Imposter Syndrome

Everyone at some point in their life will have felt this, either fleetingly, or as a lingering feeling.

As a life coach and transformational mindset coach I encounter this a lot, to most people it isn't known as imposter syndrome, that is a term assigned by the coaching community.

Essentially it's based in a belief of lack, but the exact way we tell it to ourselves will be different.

For example:

"I don't know enough, therefore I shouldn't be doing this"

"I don't know how I got this position, it's only a matter of time before they find out and fire me"

"If I put that out on social media I'll be ridiculed, so I had better do some more courses first so I really know what I'm talking about"

"I'm not good looking enough to date them"

This list could be pretty endless, but I'll stop here as I'm sure you get the idea, and I dare say you already know you're own story!

Where does it originate from?

This is an important question, as knowing the root cause it the first step in moving beyond this feeling.

Whenever I work with a client that is struggling with imposter syndrome the first thing we do is a timeline exercise, going back to point in your past when you first decided you weren't enough, you weren't good enough, or needed to be better, needed to be perfect.

You can do this yourself, close your eyes and start going back in time, right back until you arrive at the first time you chose this belief.

Now, "see" what was happening, watch from a third person perspective, but do not take on any emotion, or add additional meaning or stories.

What else could you have believed to be true in that moment? See how you had complete control over how you felt, and the belief you chose (although you wouldn't have known this at the time).

Now, go ahead and choose a better, more positive belief from this event. Come back along your timeline to this present moment, noticing how you feel different.

What else could be true?

One of the other key considerations is what you’re projecting. We tend to judge others for judging us, even though they haven’t judged us yet!!

I once had a client that was afraid to ask questions in team meetings because that would make it look like she didn’t know what she was doing (and would therefore get judged by her colleagues), this feeling was heightened further by the fact no one else ever asked questions.

We spent time together working on self confidence, specifically to have the confidence to own who you are and to know without question that everything always works out for you, and you can manage every situation that arises.

We also worked on breaking the perfectionist identity. The need to be perfect will feed imposter syndrome and keep you trapped in the loop.

The result was quite profound; this client spoke up at the next meeting and asked several questions, which then prompted questions from the rest of her colleagues. You see, everyone was feeling the same way “I’d better not ask a question otherwise I’ll look like I don’t know what I’m doing”.

Every time you take a small action to break the feeling of imposter syndrome you are building evidence to yourself that it is ok, you are good enough, you aren’t going to be attacked or victimised.

But, you will have to take action that feels uncomfortable at first.

For my clients I teach them a very powerful technique that can change their feeling state in a instant just by applying it. In the example above we used confidence, so whenever this client wanted an instant boost of confidence she applied this technique and it shifted her straight away.

The power of your mind

What we focus on we give our power to, so if you focus on what could go wrong your mind will be off on a tangent building a worse case scenario picture where your whole life falls apart and you end up homeless…

That is an option, so acknowledge it, but don’t choose it. You can allow your mind to build any picture, it doesn’t mean anything unless you choose it.

So what do you choose instead?

This will take some work, a negative emotion is five times more powerful than a positive, so it takes effort to build a “best case scenario”.

There is a lot to take in here, and this is only scratching the surface. If you want to know more about how you can use my coaching programme to take control of your life and be the driving force, rather than the passenger, just contact me here.