How you can reframe your thoughts to ease your imposter syndrome

0:02 A listener production. Welcome to another episode of Crappy to Happy. Today, we are talking about one of my favorite topics ever, and that is imposter syndrome. What it is, what it's not, and potentially what you can do about it if you recognize that this is something that you may experience. I will also be sharing with you how you can get access to my online program which is designed for this very reason, to help you to overcome imposter syndrome and persistent feelings of self doubt and cultivate an unshakable self confidence that is not contingent on external markers of success validation, looking from praise and criticism, success and failure, and really developing a solid sense of self belief and self trust.

0:55 And I created that program because I recognized that this was such a pervasive issue, particularly amongst the women that I was working with in my programs. So enough about that. I'll tell you more about that later, but let's talk about imposter syndrome. First up, It's not a syndrome. It is not a diagnosable disorder. It is not something that you can go along to a psychologist or to a psychiatrist or a GP and have diagnosed imposter syndrome is kind of a colloquial expression. It's more appropriately probably referred to as the impost phenomenon. It's what it was first called when it was first discovered back in the nineteen seventies, and I use it interchangeably with imposter thoughts and feelings, the imposter experience. The imposter phenomenon essentially what it is, it is a persistent belief that you are not as smart, capable, talented, knowledgeable, experienced, or qualified as other people think you are, despite all evidence to the contry. Now that's an important bit that despite all evidence to the contry, because let me tell you also straight up front, I mean I hear people referring to imposter syndrome. I've got imposter syndrome. I'm doing this thing, I'm starting my business, i am applying for this job. I've got imposter syndrome. Many people use that term to describe what I would consider to be the very normal, very common self doubt that we all experience when we're doing something for the first time, something that we perhaps haven't done before, something that we don't necessarily

2:25 have direct experience in. When we're stepping up, stepping out of our comfort zone is very normal to have those feelings of self doubt. I don't believe that that is necessarily genuine imposter syndrome, And I think even though everybody gets it, when you use that term to describe that feeling, we all can relate to that. I think in a way it kind of diminishes what the genuine experience of those very persistent imposter thoughts and feelings. So the impost experience will occur even when you've been doing the job, when you've got the promotion, when you've achieving the distinctions at UNI and you've got into the master's degree, even when you've got into the PhD, when you're serving on board.

3:11 It's like at the highest level of your career, people will still report that they can't shake the feeling that they've somehow flewked their way into it. They're not as smart as anybody else, they're not as smart as other people think that they are, and that any moment they could be found out that at any moment people will realize that actually they really shouldn't be here, that there's been a terrible mistake. It is associated with anxiety, depression, frustration, feeling stuck, feeling limited by your own self imposed standards. But mostly it's fear. It's a fear of failure, and to some degree it's a fear of success. Because here's the thing about the impost experience. When you don't internalize your success and we'll get to that in a minute, when you can't internalize your achievements, when but you're still not really owning that and taking that as evidence that you actually are that smart, that you are that capable, that you do belong, that you are worthy, then every time there's a new opportunity, every time there is a new success, every time somebody asks you to step up and do something more or bigger, then every instance is the potential that this could be the moment that it all falls apart, that people are now finally going to realize that actually you don't deserve to be here. So, in fact, for the genuine imposter experience, the more successful you become, sometimes the worse it gets because the higher

4:42 the stakes, the more exposure, the more visibility, Then the more there is at risk, the more likely you are to feel that humiliation and embarrassment when people actually realize that you're not that smart. So as opposed to self doubt, where the more experience you have, the more that you're doing the thing, the more that you're getting the results, then the more likely those experiences are to actually bolster your confidence and to provide you with that evidence and that proof that actually you are capable. So that's where there is that distinction between kind of genuine imposter feelings and thoughts and the self doubt that is usually allayed by those feelings of doubt that are usually neutralized by success and achievement and by positive feedback and people telling you that you're doing a good job and getting that external validation. The imposter experience persists despite that evidence to the contrary. The impostor phenomenon was first identified back in the nineteen seventies by a couple of psychologists called pull in Clants and Susanne i'ms. They were professors in psychology and what they noticed was this phenomenon, particularly amongst they're high achieving female students and graduate students, this persistent feeling among their students. These reported feelings by their female students, particularly that no matter what they were achieving, they felt

