How to Rebuild Your Confidence After Life Knocks You Down

Fernanda: Hi friends, welcome back to Connectedness. I'm Fernanda, your host and founder of Filled Cups. And this is the place where we talk about the magic and the mess of being human together, and where we explore the inner threads that shape who we are and how we grow.

Today we are diving into a topic that can absolutely transform the trajectory of our lives: confidence. What it is, how we lose it, and how we rebuild it from the inside out.

My guest today is Lu Tandazo, a life and success coach whose work centers on helping people rediscover their inner strength, trust themselves again, and pursue goals that feel aligned and meaningful. I've personally attended a few of Lu's presentations, and each time I've walked away inspired not just by her ideas, but by her grounded, practical way of helping people shift from self-doubt to self-belief.

Lu Tandazo: Thank you, Fernanda, for having me, and I'm so grateful you attended those events.

Fernanda: I'll continue to try to attend them because they're so awesome. You do such a great job with your events.

Lu Tandazo: Thank you. I'm glad you got plenty of takeaways. That's the whole purpose of those events.

Fernanda: Today we're going to be unpacking confidence not as a personality trait, but as a real-life tool. We talk about self-love, inner resilience, parenting without passing on our limiting beliefs to our children, and what happens when life knocks us down and we have to rebuild.

It's a powerful conversation and I'm so excited to share it with you. So Lu, for listeners who may be meeting you for the first time, what led you into life and success coaching, and what defining moment made you say, "This is my path"?

Lu Tandazo: There are two major pivotal moments that led me into this work. First, it wasn't work; it was just for me. In my first marriage, I was married to an alcoholic, and he was abusive, including physically.

I was a teacher at the time, and what I remember is feeling numb inside at some point because you don't know how much it does to you. When I was rebuilding my life, I decided to pick up tennis to help pick myself back up and rebuild myself.

My coach at the time was big into personal development, and he actually introduced me to it. I am forever grateful to him because it wasn't just about tennis. It was like, "Oh my gosh, I can actually change myself, rebuild myself, and also build a new path."

At the same time, the school district I was working for was having budget cuts. For me, the whole joy of teaching was seeing my kids go from zero to becoming fluent in French. When that happened, I said, "Okay, it's time for a career change. I never want to be that grumpy teacher. The kids deserve better."

I struggled finding the kind of career I could get into, but personal development gave me the wings—even when I got a bunch of nos—to hold on to the belief that I could still find a job in the corporate world that would want me and make more money than I was making as a teacher. That belief infused that confidence in me, and it unlocked my entry into the corporate world.

I had spoken to a number of people and it was always no, or I never got interviews. I remember having interviewed with one company, didn't hear a thing, and two months later the CEO calls me and says, "So, Lu, are you ready to start?"

This is the power of personal development. If you hold on to the belief and have that confidence that says, "I don't know how, I don't know when, I just know it's going to work," it happens.

From there, I grew exponentially in my HR career. I transitioned to different companies, did leadership coaching, and became the head of HR. It was all the confidence work.

Towards the tail end of my career, I hit a moment where I got stuck. I had a great boss, a great team, and the work was good, but I got bored because I'm the kind of person that really needs to grow. On top of it, in my second marriage, we were having a really rough time to the point where we were about to go our separate ways.

I felt like crap. I started questioning myself: "Lu, what is it? You clearly don't have your life together. What's wrong with you?" You start having all those self-doubts.

When you do well, you sometimes forget you need to do the work every day, and you drop it. That was when one of my former mentors, Bob Proctor, popped up on Facebook again.

I started attending his seminars for a few months. He would always offer the opportunity to become a coach with them, and my doubts were so strong that I thought, "I could never become a business owner." I literally rejected the idea because I didn't have the belief or the confidence.

Bob was really good at working on paradigms, doubts, and planting ideas. A few months went by, and when he suggested it again, an aha moment hit me: "Oh my gosh, this is what I'm supposed to be doing."

I realized it allows me to grow forever and help people in a greater way beyond my little corporate box. It was the answer to all my prayers. I wasn't seeing it before because I lacked the awareness and belief in myself to recognize the opportunity.

Confidence gives you the wings to take the jump. I decided to spend $32,000 on myself to go through this training and become a coach, which was most of my savings at the time. Having that belief meant I wasn't just throwing that money out the window.

