Do You Worry What Others Think of You? Imposter Syndrome, Fear of Failure, Failure to Delegate

Hello, my name is Mary Williams and I'm the mind architect.  I'd like to ask you how much of your thoughts you give out to worrying about what other people think of you or think of the things that you're doing? Because it's such an energy drain and I find so many of the clients that come to me, that's one of the key issues that they come to work on, is being able to let go of this concern of what other people think of them.

It leads us to worry about the fear of failure and imposter syndrome, and it leads us to not delegate.  It's like a plate of spaghetti, it leads to so many different issues in our life and not only our personal life but also our working life. And if we're a leader, we really need to sort out how we manage the way that other people think about us.

It's really important to remember that everybody's view of the world is their view of the world, it's their perception.  And so if you allow your own choices and decisions to be infected by the way that other people are actually processing their own life experiences, then what happens is you end up not living the life that you want to lead, but living a life based on the life that you think other people think you should lead and it all becomes really complicated.  As a leader, you cannot afford to have that as a piece of emotional baggage because you need to lead a team and that sometimes means making unpopular decisions and you need to be able to stand back and see where when somebody's opinion is actually really valuable to you and really adds information to the choices and decisions that you have to make.

 And you need to be able to stand back and see whether it's your own emotional baggage that is causing you to respond in a particular way.  So, I often work with clients who say to me, 'I don't feel I can take that action', or ‘I certainly don't want to put in that rule because no one will like me' and they smile as they say it because they know that it's ridiculous at the level that they're at as a leader, to be worrying about that.  Now I'm not asking you to become arrogant and never care what other people think about you, but as humans, we always will do, so it's about having a nice place, a gap between this is how I feel about other people and wanting them to like me and to get to know me and think that I'm making good decisions and the gap between it actually affecting the decisions that I'm making.

Because if you're not delegating or you're not reaching out for promotion, or you're not actually holding that team member who's got poor behaviour accountable, actually, there's a ricochet effect of course for your life, but also your organisation and the rest of your team. And I've been called into work with teams where actually one team member is not behaving appropriately, and the leader is unable to manage that situation.

So, if you can stand back and think about, am I somebody who really worries about what other people think of me or my decisions or products that I'm creating, and I recognise that actually, I'm worried about that too much.  Then really come and get that cleared because that's not something hard for us to shift for you and it will impact you across all of your life [and make you more productive, more fulfilled and happier.