6:13 like they shouldn't be there. They felt like there was a mistake. They completely underrated themselves, and they just didn't believe that they necessarily belonged, They didn't believe in their own abilities. And this was so consistent that they actually set out to see how widespread this was, and they went on to interview over one hundred and fifty successful women who were PhD candidates, who were academics, who were leaders in their field. Remember this is the nineteen seventies, so this was when women in those positions was not as prevalent as it is now. They found this was highly prevalent among these women, very successful women. So they interviewed them and they came up with some ideas about what was going on, what was causing it. So as I run through that now, I think it's interesting to go back to the nineteen seventies to what they found when they interviewed women was that when those women, no matter how successful they were, no matter how highly they were achieving, could not internalize that success, When they didn't own that and see that as evidence of their inherent ability, their inherent intelligence, then what they did instead was they attributed that success to some external factor or to effort, as opposed to a stable internal quality such as intelligence, which is there all the time. Effort is a temporary state, Like we can all make an effort to work really hard or study really hard to get a good grade in that particular exam, we don't necessarily perceive that as a stable, inherent internal quality. So what they perceived is

7:46 that if they were successful, it was either luck or fluke. They just got lucky. They got into the degree because there was a mistake by the admissions department. They got the job because nobody else applied, not because they genuinely deserved it, but because there was some sort of luck or luke or mistake. Or if they're achieving results is because they worked harder than everybody else. So what happens when you don't internalize your success, when you attribute it to either luck or effort, it means that that can't be relied upon, That success is not necessarily repeatable, because next time you might not be so lucky. And similarly, with effort, I put an enough effort to get the result this time, but who knows if I'll be able to step up to the task next time. Who knows if my effort will be enough to get me over the line next time? It's not necessarily repeatable, so therefore the impostor feelings the impostor believes are persistent. This becomes a very self perpetuating loop. If my success is only because I got lucky or because I worked harder, then the next time an opportunity presents itself, my fear is still there because even though I was successful, even though I achieved, I haven't necessarily internalized that and used that as evidence that I'm capable, intelligent, talented, I have those internal qualities that will see me through the next time.

9:12 So at the time, this was nineteen seventy eight they published this paper, there was also some research had been done around that time as well, particularly around how men and women attribute success, and what they were finding was this exact same thing. Basically that when women were successful, they more likely attributed it to causes outside of themselves, to something temporary, whereas men, when they were successful, they more likely attributed their success to their own inherent capability, their own inherent qualities. Failure, on the other hand, women attributed to themselves. Men, on the other hand, were more likely to attribute failure to something temporary, bad luck, difficulty of the task, and not necessarily because they they necessarily were not that smart. So Clans and Imes who came up with this impost phenomenon, they called it the impost experience.

10:07 They believed that this was a large part to do with why women had these imposter thoughts and feelings because of the way they attributed success and failure. I think that is still very relevant today the women that I speak to. Now I'm talking a lot about men and women here. This comes up a lot. Isn't there something that both men and women experience? The research on that is fairly mixed. At the time that Clants and Ims came out with this research and discovered this identified this phenomenon, they very much believed it was predominantly a female affliction. In the fifty years since then, lots of research has been done. Some of it affirms that it is more of a female sort of condition. I guess not that it's condition as we've discussed. Other research has said no, that it presents equally amongst men and women, And I certainly know that many men will say that they recognize this, that they experience this. I think for many reasons, it probably is more a prevalent amongst women, but it certainly can apply to both men and women. So then they started looking at what causes it. What they found particularly was that a lot of it was to do with family messaging. They found particularly at that time, two different kind of profiles of women who experienced this. The first were the women who had a sibling or a close family member who was basically labeled the smart one, and the girl, the little girl was labeled the sensitive one, or you know, something other than smart, and so no matter what they did, and no matter what they achieved, it was the other one, the sibling or the other family member, some close person in their circle, was identified

11:41 as the smart one, and so they internalized that message that they're obviously not the smart one. The other profile with the little girls who were told they were the smart one. They were the bright one, they were the little genius. Everything they did was perfect, They were so amazing, they couldn't do a thing wrong, and therefore they had this expectation. They internalized this belief that success must come easily if I'm really that clever. This is why we don't tell kids they're clever, you guys, If I was that clever, I wouldn't have to work hard. Success should come easily. To me. So if I have to make an effort, if I have to work hard, then I'm obviously not as clever as those people think that I am. So the parents telling the kid over and over how amazing and brilliant and bright and wonderful and creative and talented they are. Actually when they found that they were struggling or they had to work out, I mean, they might have been really clever, but if they had to make some effort to achieve something, and the perception was that if I was really clever, I wouldn't have to work that hard, this would come easily to me, well, then there was that gap. Then there was that feeling that I'm not as smart as people think. And so whether the little girls fell into one or the other of those kind of camps, what there was was this discrepancy between what they experienced within themselves and what was being presented to them from outside. And whenever there is that gap between how somebody else perceives you, or the messages that you're getting from somebody else and what's happening like what you believe based on your internal experience, when there's that gap, it sets up this idea, this perception

