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Defeating Imposter Syndrome: Overcome Your Feelings of Self-Doubt and Inadequacy

Picture this: you’ve just achieved an A in your exam, got a promotion, or had a public celebration of your achievements announced. But deep down inside, all you’re telling yourself is, “You’re a fraud.” Sound familiar? Welcome to Imposter Syndrome.

Before you worry too much, it’s important to realise that you’re not alone.  According to a study documented by the NIH, up to 82% of people within that study experienced imposter syndrome. It’s not limited to any certain demographic, either: people of all job roles, gender, race, and origin experience it.

Over and above this, before I go on I can reassure you with one fundamental truth: Imposter Syndrome is not evidence that you are inadequate.

So, what is imposter syndrome, exactly?

Imposter syndrome, as the name suggests, is the feeling of being a fraud, of not belonging, of not being worthy of your achievements, and of being exposed as an imposter at any moment. It’s that voice in your head that tells you that you’re not good enough, that you don’t deserve your success, and that you’re just faking it.

Now, you might think that imposter syndrome is something that only affects people who are new to a field or who are just starting out. But let me tell you, my dear reader, that imposter syndrome can affect anyone, no matter how successful or experienced they are. Yes, even those who have won Nobel prizes, Oscars, or Grammys can feel like imposters! For an example, Maya Angelou has verbally expressed this feeling: 

“I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.'” – Maya Angelou

Defeating Imposter Syndrome

Why do we experience Imposter Syndrome?

Well, there are several reasons. For one, we live in a society that values success, achievement, and recognition above all else. We are constantly bombarded with messages that tell us we need to be the best, the brightest, the most talented, the most successful, and the most beautiful to be happy, loved, and respected. But when we do achieve some measure of success, we often feel like we don’t deserve it or that we just got lucky.

Another of the number of reasons we might feel like imposters is that we tend to compare ourselves to others. We see people who seem to be doing better than us, who are more successful, more talented, more confident, and more put-together, and we feel like we’re not measuring up. We forget that we are all unique individuals with our own strengths and weaknesses, and that we don’t need to be like anyone else to be valuable and worthy.

How to overcome imposter syndrome

Sometimes it feels hard to figure out the starting point when dealing with something so overwhelming. And although there are many effective strategies to approach and defeat imposter syndrome, here’s some that I know to be impactful. 

Acknowledge your reasons to believe: Sometimes you need a little reminder of the paths you have walked, and the battles already won. When you make a point to intentionally remember these, it refuels your beliefs and reminds you of what you’re actually capable of.

This might be as simple as writing down past achievements and struggles you’ve overcome. Or, it may be a case of you speaking with someone you trust and asking them to help you remember moments in your life where you experienced success because of your efforts and abilities.

Track your progress: Making progress tangible is an incredible way to boost your sense of capability. Best way to do this?
Whether it’s a check list, marks on a calendar, or through digital tools like the many apps you can find today to track progress, it all does the same thing: makes it visible!

Take your sense of achievement beyond performance and towards meaning: Performance is important and has a valid place in this world. But if you only have performance orientated goals, you’re missing out on tapping into the richer side of live, where there is meaning and purpose.
Create some goals that are “purpose driven” and “growth driven”. For an example, a purpose driven goal could be to increase your team’s engagement with each other. And a growth goal could be to read one page from your book every night. You may want to tie these goals into something that you’re specifically needing to grow confidence in, or you may want to make them totally unrelated. The choice is yours, and the intention is to focus on the achievement you are experiencing in other areas of your life.

Give yourself the grace card: we are all entitled to the grace card; more than we allow ourselves to believe. All too often, applying grace is seen as weak. But it’s quite the opposite: grace enables you to return to the challenge, to pick yourself up and try again. Don’t beat yourself up for making mistakes or for not being perfect. Treat yourself as you would treat a good friend who is going through a tough time. Practice self-care, such as getting enough sleep, eating well, exercising, and doing things that make you happy.

Practice healthy internal language: Mahatma Ghandi puts it perfectly, saying, “Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.” Not much else needs to be said on this other than, be careful what you say to yourself! Speak life, possibility, and love into your being. 

