonder why they never got around to doing what needed to be done.
Think about what happens on a team right before a huge, must-win moment. In my experience, I got to see this when my kids played hockey and the coach gave a bit of a speech in the locker room before they headed out onto the ice. That's not a logic-based moment. That's raw, collective emotional intensity, and it's genuinely powerful. Even in those young kids on that minor hockey team, it seemed to lift individual performers beyond what they believed they were capable of on their own—like the emotion of the group unlocks something in each kid that logic alone could never have reached.
That's the order that actually works. The process begins with emotional motivation. Something has to matter to you, has to make you feel something, before logic comes into play and then logic comes in afterward to give that feeling a next step. Emotion lights the match. Logic builds the fire pit around it so it doesn't burn out of control. You need both. The magic really is in the mix.
So when you're rebuilding confidence after a setback, don't just make a logical plan. Ask yourself what actually moves you. What outcome, pictured vividly enough, makes your chest tighten a little with wanting it. Start there. Let that feeling get you off the couch to take that first step. Then, let logic take over to keep you consistent. That combination—emotional ignition plus logical follow-through—is what turns a string of small actions into real, sustained momentum.
Progress, in the season where your confidence is low, is almost never going to look like the win you were picturing. It's going to look like catching a limiting belief before it becomes a default decision. It's going to look like sitting in discomfort for thirty extra seconds instead of retreating to what's more familiar and what's more comfortable. It's going to look like processing that feeling of disappointment, and working through it, instead of marinating in it. It's going to look like acknowledging a biased, dysfunctional system without taking it personally. It's going to look like a lesson learned that you actually put into action, and a recovery time that got a little shorter than it was last time. It's going to look like one small, brave action taken before you felt ready for it.
None of that would be what you'd see on someone's highlight reel. But all of it counts as real progress.
So, here's what I want to leave you with this week: pick one small action—just one—something small enough that it feels almost silly to be nervous about. And do it, not just because you feel confident, but specifically because you don't, yet. Let the doing come first. Then, let the confidence catch up.
And that's it for this episode of Stop Sabotaging Your Success. Remember to download your Guide to Recognizing Your Progress at cindyesliger.com/podcast, episode two hundred and thirty-five.
Thank you to our producer, Alex Hochhausen and everyone at Astronomic Audio. Get in touch, I'm on Instagram @cindyesliger. My email address is info@cindyesliger.com.
If you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out The Confidence Collective. It's my monthly coaching program where we dig a little deeper into what's holding you back in your career and we find the workarounds. We help you overcome the barriers and create the career you want. Join me over at cindyesliger.com/join. I'd love to have you join me in The Confidence Collective.
Until next week, I'm Cindy Esliger. Thanks for listening.