Fernanda: You were investing in yourself. You were in a pivotal moment in your personal and professional life, your teacher reappeared when you were ready, and you had your aha moment.

I've heard you speak about confidence before, and it had a really good impact on me. How do you define confidence?

Lu Tandazo: For me, it's that belief in your ability to achieve anything you really want to. It's understanding the laws of your being and how your mind works with the universe and your body.

We are a spirit with an intellect in a physical body, and we can literally create anything we want. The question is: do you believe it? The moment you truly do, you're going to make it happen.

It's that belief in yourself, your abilities, and your talents. A lot of us look at our weaknesses more than our talents, but you have to know you have the capacity to achieve anything your heart desires.

Fernanda: It's self-trust essentially. It will take work, but it's not impossible as long as you put your effort toward it.

Lu Tandazo: A lot of that trust comes from understanding who you are and having a true perception of yourself. A lot of the time we have a skewed perception of ourselves.

We tell ourselves stories that because we made a mistake a long time ago, we're not good enough, or maybe we heard that growing up. We end up with this warped perception that directly impacts our confidence. But it's only an opinion—strictly an opinion—and you can change your opinion.

Fernanda: In one of your blog posts, you wrote that confidence isn't pretending to be superwoman, but knowing your capabilities. How can somebody begin to distinguish genuine confidence from performance or pressure?

Lu Tandazo: What I really like to guide my clients through is remembering a time when you felt confident, whether it was jumping off the high dive or singing at a recital and nailing it. Or even like my six-year-old son saying, "I put on my shirt by myself!"

You have these moments in your memory, and if you can reconnect to that feeling, that's true confidence.

At first, when you're trying something new, it may feel like acting. But you can tap into that memory of what confidence truly felt like, transpose that feeling—I call it the success mechanism—and transfuse it into the new situation to act genuinely confident.

Fernanda: I love that. Remembering a time when I felt confident and drawing from that feeling is something I forget to do in the moment when doing things I've never done before.

Lu Tandazo: It's training our mind to not focus on what could go wrong, but what could go right. Seeing ourselves succeeding in our mind helps build that confidence, and then we tap into those memories.

Fernanda: You've mentioned how losing a job or going through a divorce can shake our confidence. What does rebuilding confidence actually look like in those moments?

Lu Tandazo: It's realizing that your worth is not tied to a job or to somebody else. It starts by learning to love yourself, learning what's amazing about you, and knowing your circumstances do not define you unless you let them.

That's why job loss or divorce takes such a heavy toll on people—what they did became their entire identity, and now they don't know who they are. It takes soul-searching to ask, "Who am I? What do I appreciate about myself, from my personality to my talents to my body?"

And I mean every part of your body. One exercise I do with my clients is about body acceptance. I don't have big boobs, but I can say, "You know what? They may not be the biggest, but they fed all three of my kids, and I can love them for that."

It's learning to love every part of you, being grateful, and recognizing you are an amazing human being. My mentor always said you have to love yourself so much that you kiss yourself in the morning, and he would literally kiss his own hand. No matter what happens externally, you are always enough, and external validation doesn't define you.

Fernanda: The only opinion that matters is your own personal validation of yourself.

Lu Tandazo: That's one of the things my mentor taught me, because I used to really worry about what people thought. When I was about to get my second divorce, I worried about what my family would say, until I realized: "Why do I care about what they think? It's about me. Am I happy?"

My mentor said, "I hope that you like me because I'm a pretty nice guy, but in the end, it doesn't matter because I like me." The only opinion that matters is the opinion I have of myself. Nothing else matters.

Fernanda: In another blog post, you brought up the limiting beliefs parents may unintentionally pass on to their children, especially in families with special needs. How do those beliefs take root?

Lu Tandazo: I'm saying this from experience because I have a special needs kiddo. Even being in a community of special needs support groups, our minds often don't know how to guard against limiting conversations.

When you hear people unintentionally say, "I don't think your kid will ever be able to do those things with that condition," whether it's from a doctor or other parents, they aren't consciously trying to sabotage you, but we accept it without a filter.