13:14 that I'm somehow fooling people, hence the impostor phenomenon that I'm fooling people, I'm a fraud if they really knew that this was what was happening for me. You know, that's essentially what the impostor experience is. In many cases, rather than believing the evidence, like, rather than believing the other people or the objective evidence that is there that says they're smart or capable of talented, They're more likely to go with their own internal experience, their own internal thoughts and feelings that this obviously, this is obviously a mistake, or this is obviously a fluke, or if I had to work hard, I'm obviously not that smart. And these are the kinds of experiences that people still have to this day. So then what they found they noticed particular behaviors that these women would engage in as a way to kind of counteract these imposter thoughts and feelings, or that the impost experience tended to go along with particular behaviors.

14:13 The first one, as I said, is diligence and hard work, over efforting, over preparing, perfectionism, working harder than anybody else because that is what they believe was necessary in order to continue to achieve, or to continue to fool people into believing that they're actually that smart. I see this now all the time, this overworking, overachieving, over checking, triple checking, overthinking, never relaxing, just putting in, making things so much harder for yourself than they need to be because of this internal fear, this internal anxiety that if I just do what anybody else would consider to be a good enough job won't be good enough. I actually have to work harder in order to prove my worth and to maintain my position and perhap for other people to believe that I'm actually as smart as they think. So overwork, hard work, diligence is number one. And as I said, so the cycle and this worrying about their intelligence and using hard work and these kind of cover up strategies is what they called. It gives them a temporary feeling of relief, a temporary feeling of elation when they achieve and when they get that success, but it's temporary. There is no inherent, internal stable perception of intelligence. So the next time a

15:44 challenge presents itself, then this cycle of hard work continues, this belief that I have to work that hard in order to replicate that result. The second thing I noticed, and remember they were mostly talking probably to academics and professors, but they did talk to professional women in other fields as well, is this intellectual flattery, so going along with the higher ups, going along with the opinions of more important people, believing that they had to stay in the good graces of more important people in order to maintain their position. And again, if you're kind of being a bit phony because you don't trust your own opinion or you don't believe that you'll maintain your place, if you express an opposing view or a different opinion, or something that challenges the opinion of somebody who's more important than you, then that's only going to reinforce those feelings of being a fraud that I don't belong here, because if I actually expressed my real opinion, then they may not still let me be here. Like then I might not get the job, I may not have maintained the role or the whatever it is that you have achieved. The third one is a little bit like intellectual flattery as opposed to more of that intellectual going along with the research or the opinion or the theory or whatever in academic circles or in business or whatever. Then more just being nice again to stay in the good graces of the

17:15 people who have the power and who potentially could be the ones to put you out if they recognize that you're actually not that smart, So taking personal interest in the things that are of interest to your supervisor, for example. The other thing that they recognized back in the nineteen seventies, and I don't think a lot has changed the last fifty years, is that there was a general belief on the part of women that there would be negative consequences to being too successful or too independent. A successful independent woman was considered to be not a great thing. Back in the day, women had their place, women served a particular role, and the societal view was that there would be negative consequences. People would be judged and disapproved of if they displayed those qualities of being successful and independent.

18:04 Now that's really interesting because even now there is research that indicates that when men display behaviors such as being very direct, being very assertive, even being angry in the workplace, they're perceived as having higher status. They are perceived as having being better leaders, like they're actually rewarded for those behaviors, and the more women have entered the workforce, and the more women have risen to high levels in society, and I think we'll all agree that they are nowhere near as represented that at those highest levels in positions in businesses politics. Even when women rise to those high levels which they are able to do now in their career in business, in politics, if they display those same qualities of being direct, assertive, angry, they are punished. When women display the same quality that men do, the same qualities that men are rewarded for, and that are the qualities that get men promoted and get men into these powerful positions, women are punished for displaying the same qualities. So there is a gender bias, very real, very very prevalent gender bias to this day. There's also racial bias. There are all sorts of inherent biases in the workplace that hold certain people back, and that is people who are not white men basically. So I think that persists. I think

