How To Overcome Imposter Syndrome For Good!
How To Overcome Imposter Syndrome For Good!
I’ve struggled with paralyzing fear in some way or another my whole life. But I’m standing here today on the other side. I am no longer a fear-filled person.
How you may ask?
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Well, let’s take a little journey. It will take slightly longer than swallowing a pill (but a heck of a lot cheaper). It will take less time than to drink a cup of coffee, so go ahead and grab one and start reading!
I have several memories of fear paralyzing me. One of my earliest happened while in gymnastics. I was on the top bar of the uneven parallel bars. I was eight or nine years old.
The exercise was fairly simple. I was to swing up to a straddle and swing down toward the low bar. When you're nearing the top of your arc above the low bar, kick your feet out twist over 180 degrees, and re-grab the high bar. At the same time, my legs were to wrap around the low bar forward and back up again to lift me back up to stand on the low bar.
It sounds like a lot, but in the world of gymnastics, it’s pretty elementary. I’d even done it before, dozens of times. But this time I froze. I couldn’t move. I cried. I eventually climbed down, totally embarrassed and defeated. Nothing my coach said could encourage me to try again.
This paralyzing fear happened several more times. Not constantly, it would creep back up time and again. Often, I overcame this fear because I went on to complete for four more years.
I don’t remember how I overcame the fear now, but I still remember being paralyzed. The more you do something the easier it becomes. Eventually, the thing you’re learning to do becomes like walking. You don’t think about how to do it anymore, you just do. You rarely if ever fall down and you can’t even remember how you learned to do it if someone asked.
The next fear-paralyzing memory I have is from public speaking class in 8th grade. I can still feel the eyes of my classmates’ boring virtual holes into my soul. I stood in front of them preparing to read my first-ever speech on how to make a peanut butter sandwich.
If my memory serves me right, (and not the bad teenage movies scene that plays in my head) I did not run out of the room in terror. After what seemed like an eternity, I did start talking. I read through my life-altering speech and got to return to my seat with no visible scars.
Lessons Learned from my Corporate Training + Ballroom Dance Instructor Gigs
Fast forward twenty years, I had my first "official" corporate training job, the thing I actually studied in grad school. It was a great job, except for the fact that three days a month I had to conduct an in-person training event for new apartment managers and their staff.
I’d prepared a PowerPoint presentation to assist me and remind me what the heck I was supposed to say. My technology was on and thankfully working for this first session.
I’d been a student in the class a few years before so I had a good feel for how things were to go. Three things got me to stay in the room that day.
The first was remembering I only had to be a few steps ahead of the students in my knowledge. I learned this lesson as a new ballroom dance instructor. You really don't have to be a champion dancer, you just need to know more steps in the rhumba than your student does.
Second, if I had more experienced people in the room to ask for and learn from their experiences.
Third, remember how intimidating starting a new job can be. Even if you’ve been around the block a few times every company does things a bit differently.
My job was to make them feel welcome and not alone.
I never once loved the first day of class, I felt anxious every time. But I knew by the end of the first day that I helped someone make their new job better. Lightning bolts never struck me down as a fraud.
In my introduction to each class, I told them there was a good chance I would not know the answers to all of their questions. But I did know the people that would. I told everyone I learned something new and invaluable from the students in each class. And that I would pass along this to subsequent new hire classes.
Another paralyzing experience happened in 2016. I was sitting in my 8th-floor apartment seeking God's guidance.
I had three babes five and under, navigating living in DC for the first time, and feeling discouraged about how I could do anything helpful/useful for more than the three little people I had been entrusted with.
This is enough by the way, and a mighty calling in fact.
But in this moment God whispered, “I want you to write.” Not at all what I was expecting and thus, how I am certain it was God speaking, not me.
Writing. I loved reading other mom blogs at this point and they helped me stay sane. But, I had some problems with writing myself. I can’t spell. I can’t tell you how many times I've deleted a response on Facebook because I wasn’t certain if I spelled a word correctly.
I loathed writing. I am dyslexic, I didn’t learn grammar well in elementary school, high school, or college.
Only now as I’m homeschooling my kids are some lightbulbs going off. I tend to write in an overly passive voice and am a run-on sentence Queen.
Write.
Me: Ok God I hear you, I’ll start a blog.
God: I said I want you to write.
Me: Ok God I'll build a website and start a blog.
God: Write.
Me: I kind of liked designing my website. I think I’ll learn to be a web designer. I can do that from home, right?
God: Are you making this a tad too complicated?
Me: Shoot if I become a web designer, then I’ll have to sell my services. I’ll have to learn to pitch and write copy. Then, I’ll have to write a blog, to get traffic, to my website, to get clients.
And then I’ll have to learn how to write emails and email marketing and build a list. And then I’ll have to learn how to manage my clients and use a CRM. And then I’ll have to learn social media and how to reel and pin. And then I’ll have to learn how to YouTube and edit videos.
