How to deal with Impostor Syndrome as a Coach
How to tell your mind to shut up once and for all and get the important shit done.
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Ok. You are here.
Congratulations. You are already in 0.0001% of people who actually want to do something about your self-doubt. You just don’t know how.
Read on. Here is a simple 5-step framework for you that you can follow.
❗ Disclaimer. It doesn’t work if you don’t. You will have to process this IN WRITING. ✍️
Step 1. Capture.
Bring the Impostor to the Light of your Awareness.
You can’t change things that you are not aware of. Fortunately, most people know the term ‘Impostor Syndrome’ and understand exactly what they are feeling.
Listen to the voice in your head but don’t just listen to it. Capture it on paper. Every time a negative thought pops up in your mind write it down. Write until you are empty.
- I am not good enough
- I suck at this
- I am not an expert
- Who am I to speak
- Why would people listen to someone like me
- I don’t have my own shit figured out
- People will judge & criticize me
- They will say something that might ruin my career
- I am going to fail
Now that you finished this step of the exercise. Look at what you have written, and look within.
Step 2. Identify the source.
Do not just accept the emotion/feeling that is created as given. Study it. This is how you increase your EQ.
Why are you feeling the way you are feeling?
For every negative emotion you need to ask yourself a question:
Where is it coming from?
The more you study your feelings the more you will be able to establish the truth.
Your emotions are born from thoughts.
Ground yourself in this understanding. This insight alone is already a great progress. Why? Because you can leave the emotions aside for now. There is nothing you really need to do here — there is no work required to be done with the emotions themselves.
To control your emotions you have to work with your thoughts.
Change your thoughts. And your emotional state will follow.
I know what you are going to say. Easier said than done. True. But working with your thoughts is not as complicated as you think. Let’s take a closer look.
Step 3. Compartmentalize.
Saying that you are a pink elephant doesn’t really make you a pink elephant. But play this thought in your head on repeat, a million times a day, for 10 years, and you know what? Guys in white coats will come to get you eventually.
Playing the thought that you are a loser doesn’t make you a loser. But do this a million times a day, for 10 years, and you know…. You get the point.
Your identity largely consists of the thoughts that play on repeat in your head. “I am this”. “I am that”. “I am something else”.
Study the thoughts that play in your head. How much truth is there really? Who are you?
You are not your thoughts.
Even right now as you are reading this how many times your thoughts have changed? But has your identity changed?
Look closely.
No. It is the same you that is aware of the flow of the thought. Thoughts are fleeting but you are here unchanged. Watching the thoughts unfold themselves.
Playing the Impostor thoughts in your head doesn’t make those thoughts true unless you believe in them. Play the thought over and over again a million times and it will become integrated as a belief.
And if you have a deeply integrated belief, then you act as an Impostor. Or to be precise, you don’t. You choose inaction. Inaction is also a choice with its own consequences. And the major consequence is one — you are not progressing in life, and your goals stay where they are. You stay where you are.
Step 4. Dissect.
Look at everything you have written down.
What is truly constructive feedback here?
- I am not good enough — there is nothing constructive about it. You are just making yourself feel bad with this unproductive thought. Enough for what or for who? What system of coordinates or what ruler are you using to measure your “enoughness”?
- I suck at this — of course, you are, you haven’t done anything not to suck at this. Constructive feedback would be: “You suck at this, and this is how not to suck”.
- I am not an expert — OK. This is just a fact. What is constructive feedback here? If you are familiar with the theory of 10,000 hours, you can think that clocking in 10k hours of deliberate practice is how much you need to master a skill (regardless of its nature). Constructive feedback would be to say: “If you want to acquire the skill, you need to start crunching your 10k hours, and this is the system of how you can do it.”
Do you see what I am doing here? Go with those thoughts one by one, and ask yourself what is truly constructive here. You are a rational person and I am sure you will be able to establish one thing very quickly.
There is nothing rational about your Impostor thoughts.
Your mind is a mad monkey that is sabotaging your success. This is the only constructive feedback here.
How long are you willing to be manipulated by the monkey?
Step 5. Reframe.
Now we are at the the most challenging step — a step where you will have to reprogram your mind.
As you now have all the thoughts written down in one column, you can see — this is the code and it is obviously not working. Now make another column next to it and start exploring the ways to reframe the thought.
What is the new code?
