Freedom From Imposter Syndrome

TRANSCRIPT: FREEDOM FROM IMPOSTER SYNDROME

Hello, this is Rachel Henke, transformative coach and author of the “Living Fearlessly” series.

Today, I want to talk to you about something called “Imposter Syndrome.” This is a fancy term given to a very uncomfortable feeling of thinking you’re not good enough.

Psychologists call it Imposter Syndrome; you may have read about it in Psychology’s magazine or you may have heard this term bandied about. And it seems to be really prevalent with women. Women especially seem to really, really worry that they’re not good enough, they’re not quite up to standard, even if they’ve got very high positions in the corporate world, or they’re running their own businesses, and they can be extremely successful.

This feeling of not being good enough has nothing to do with actual results in the world. It’s a feeling. And the reason that we have this feeling, and I suffered with this worry that I’m not quite good enough for 30 years.

The reason we have it is because we don’t understand that our whole experience of who we are is coming from our thought in the moment. So if we have thoughts about how we might not be good enough, we instantly feel not good enough. We instantly feel low, our consciousness drops, our mood drops, and the truth is that thought is neutral, but the meaning that we put on it is what we feel.

What we feel in our body, what we feel moment-to-moment, so there’s actually no such thing about whether we’re good enough or not good enough, because our idea of who we are shifts all of the time.

Think about it: you’ll have one day where you feel really confident and it might not even enter your mind that you’re not good enough. But then something will happen; perhaps you’ve got to give a big presentation, or you feel like you’re gonna be tested in some way, and then all of those fearful thoughts, which are completely made up, because they’re just thoughts whizzing around our head, they’re not in any way related to truth. But we think they are.

So we believe them, and we get lost in this awful construct of us not being good enough. And really, that’s all that’s going on, a lot of my high-achieving clients that I’ve worked with, have talked to me about this, and it’s men, too, that they feel worried that they’re not quite good enough, they’re not at the level they should be at.

It’s this idea that somebody’s gonna find out that they’re not quite as great as they should be. And what’s happening when we have this experience a lot, is that we are running the same thoughts, we’re running the same patterns of thoughts, and the great news is there’s nothing to do about it.

We don’t need to try and control our thoughts, because thoughts pop in, whether we like it or not. Those thoughts pop in, but when we have these patterns of what feels like very negative thinking, it’s just a habit. And we’ve got used to taking it seriously. Because when a thought pops into your head that says, “Oh, Rachel, you’re not good enough at …,” whatever it is, making YouTube videos, if I take that seriously, then I won’t make a video. But if I just understand that, “Oh, hold on, that’s just me judging myself. That’s really just me getting lost in fearful thinking,” then I can gently put that aside, and focus on what I want to do, which is make a video for you.

And that applies everywhere. We have these thoughts popping into our minds, and we can choose whether we’re going to kind of hang on to them and really take them seriously, or when we wake up to the fact that thought is just part of how the human system works, it’s part of how our minds work, we can just let those thoughts pass on by, they don’t mean anything about us.

Thoughts are neutral, but we give them a lot of meaning. And when we give them the meaning that we’re not good enough, and we really start to believe that, then of course that plays out through our whole lives.

And we can be really high-achieving and really successful, but not enjoy it, because we’re literally lost in these painful, fearful thoughts about who we are and how we’re not good enough.

So I hope that sparks something for you today, something new to think about, ’cause this is a new way of thinking about how the mind works.

And if you’d like more good stuff like this, check out my Living Fearlessly books.