Overcoming Imposter Syndrome in 20 minutes or less
Read Time: 5 Minutes
A big thanks to the People and well-being leaders in this community for their amazing focus on supporting their organizations that have brought this work to life.
It’s a collective effort to realize wellbeing in the workplace, promote mental and emotional health for performance, and end the culture of chronic stress and burnout. #Wellbeing is the new performance?
Join us on August 2, 2023 at 12PM PT / 3PM ET for our next Workplace Wellbeing, Performance and Recovery Support for People Leaders on LinkedIn.
Key Highlights:
The theme for this week’s community support is handling inner conflict and ‘imposter syndrome’.
How many of us have ever caught ourselves being a hypocrite?? We say one thing and do another.? We have an expectation of someone else, but it doesn’t apply to ourselves.? We teach a model of excellence, yet we don’t follow our own teachings.
It’s nothing new, but it’s also no secret that the weight of feeling like a fraud today is hitting us harder than before.??
Part of that comes from the pace and volume of information unique to the influences of the internet and social media.
We adopt beliefs, values, and behaviors - some that might be in conflict, and compartmentalize them for certain situations.
Like the growing issue of burnout in a culture of hustle, the hustle has distracted us from creating healthy boundaries and rules for how we should operate and sustainably win in today's environment?
As a result, instead of navigating our days with integrity and integrating our whole selves, we continue to separate ourselves into unhealthy and conflicted parts.
We have conflicting values and beliefs that can trigger at inappropriate times, with nagging feelings of inner conflict?
And the most problematic: self-sabotaging behavior that leaves you fighting fires and cleaning up messes that derails you from your intentions.
How do we know when it starts to become a problem?
Here are the steps for the NLP Parts Integration process:
Step 1. Do you hear yourself (internally or externalized) where a “part of you” wants one thing, and “another part” wants another?
Example: a part of me wants to spend more time raising children, but another part wants to pursue my career / a part of me wants the freedom of being my own boss, another part likes the stability of the paycheck?
Step 2. Ask yourself, “How is that a problem”?
We tend to utter our issues that mask our deeper problems like a part of me wants a Ferrari and another wants a Tesla - we might laugh it off and make a list of pros and cons, but we ignore the emotional conflict and leave it unresolved to snowball emotionally?
Keep asking “How is it a problem” to your parts statements until you get close to the root of the problem.
You’ll know when you have a deep knowing or what you say is so profound that it leaves you and the room in silence?
Step 3. Personify your parts
Who does it remind you of?? Give it a name.
Note: this doesn’t mean it’s actually the person or thing, we’re not psycho-analyzing.? It’s the internal relationship you have with that label of the person that can get you to associate with the part.
Take a sheet of paper and draw a line in the middle.? Write your part’s names on the bottom left and right sides of the paper.
Step 4. For what purpose is this part? What’s the intention that it exists?
领英推荐
Start with a part, and simply ask, “For what purpose?”?
For example, the first response might start off with “safety”.? We just need the label - the why and what it means doesn’t matter.
Using that label, repeat the question, “For what purpose?” Example: “Safety for what purpose?”
Keep doing that, stacking the labels on top of each other.? You’ll notice two things:
Step 5. Repeat step 4 on the other part
Follow the same procedure on the other part.?
Make sure you associate with it.
You’ll form a stack of labels just like the other part.
Step 6. Notice the similarities, “do you notice that your parts share the same higher intentions?”
Eventually, you’ll notice similarities in labels across both parts because all your parts ultimately share many of the higher intentions
It’s along the way that we create an illusionary boundary, rules, and reasons that separates us - and over time when our parts gain their own autonomy, they can derail us.
You can actually physically draw out and connect the same labels if you like.
Step 7. Integrate the parts
This is an emotional exercise, not an intellectual one.??
Take a part and begin to associate it with the same labels of the other part. Take the other part and associate it with the labels of the other part.
Because the internal labels are the same or similar, they will connect internally and dissolve the boundaries of the neural pathways.
How you know is feeling a deep sense of relief and might get a physiological response like crying, a sense of remembering, connection, validation, and feeling heard?
That’s integrating back into the wholeness.
Step 8. What was the problem?
At this stage, you may not even remember the problem, which is perfectly normal.
The goal of the exercise is to navigate the “problem” from an integrated lens and resolve the identity and inner conflict.
This stops the “one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake” problem loop and can enable you to more effectively optimize towards your intended results?
Your answer to “the problem” will be emotionally clear, irrespective of the rationale.
And we can truly respect that different paths can lead to the same outcome.
Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:
1. If you're still looking for personal recovery and support for your well-being, I'd recommend starting with this affordable course that's helped hundreds of people and their organizations, here.
2. If you’re struggling with a crisis of burnout and looking for an effective way to recover quickly, consider a life-transforming Burnout Retreat for your next vacation, here.
3. Build out Workplace Burnout Responsiveness and Recovery in your organization by booking a strategy call with me, here.