Examples:
- I am not good enough…
If you are not good enough, then who is? Who is sufficiently qualified to design and build the life you want to live? Who will do the thing that you are about to do so that you could have the results you want to have? - I suck at this…
But I don’t want to suck at this anymore. So what do I do? Is sucking at this a constant state I want to find myself in? Or it is more of a phase that I need to push through, to get to the phase when I am not bad, to then get to the phase when I am pretty decent, and one day to get to the phase of excellence? Do I see myself achieving excellence at this? What does this look like for me? - I am not an expert…
What exactly is an expert? Do I really have a definition for that? Maybe I need to go and figure out this first. I better go talk to other people whom I see as an expert. What is their thought process? What do they think of their own expertise? Do they really think that they are experts? - Who am I to speak…
I am a human. Just like 8B other humans. What makes them better or worse than me? We all have intrinsic Value, and we all have a voice to share. The thought leaders I follow — what makes them different? Didn’t they become who they are by speaking up? - Why would people listen to someone like me…
How do I consume information? Who do I listen to? Where does my own attention go? Well, it seems that I listen only to those I want. I read only those I like. And I don’t listen or read those I don’t like. Logical conclusion? My audience will find me. And those who don’t listen are just not my audience. - I don’t have my own shit figured out…
First. So how long will I be ok with maintaining the status quo? There are two choices that I have here really. I either start dealing with my shit or let it pile up and consume me. What shall it be? - People will judge & criticize me…
Do your research on Youtube. Find the best and the most positive videos — the acts of kindness, the moments of grace and greatness, the purity of children. Read the comments. There will be at least one person spreading negativity. Notice. People project externally what they are internally. The only way not to get criticized is to sit and do nothing. (Not true. Even then, people will come and say: “they are passive”, “they are not proactive”, “they lack initiative”, “they don’t have leadership skills”)
- They will say something that might ruin my career…
Then be thoughtful with your language. Play it safe before you play it rough. Test the waters first. To get to the state where every day is a Zero F**ks Given Day, you have to scratch off the items on your “F**ks I give” list one by one. Every overnight success is several years in the making. - I am going to fail…
You will. And that’s a good thing. Failure doesn’t exist only feedback. You fail, you learn, and you gain knowledge on how to do better. The only 3 types of failure you can have in life are failure of not starting, failure of quitting early, failure of not learning, and persevering at the wrong thing. Everything else leads Success. As long as you are doing what you are supposed to and not giving up, success is inevitable.
Of course, doing this by yourself is much harder than working with a coach but we are limited to one-way communication by the constraints of this article. Instead of guiding you to the insight I have to just share the perspective. But that is ok. You can still do this exercise on your own.
Just keep this in mind.
There are always more than two ways of thinking about things.
The oldest problems have the oldest solutions. Impostor Syndrome is one of those oldest problems. The solution is simple (which is practically the whole essence of NLP — NeuroLinguistic Programming).
- Find those who have the results you want to have.
- Model their mind.
Some questions for you:
Who are the people you admire for their confidence and thought leadership?
How do they think? What are their beliefs? How can you replicate that thinking?
Every successful thought leader has learned how to tame the Impostor demons. They felt it. They were scared. They did it anyway.
And if you think about it there are only two ways of dealing with Fear
- You either face your Fear
- Or you live in it
What will it be?
Let’s wrap it up
If you want to do something about your Impostor Syndrome and finally take action, do the following.
- Capture all the Impostor thoughts on the paper. You can’t manage it if you are not aware of it. And you are not aware of it if it is in your head. It has to be in a physical form so that you could work with it.
- Study the thought. Where is it coming from? What emotions does it cause? What are the triggers for thinking that way? But most importantly, is there any rational foundation for thinking that way? Is your logic flawless?
- Compartmentalize. This is another purpose of writing — you put it on paper so the thoughts are no longer a part of you. They are not IN the body. You have separated them from your SELF. And that is ultimately what you want to accomplish. Whatever you are thinking right now — you don’t want this to be a part of your identity. Then what do you want?
- Take every Impostor thought one by one and dissect it. Isolate it. Separate it from others and unpack it — what exactly is the thinking that is happening behind it? What thoughts does this thought contain within itself? Write until you are empty. Write until you realize the illusory nature of your own thoughts.
- Reframe. Spend most of your time writing here. Basically, you need to substitute all your incorrect thoughts with the correct ones — thoughts that propel you to action. If you don’t know what those thoughts are, study the thoughts of other people who have already overcome this problem i.e. already successfully reframed it. Model after them.
Bonus step: Begin.
You can intellectualize forever how to do it perfectly. But here is the truth. Reality is always more complex than what your mind is capable of conceptualizing.
Your first iteration will be shit. Ship it anyway. You are welcome.