19:39 to this day there is a perception on the part of women that they have to be nice, that even if they want to be successful, they have to stand the good graces of people, that they do still have to use their charm that they do still have to There is still that sort of intellectual flattery that goes on, and so therefore this is why I think many women still have these pervasive feelings of being not good enough. Certainly the impost experience is more prevalent for women who work in traditionally male dominated industries. Not that it's only male dominated industries, but certainly we see it a lot in those careers and professions, even in something like I was talking to one woman who works in finance in the motor vehicle industry, for example. So it's kind of just got that. It's kind of a bloky industry, right, You don't often see women there. That's certainly going to amplify those imposter thoughts and feelings, but they can show up anywhere, So I guess then the question is what to do about it. And most of the research and most of the advice that has been offered. There's another woman by the name of doctor Valerie Young who heard about this research very early on. I think it was in the nineteen eighties. She was a graduate student at the time. She read this research and she said, oh my god, that's me. And she went on to devote her entire career and still to this day, has devoted her career to understanding and to helping women to overcome the impostor experience. And much of the advice has been

21:14 that this is all about how you think. This is a mindset issue. A lot of the advice has very much been about change the way you think, like reframe your thoughts and you'll get a different outcome. Now, I don't think that that advice is really cuts it in this day and age. I think this is the whole reason why I created my program. Even back in the nineteen seventies, when clans and i'ms were talking about what we should do about the impostor phenomenon, they suggested that this should really be a group therapy type situation, which is one reason why I created my program to be a group program. Because when you experience the impostor phenomenon, you typically don't talk about it. It feels very isolating.

22:05 You feel like you're the only one, when you feel like you're a fraud, when you feel like you really don't belong somewhere, you're not about to go telling everybody that you feel like that. You're spending most of your time just trying to keep your head above brought water to continue convincing people that you're actually good enough. The anxiety is very internal. It's very much an internal experience. We're not often talking about it. And even if somebody else says to you, oh yeah, I feel like that or I've got the impost syndrome, because that is been so overused, that phrase and that term, I think it's very easy to think, oh yeah, well, sure you do like but you don't understand like I genuinely don't belong here.

22:50 You might feel a little bit of self doubt sometimes, but you don't understand like I am genuinely not supposed to be here. I'm genuinely not as smart as other people think I am. So having a group setting is very very beneficial. Absolutely, we need to look at our faulty thinking, like the beliefs that we have, the rules we've set up in our own mind about what it takes to be truly to be competent or to be capable or intelligent, like, we have to examine some of those unconscious beliefs. We go into this in detail in my program, where those faulty beliefs come from early childhood experiences family messaging about success and failure, family labels and myths, early trauma, adverse childhood experiences that cultivate a deep sense of unworthiness or feelings of not being good enough. They all play into it. And yes, we have to look at what is the thinking that's going on, because we need to reframe those thoughts. But I think now in twenty twenty three, we have moved past mindset work or thought work as I sometimes hear it refer to as as the solution to every psychological struggle. I think what we need to recognize now and what I have deliberately incorporated into my program, is that the nervous system, your nervous system response in a situation absolutely has to be addressed.

24:21 If your entire nervous system, your fight or flight response, when we're talking about fear here, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of being exposed, fear of being found out, fear of being judged or criticized. When that is happening, there isn't a process happening in your nervous system that needs to be managed before you can even think about getting your actual logical brain on board and helping you to come up with a different way of thinking. You have to have strategies for managing your nervous system in the moment, as well as strategies that will help you to cultivate that deeper feelings of self worth and self belief in the longer term. So in my program, for example, we talk about strategies you can use in the moment, how you can calm yourself in the moment, how you can challenge your thoughts, how you can manage your heightened emotional response, you know, get you through that initial feelings of fear. How you can look at your behaviors, analyze the behaviors you're engaging in, some of which we've just talked about, and recognize them as imposter behaviors, unnecessary behaviors that you might be engaging in. To be able to see them for what they are, and to recognize that even though in the short term it feels like they're helping you, in the long term, all they're doing is reinforcing the imposter experience. And so we have to manage our thoughts, We have to change some of those behaviors.