And lastly…talk about it: Sometimes you can find consolidation in the act of sharing your feelings with the people around you. You may receive feedback that reassures you that you are indeed doing a good job. But most of all, the power lies in realising you’re not alone. You’ll discover that many others around you have experienced these same feelings and understand the path you’re walking. It’s also important to remember that it’s okay to ask for help when you need it. No one knows everything, and everyone needs help from time to time. Don’t be afraid to seek out mentors, coaches, or therapists who can help you grow and learn.

Defeating Imposter Syndrome

Finally, remember that imposter syndrome is not something that you can completely get rid of. It’s a natural and normal part of the human experience, and it may come up from time to time. But by recognizing it, challenging it, and practicing self-care and self-compassion, you can learn to manage it and thrive despite it.

So, CAFE Life community, I hope this blog post has helped you understand imposter syndrome a bit better and given you some ideas on how to overcome it. Remember, you are not alone, and you are not a fraud. You are a unique and valuable individual with unimaginable capability to contribute, achieve, overcome, and thrive. 

Learning the TEAMS lesson
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Hitting a confidence dip? Learn how to build your confidence with these practices

build your confidence HEADING: Hitting a confidence dip? Learn how to build your confidence with these practices

Confidence impacts everything we do. From our approach to challenge, to our response within conflict, to our performance at work. If yours is low, you’re one of many. But this truth still stands: Learning how to build your confidence can be transformative. The best part? it’s more doable than you may think.

“Self-confidence is contagious.”―Stephen Richards

Have you ever heard someone say that confidence is the most appealing characteristic? It’s a rather contagious one, that echoes a sense of self-assurance and authenticity. Self-confidence seems to say, ‘I know who I am.’ But what happens when you have a dip in confidence? Or perhaps you have areas in your life where it has always lacked? Becoming an active player in building your confidence gives you the chance to rewrite old narratives that have taken root in your life and brings you home to your authentic self.

Confidence Vs Self Esteem

It’s important to start by understanding that although connected, confidence and self-
esteem are different things.

– Confidence:

Confidence is described as “the feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something.” You can have confidence in your ability towards specific tasks, talents, or activities, but still be low on self-esteem.

– Self esteem:

While confidence is faith within your capabilities, self-esteem is assurance in your own sense of worth. It is influenced by your beliefs about who you are.

Confidence influences self-esteem, and vice versa. Therefore, if you want to grow your self-esteem, a good way to start is to build your confidence, using it to support new beliefs about yourself. Let’s take a look at how you can do this.

1) Capitalise On Your Strengths

build your confidence HEADING: Hitting a confidence dip? Learn how to build your confidence with these practices

Did you know that everyone has areas of strength where they sit in the top 25% for? Great news, right? Hopefully, even this stat gives you a little confidence boost.

Taking the time to discover these strengths allows you to maximise your talents and play in your areas of strength. And you can even take it a step further – combine your strengths to form a power combo of skills that sets you apart from others.

Of course, I’m all for being a student of life – in fact this is one of our core values at CAFE Life. When you maintain a mindset that seeks growth and understanding, the sky is your limit. But it’s pretty powerful to know where you’re already ahead of the game so you can use this as a way to build your confidence.

What are your areas of strengths? Write them down. Get creative and brainstorm how you can make your own power combo of strengths.

2) Track Your Growth & Progress

“In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find
themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
– Eric Hoffer

What a showstopper of a quote, right? We don’t want to become stuck, where we fear embracing a challenge and learning new skills. Becoming courageous enough to learn something new or strengthen your weaknesses, plays to your advantage. Make a point of visibly tracking your progress. Mark it on a calendar, or put it on a to do list, or chart. You can even become playful with it and add a sweet or coin to a jar whenever you make time for your targeted area of growth.

When you do track your growth, you create a breadcrumb trail for your progress. Now, you can easily see that you are indeed moving forward – no matter how small the steps are. This can be very invigorating, especially when you feel disheartened or unmotivated. And don’t forget to celebrate your achievements, by the way!