If I accept that belief, my kid will feel it in the way I set expectations and talk to him, and he will believe he can never do those things. One of the things I've tried to work on is holding the goal that my child will be able to do everything any other child can, even if it's on his own timeline, and not let a condition dictate what he can or cannot do.

Fernanda: It's easy for us to play Monday morning quarterback with our parenting. I'm in a phase of self-forgiveness with younger versions of myself, but I can relate to feeling like I might have passed some limiting beliefs on to my older kids.

Lu Tandazo: It's never too late. I didn't start out as a great mom because I wasn't deep into this work until my oldest was older.

He was the kid that lacked confidence and struggled with grades, and we were able to change that within a year. Could we have done better? We all try to do our best with the awareness we have at the time. As long as we continue to work on ourselves and help others elevate, that's a win.

Fernanda: When we grow up, whatever happened happened, and our parents did the best they could with the awareness they had. Now as adults, we own the responsibility to change those limiting beliefs so we can thrive.

You also talk about children's natural resilience and fearlessness. What can adults learn from watching how children approach challenges?

Lu Tandazo: Think of a child learning to walk. They aren't thinking, "I'm going to get hurt, I'm going to fall a hundred times." They are locked in on walking.

They bang themselves up, cry for a second, get right back up, and keep going. Over time as adults, we lose that ability to just lock in on our goal and jump in fearless.

My own child has had many surgeries, and right after surgery, he's smiling while in four casts. As an adult, we would be miserable, complaining about how horrible life is. He was scooting around on his bum trying to reach his toys, completely unfocused on the obstacles. Children aren't focused on limitations; they just find a way.

Fernanda: That is so inspirational. Whenever we're facing challenges, we need to remember that mindset.

What would you recommend for interrupting and rewiring negative self-talk?

Lu Tandazo: The first step is awareness: recognizing what self-talk you're telling yourself. Journaling helps you realize what deeper beliefs that inner chatter is revealing, which gives you the opportunity to flip them.

If you're telling yourself, "I'm never going to be able to do this," the deeper belief might be, "I'm not good enough." Deconstruct that belief: Is it actually true? What disproves it?

Look at all your past successes and wins to show yourself that the negative thought is nonsense. Then you reinforce the truth with affirmations and mirror work.

Fernanda: How do we do affirmations effectively rather than superficially?

Lu Tandazo: There are a few components. First, write and speak the affirmation in a way your mind doesn't instantly reject. If you say, "I am super confident," but your body contracts, your subconscious is rejecting it.

You can use a modifier instead, like, "I am getting more and more confident every day," which your mind can accept.

Second is feeling. If you don't feel it, it won't do anything for you. Tap into a memory of when you felt confident so you can feel it deep in your cells, retrain your nervous system, and connect the words with the physical vibration.

Movement and power poses really help affirmations sink in. Most importantly, if you do not back up your affirmations with action, your mind knows you're lying to yourself. You have to step out into the real world, do the uncomfortable thing, and act on it.

Fernanda: In the book What to Say When You Talk to Yourself, the author talks about writing affirmations with action verbs, like, "I schedule my day in an organized manner," rather than just stating an abstract idea.

How can someone reinterpret past situations they aren't proud of so they can still love themselves?

Lu Tandazo: It's developing a new relationship with failure and mistakes, and understanding that you wouldn't be where you are today without those experiences. At the time, you did the best you could with what you knew.

Instead of looking at what you did wrong, look at how you grew from it and realize it served a purpose. I recommend writing a forgiveness letter to yourself.

One affirmation I use with clients is: "I release myself to my highest good." If you're holding something against someone else, you can say, "I release them to their highest good, and I release myself to my highest good." When you repeat that, you feel that heavy weight lift off.

Fernanda: Where can listeners find you and learn more about your upcoming events?

Lu Tandazo: You can find all my links, social media, and email on my website at dreamintosuccess.com. There is a tab on the site for all my upcoming workshops and events, including a private business owners' networking dinner on December 11th at 6:00 PM.

Fernanda: Thank you so much, Lu, for sharing your wisdom, vulnerability, and passion for empowering others.

If this conversation reminded you of your own power, go connect with Lu and check out her coaching work. As always, thank you for being part of this community. Please leave a review, share this episode with someone who needs confidence, and remember to subscribe!