25:45 We have to slowly back away from the overworking and the over preparing. We also talk a lot about procrastination. So when we talk about overwork and perfectionism, often the twin of overwork and perfectionism is avoidance and procrastination. So when we talk about avoidance with the impost experience, sometimes it's completely avoiding, and we go into detail about this in my program as well. Sometimes avoiding is dropping out of the PhD, and I have spoken to more than one woman who has dropped out of a PhD thinking that their research was shit, when in fact it was quality or not applying at all, passing over jobs or promotions, looking at them, and just fully avoiding them because I obviously am not cut out for that. Again, we all know the research that men can have sixty percent of the necessary qualifications to go for a job and they'll have a crack. Women will not unless they have one hundred percent or more, and even then they probably talk themselves out of it. So I'm not saying that happens every time, but it happens a lot. So avoidance can actually be avoiding opportunities, failing to take action, failing to write the books about the business, apply for the job, apply for the unique, whatever it might be. But it can also be procrastination. And so when that procrastination is the flip side of perfectionism, what it is, it's this loop where if I believe that the only acceptable outcome is to produce perfect work, or that I have to doing this job because of the amount of overwork and

27:17 over efforting that I have to put into every single thing, and I make so much unnecessary work for myself, then that can feel so overwhelming that then what happens is I tend to just avoid and procrastinate and tidy in my soft draw do every other thing except for the actual job. And then what happens is at the last minute, there's this frantic, oh my god, I've got to get this done by this deadline. And so we get the work done, we get it in. But then and there is a relief, there's an elation that I got it done. But again, if you are either being a perfectionist or you're being a procrastinator, when the end result is that you are successful, either attribute it to the fact that I work so hard or that I just got lucky.

28:05 Because if I just got it in at the last minute and I managed to get it over the line, then what a relief, what a Fluke, I don't necessarily internalize it was because I'm actually pretty good at what I do. So we talk a lot about the perfectionism procrastination loop, have strategies for addressing that, for getting out of that cycle, but a lot of this is about also cultivating a deep sense of your own inherent worth and value that is not contingent on external markers of success. Because when you have that deep sense of your own worth and ability, and you can unhook from the opinions of other people, get out of that loop of being hooked on either praise or criticism, being afraid of either success or failure, well, then you are able to take more risks, do the things that feel important and inspiring to you. Get out of that anxiety trap, get out of that frustration of feeling stuck and feeling limited, and actually being able to live a life that is meaningful, that is fulfilling, in love with your values and just knowing that you are enough, just knowing deeply that you are enough and trusting that you are enough. And when you have success you can celebrate that. And when you have setbacks or failure, then that doesn't necessarily have to be a reflection on your sense of self worth or

29:35 your sense of your own intelligence or competence. That's what we're going for on the whole. You know. I interviewed over fifty women about their impostive experience before I put together this program, the program that I run, and mostly when I said, what is it that you would want? Like, what would be different if you were able to overcome this, if I was able to put together a program that gave you all of the results that you need, Like what what would it be that you would experience that you're not experiencing now? And mostly what they said I was I honestly, I was expecting people to go, oh, I could write the book and I'd launch the business, and i would go for gold with my career and I'd be you know, kicking goals. And mostly what they said was.

30:20 God, I could just breathe, I could just relax, I could just be happy. Honestly, I was not expecting that. But that is a worthwhile outcome. And if my program or any program can deliver you that, then I think that is job well done. So if you have any other questions about the impost experience, and that's been a fairly brief kind of summary, But I hope that helps to explain it, and I hope that helps you to differentiate what I consider to be the genuine impost experience from more just that typical kind of self doubt we all experience. There's a lot of advice out there, but how you can overcome self doubt.

31:03 I will give you that advice for free, and you can find it all over the internet. But if you know in yourself that that advice doesn't cut it, that that just doesn't get to the core of the issue for you, then I would really invite you to consider at some point maybe checking. Out the program that I have created, which is not just an online training program. It's actually a minimum twelve months inside a community with regular calls, regular check ins, lovely, vibrant, supportive community. I've added loads of bonuses this year. What I'm doing also is having some of my most special podcast guests have agreed to come in and do private sessions like Q and A sessions with my community. So it's really really going to be something special and something really worthwhile. So I'll put some a link in the show notes to help you if you want to get involved in that. No obligation of course. I hope this has been helpful information anyway, and I will continue talking about it. So make sure that you're following me, maybe get onto my mailing list if this is something that's of interest to you. I hope that's helpful. Cannot wait to catch you on the next episode of Crappy to Happy Listener