3) Reasons To Believe You Can Achieve

You haven’t got to where you are on luck. It’s taken blood, sweat, and tears at the least. But sometimes we forget the path we have walked and the hurdles we’ve overcome. Remind yourself, so that you can use these as reasons to believe you can climb your next mountain.

When you feel a lack of courage, ask yourself:

– Have I ever faced a similar challenge before? What helped me then?
– What resources do I have in my hands right now?
– Do I know anyone who has faced a similar challenge? What helped them?

Make an effort to remind yourself of these reasons to believe on a regular basis. Why don’t you create a mantra for yourself to use whenever you need it?

4) Pay Attention to Your Choice Of Language

Words can empower, or disempower. They can create paths of opportunity, or unpassable walls. What story are you telling yourself around your capabilities?

Pay close attention to what you say to yourself and others. You might just be reaffirming a lack of confidence instead of building your confidence.

Sometimes language can:

– Make you believe a problem is unsolvable
– Feed self-pity or lower your levels of choice
– Give meaning to something it doesn’t deserve

Don’t deny your pain or ignore your challenge. Instead, start taking note of your ‘unpassable wall’ talk and reframe it with language created around your reasons to believe you can achieve.

5) Don’t Forget to Dream

build your confidence HEADING: Hitting a confidence dip? Learn how to build your confidence with these practices

Here is a most powerful quote from the ‘dream-maker’ himself, Walt Disney. He says,

“The secret of making dreams come true can be summarized in four C’s. They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy; and the greatest of these is Confidence.”

Before you can achieve, you must first desire to achieve. It definitely takes confidence to act on a dream! Sometimes you might feel safer keeping it as it is: just a dream. But wouldn’t you wonder whether something may have come from it?

Become comfortable with creating pictures of possibility in your mind. This invites you into a space of playfulness, where you remove your unpassable walls and entertain ideas freely.

You might even want to take a page from the book of another great storyteller, Pixar. Pixar is known for their famous formula for storytelling. They often get requests from people to make a movie out of recommended story lines. But they will always test the story to see whether it fits into these in 6 lines:

Once upon a time …
Every day….
One day…
Because of that…
Because of that…
Until finally…

Why don’t you play with your pictures of possibility and write out a story using Pixar’s formula?

In her book Becoming, Michelle Obama makes a stunning statement: “There’s a power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice.”

This quote takes us beautifully into our next point.

6) Know your Unique Path and OWN it

This is your unique path. Nobody else in the world is quite like you or has walked your exact path. When you re-affirm your unique path, you can avoid the ominous ‘compare and despair’ that comes with focusing too much on other people’s lane. You also begin to create a strength and security in the knowledge that what you do, is within your own hands.

Own your circumstances, own your actions, and own what is yours to own with confidence.
Here’s some great practices to help you do this, taken from CAFE Life’s resource Resilience In A Box:
– Society popularises some things above others. Some of these popular paths need to be respectfully ignored so you can own your own path.

– When you’re feeling vulnerable, express the mantra, “This is my unique path.” Ponder on questions like…
How do I maximise what I’ve been given?
How do I live into the best version of me?
What is most important to me?

– When things feel out of control, shaky, or inconvenient, remind yourself to take ownership of what is yours to own and in your control. Say “I own…”

Building Your Confidence Supports A Healthy Self Esteem

I’m sure you can already see how these practices don’t only support you in growing your confidence and capabilities. They speak to the heart of the matter as well.

When you make time to reconnect with your values, purpose, dreams, and beliefs, you’re re-connecting with who you really are. You are reminding yourself, “this is me; this is my path.” And this builds self-esteem through authenticity.

Let’s take this mindset into our vision for 2023. Take a minute to contemplate what has worked well this year, and what hasn’t. What areas do you feel confident in after this year? Where can you use these as building blocks to excel? And what areas do you need to grow confidence in to improve your sense of wellbeing?

No one will ever be 100% confident in every area of their lives. This is human – and sometimes we simply need to have the confidence to express “this is not my forte.” And yet, when you take the time to notice if something is impacting your wellbeing and choose to work on it, you exercise one of your most powerful tools available: The ability to adapt.

build your confidence HEADING: Hitting a confidence dip? Learn how to build your confidence with these practices