You Deserve Confidence (Even When You Feel Like a Failure)

(I originally published this article in my Substack newsletter, Reflections by Samantha Lord, in 2024.)

I think one of the most tragic parts of life is how people accused of being “failures” are treated. Have you ever heard of the “Just World” cognitive bias? It’s a tendency that “we” (I use the word we here because it’s a convention, but I hope I’m not included in this) have to assume that if bad things happen in people’s lives, it must be their fault.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. In many cases, bad things happen because of simple bad luck, or because of neglect, harshness, and unfairness from other people and social structures.

Once a person is labeled as a “failure,” there are strong social forces that tend to push them headfirst into a downward spiral. The tendency for other people to undermine their confidence has a devastating effect. That is because when you don’t have confidence, you’re even more likely to fail.

Gaslighting plays a big part here. You’re gaslit into thinking that the factors beyond your control had no effect, and that it was all your fault that you failed or didn’t do as well as you should. Gaslighting can extend far just beyond individual interactions. It often happens on a societal level. Let me give you an example.

I usually dislike generational labels, at least at the individual level. I think saying because one person was born in a given year means they must be a certain way is silly and misleading. However, there are certainly discernible trends.

I’m apparently part of the little-known, perennially ignored, and virtually discarded Xennial generation, born between 1977 (my birth year) and 1982. I think the window should be wider than the “experts” (who decides these things, anyway?) say, probably stretching back to at least 1975.

I think every generation has been hit with a level of gaslighting, but I do feel our micro-generation got a heavy, damaging helping of it. We grew up being told certain things by the “Boomer” (and even sometimes the “Greatest Generation,” for that matter) adults and “role models” around us, not to mention the dumbed-down media, just to find out most of them were lies, or grossly misleading, at the very least.

In many cases, they weren’t intended to be lies, but they were often ill-thought-out generalizations that eventually became complete and utter garbage. In some cases, they might have been at least partly true when they were told, but by the time we became adults, they were false.

We were then promptly, overwhelmingly gaslit! “What, no one ever said that! You were irresponsible! You should have done something more practical!”

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. I think one of the most useful and life-transforming skills you can have is knowing how to feel confident even when you feel like a failure, or other people have said or implied that you’re a “failure,” and you’re struggling with self-love and self-esteem.

To help myself (and my readers) develop resilient confidence that they can rely on no matter what gaslighting or blame others burden them with, I wrote Transcendent Confidence: How to Be Confident (Even When You Feel Like a Failure). If you ever get around to reading it, please let me know if it helped you!