And then I have to learn how to make a passive product template or a course. And then I’ll have to write sales pages, launch copy and run a launch. And then I'll need to change my mindset, elevate my energetics. And..,
While in DC my husband Ben worked for a Jewish man and helped open a kosher Italian restaurant. One of the Rabbis he worked with told him a story to explain how the Jewish food laws worked. In layman’s terms, it’s called fencing. God asked the people not to boil a calf in its mother’s milk. The people continually make other rules (fences) to keep them from possibly breaking the original commandment. The story ends with God eventually throwing up his hands and saying to the people, go ahead do whatever you want!
It’s a bit like my story above. I could have listened and obeyed. And sometimes I did. And sometimes I learned something profound. Sometimes it felt like God was speaking through my hand as it scribbled on the page. You’d think that was enough to keep me just writing. But sometimes it wasn’t. I felt this draw to all the other things too in my story above.
Paralyzing fear struck again with his buddy perfection at his side. They were there when I had to choose a business name, choose the perfect colors, and design the perfect website. It took me months of agonizing and annoying my spouse with questions about this shade or that.
It struck again when I went to post my first blog. And the second.
It struck again when I had to move states and change my business name. I had to change because I didn’t want to be an LLC yet, so I couldn’t use the word company in my name.
It struck again when I had my first client find me on Instagram and I choked and lowballed my offer.
It struck again when I started writing a blog after 6-month hiatus with sickness, swim team, and moving again.
But this week I have a new perspective. I’m not going to limit myself on what I write. I’m going to endeavor to write daily.
First in my notes app with just a date at the top.
Sometimes it will be an inspiration for a blog; sometimes it will just be for me.
Paige Brunton said something this week about just posting the thing, you don’t have to do all the other things. If you write and do it consistently, google will work its magic and find you. You don’t have to do anything else.
It was like the weight of the world fell off my shoulders.
I just let go. I dropped the internal thought that I had to try to understand all the things, all the algorithms and all the schedule platforms. I dissolved the need to keep up with all the marketing “Joneses.”
Translation to self. Just write. I could choose to post on social media if I wanted to or not, no worries.
Another ah-ha moment this week, from Maria Forleo’s book, Everything is Figureoutable:
Haven’t some of your setbacks or failures actually been redirects that guided you to a higher path?
Failure is just an event. It is not a characteristic. People can’t be failures. -Judge Victoria Pratt
FAIL=faithful attempt in learning.
It’s nothing to fear and nothing to avoid.
It’s a must-have feature.
You can only fail if you stop learning and growing.
*p.111
People can’t be failures or stupid as my worst inner voice likes me to believe. It’s not a characteristic, just an event.
Know this. Let it soak in a little bit.
You don’t have to be an expert for people to get value or learn something from your journey. You have no way of knowing what even one other person out of the billions on this planet we call home needs to hear today. Isn’t helping one person enough? Isn’t that the start of something bigger?
Remember these three things:
You can bless someone by sharing your journey. How you make your choices and the direction you are headed in may bless someone also trying to decide. You may help someone not feel so alone.
You can help someone learn something you just learned. In fact, it’s the very best way to really internalize new information.
Welcome and ask for feedback and stories from more experienced people. You will almost always learn something new, become wiser and be able to pass it on.
It’s okay to be a beginner and to start learning something new. Every expert started just where you are. Every mountain summit, Fortune 500 company, and world-changing expedition started with an idea and action. They all had to take a first step. What will yours be?
You are not an imposter.
It's a lie.
You are learning and doing the thing. You may be a beginner, but that is the first step to becoming an expert.
You may change one person’s journey or thousands. Think of your biggest hero or favorite star for a moment.
How grateful are you that they picked up the guitar and played a note, learned to add and kept going, picked up a ball and kicked it, or put on ballet shoes and learned to plié? You can fill in your own line here. The one that really resonates with you.
Remember, as attributed to Henry Ford, if you think you can or think you can’t you’re right. Start your journey thinking you can.
Make your first step so easy that you can succeed, baby steps if you will. Proceed to take baby steps and build momentum. You'll start slaying and laying to rest your fears one by one as they attempt to vanquish you.
Don’t think that you can’t just because you don’t want to or won’t try.
When you actually get to a place where you can’t or don’t want to, pívot. Take the first step in a slightly or drastically new direction. But know this, you're vantage point will be significantly more encompassing than had you not taken the first step.
I reached this point in gymnastics, I decided I didn’t want to try to do back flips on the beam (a 4” wide slab of wood 4’ off the ground). I probably could have done it and gotten quite good at it, but it didn’t bring me joy anymore.
I pivoted.
All those years of training weren’t lost, they made me a better and “well-balanced” athlete!
Start your journey into the unknown. Know that you will learn new things and might even discover something or someone you love along the way. That is more than enough reason to start.
Be uncomfortable and unsure, but willing to take the first step. You will rarely if ever experience ah-ha moments sitting on your bum, binging Netflix.
They happen when you’ve done something new, tried something hard, or are reflecting on what you did. Ah-ha's can light a fire, igniting you to further action.
You will never fully know the whole of your impact. There are stats you can measure, but there are always people who hear you and see you but never let you know. There are people behind your numbers and even more people beyond the numbers watching and waiting for their first spark. Be the spark!
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