How To Beat Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome, what is it?

It's a huge misconception.

First and foremost, it's not a syndrome.

You can't go to the doctor and be diagnosed with imposter syndrome.

Really, it's not feeling good enough wrapped up in a bow, and I'm going to talk to you about what it is, how you can overcome it, the struggles I've had with it, and so much more. So let's get into it.

Some of the triggers for impostor syndrome, some of the feelings that are attached to it, might be, "I'm not good enough. I shouldn't be here." So, let's say your boss might say you need to do a presentation next week, and you have already started panicking. "I'm going to get found out. People are going to wonder why I am doing this." I'm not deserving of this." So you start judging yourself before you go in. This is going to really impact how you show up. You're not going to be congruent, your body language is going to be off, people aren't necessarily going to believe what you say, and you've just undone all the great work that has got you to this point.

Follow the data. There's probably around ten years of experience there, and now you're saying, "I don't deserve to be here," based on really poor belief systems. Other triggers might be, "I need you to go see the client. I need you to talk to a certain person. I want to push you forward for that promotion. I want to set up that business." Things like that. So once you can identify what is triggering it, we can start to change the meaning attached to it.

Don't just go off your beliefs because you have low self-esteem right now. What you want to do instead is ask your colleagues for some actual constructive feedback. This isn't an opportunity for them to just dive in on you and start saying everything they hate about you, but you can also ask your family members as well. "What areas could I improve on? What do I do really well? Where do I thrive?" Then you can start to look at this as actual factual information as opposed to just thinking, "I'm not good enough. I don't deserve to be here."

So all that's happening when you're having these thoughts around imposter syndrome is exactly that—they're just a thought. Here's a framework that I like to work through with people: Number one, make sure it's just a thought. So let's say the thought comes in and you go, "I'm a piece of... I'm an idiot. I'm stupid. I don't deserve to be here." Okay, ask yourself, "Is this true?" You might be really low on yourself, and you might start sulking and say, "Yeah, it's true." Then you need to say, "Can I say with 100% certainty that this is true?" Probably not. No, it's not true. "I'm not a worthless piece of... okay, good."

So what's a more helpful thought? This is the single best question you can ask yourself, and you can ask yourself this in almost any scenario, especially as it pertains to imposter syndrome. So when you start doubting yourself—"I can't do this, I don't deserve to be here"—what's a more helpful thought? Hold on a second, let me follow some of the feedback that I got from people: "You're a strong leader, you're a good communicator, you're inspiring." Great. So a more helpful thought here is, "I can do this. This organisation has been running for, I don't know, 50 years. I'm a senior leader in this organisation. If I wasn't good at my job, they would have got rid of me a long time ago." That's a much more helpful thought.

When you do have the thought, just remember that you want to lean into this with a bit of curiosity, not judgment. Because when the thought comes in, you might go, "I'm a piece of... why am I so hard on myself all the time?" Pause. Thought comes in, "I'm such a piece of... I'm wondering where that came from. Maybe I've been a bit too hard on myself today. Maybe I'm tired. Maybe I just need a bit of a rest. Maybe I need to check my data more frequently."

When you combine all of that, you will come to the understanding that imposter syndrome is not a syndrome. It is a set of belief systems that you've had instilled in you from a very early age, and you keep recanting it over and over again. So we want to interrupt that, bring it into the conscious mind, and start saying more positive things to ourselves.

When we first started our coaching business and people were paying us large sums of money for us to help them turn their lives around, I encountered these limiting beliefs myself: "Why would they pay me? I've only worked in hospitality before doing coaching." And then I started asking myself better-quality questions like, "Well, hang on a second. If I can lead teams of hundreds of people over a 14-year career and run businesses that turn over ￡150,000 a week, maybe I do have value here. Maybe all the hours of studying people that I've done are going to help me get closer towards helping them. All the podcasts I've consumed, all the courses I've done, all the thousands of pounds of investment I've put into myself—of course they want to listen to me because I've turned my life around. I'm my best testimonial because my life was a mess, and now it's not."

So I've not got it all figured out. I'm not perfect. I have moments where I doubt myself. I have moments where I lack self-belief, of course. However, I don't label it with a destructive thing as imposter syndrome anymore. Just maybe I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed today. Maybe I'm feeling a bit anxious today. Label your emotions and your thoughts with more intellect. Be a bit more intentional with that, as opposed to just putting this grandstand label of imposter syndrome. It's going to cause so much inaction for you going forward.

So there's an example of a client that I coached. He's the global relationships manager for HSBC now. He's only 38 years old. Every boardroom he walked in, he was about 20 years younger than most people there. And, you know, some people, in his mind, were judging him: "He's too young to be here. He hasn't got the experience." As relevant as that might seem, with an organisation as large as HSBC, would they really employ someone in a role like that if he didn't deserve it? I don't think so. So we reframed it.

What we went back to was actually his childhood. He used to get bullied as a kid in certain situations. So what we did was the deep inner work. We understood what was really going on for him, and when he walked into the boardroom, he felt like this 10-year-old boy who was getting rejected by his father. So when he played football and his dad went to go watch him, he said, "How did I do, Dad?" It was the first time his dad went to watch him, and he said, "It was alright, I guess." To a 10-year-old boy, it's pretty destructive. And until we did the deep inner work, he didn't understand why he had that belief about himself. But it was so deeply anchored and ingrained in his psyche that this carried out through most of his career. He had to keep working hard to try to get validation from others along the way, but that just meant he kept becoming more successful without believing that he deserved it. So every success that he had, he said, "I don't deserve it," and everything that went wrong, he said, "Oh yeah, that makes sense because I'm not good enough." When we destroyed that belief system, he started walking into boardrooms so confidently, thriving. He's got another promotion within the organisation. Now he's running ultramarathons, he's helped heal his relationship with his dad, and so much more.

So you have to get to the absolute root cause of the problem if you want to fix it.

You might be reading this, thinking, "This is me. But am I capable of change?" Ironically, this is the whole reason why you need help and why you need support. I can help you elicit that. Where did the pain point begin? How can we reframe it? What are some of the habits we want to instil moving forward? And so much more.

Find out more here.

Adam Smith

Mindset Coach & Co-Founder of A-Game Consultancy