Imposter syndrome
I have been an educator for almost 30 years… probably longer if you include the community groups I was involved with as a teenager. I have spoken at conferences, led departments in the school system and run my own business for over 15 years. I was asked to speak at a community event recently educating young women on the interconnectedness of the mind and body and how to use meditation and mindfulness to improve their everyday. I found myself questioning whether or not I was qualified to do the job!
Similarly, a young woman I know who is clever, kind and emotionally very mature got the great news that she received early entry into a high level university course. The first thing she said to me when I congratulated her was “I don’t know if I can do it though. Everyone will be really smart.” Argh!!!!!!
What is it with capable, educated, amazing women thinking they don’t have what it takes to step up to a challenge… often even a challenge they have faced many times before? So many of us experience the phenomenon known as Imposter Syndrome. Imposter syndrome is where we feel we are not qualified or worthy to be doing what we are doing.
We must focus on empowering every woman to understand that while they may not have achieved a particular goal yet, they have the skills, abilities and resilience to step up to a new situation. We want them to know that indeed they have been practising all sorts of skills in their lives that they can draw on to equip them for the job. They are enough as they are and have the ability to learn and take on what they need to.
So what action can we take to help women challenge their subconscious and become conscious of the limiting beliefs that create this feeling of not being enough for the task?
Understand that when you are new to something you are not an imposter… just a beginner. No-one is an expert when they are starting something new. Experience is the only way to increase your ability. You are not an expert… yet.
You are only a failure if you give up. By definition, you only fail when you cease trying. Some people go their whole lives without achieving their goals but we would never define them as a failure because they never gave up on themselves and what they believed was possible.
When we hear women speaking negatively of themselves, get them to question if this is really true? The subconscious mind wants to keep us safe so anything new feels uncomfortable… it wants us to fall back to what is familiar and known. Get them to think of similar challenges in the past that they were able to achieve or examples where they demonstrated the character skills that will help them with this task. The more the subconscious mind finds evidence of their ability to reach the goal, the more inclined they will be to believe that it is possible.
If the negative self-talk genuinely is true of them in the past, ask them to think of one small action they can take right now to move them towards something different. Show them that it is possible to achieve their goals if they just focus on the immediate step in front of them… then the next one and the next one.
Be a cheerleader for others. Women have enough to contend with in society without worrying about what others think of them or that their amzing uniqueness is not enough. Commend your friends and family on their amazing qualities and indulge in plenty of what I like to call ‘positive gossip’ in front of your kids. Point out the amazing qualities of the people around you and they will seek to find it too as they grow. By building up others, we build up everyone.
Too often as women, we see only what we have not achieved, too busy comparing the external lives of others to our internal world. We also must open our awareness to the fact that social media is a tiny snapshot of what other people want us to see. Everyone is imperfectly perfect.
You are not an imposter in your own life… life is made up of certainty and uncertaintly. By empowering ourselves and others to step up to a new challenge we as individuals and as a society can grow and develop.
Everyone has insecurities but by illuminating the world with our own growing light, we provide light by which others might see themselves, feeling empowered to live authentically. The brighter we let our candles burn, the brighter the world is for everyone.
Have a beautiful day, Kate