Unmasking the Imposter - Part 3

Last week I outlined five potential ways for you to overcome your ‘imposter’. Did any resonate with you?

Perhaps one or more did. Perhaps not. Either way, here are five more ways of handling it, to stop ‘the Imposter’ running the show.

From over 14 years of coaching hundreds of people to realize their potential, I've come across lots of similar patterns and ways we can trip ourselves up, without even realizing it.

This time we explore “Errors in our Thinking” - of course we always think we are right, am I right? Well, our brains are not as reliable or helpful as we think…

1. Cognitive Distortions

Because our brains are wired for survival - we have inbuilt fight, flight and freeze responses (and I just recently learned about fawn and flop) - so our brains are wired to make our challenging experiences really stand out in our minds. 

We have an inbuilt negativity bias highlighting times of difficulty and forgetting about all the previous times we solved problems or dealt with similar previous challenges. 

We also have a recency bias. So if it's been a while since you felt like you had achieved something great or rewarding, and let's face it who hasn’t had some challenging times in the last few years, we easily forget about these unless we specifically take action to remind ourselves. 

So we can feel like we have lost access to our internal resources and innate experience.

It's time to remind yourself (and your internal imposter) about them.

Take time out to reflect on all the successes you've had that demonstrate your capabilities - maybe even sketch a career timeline with highs and lows to get a true picture of what you've achieved and how far you've come.

2. The Illusion of Control

This is a big one - HUGE! 

Most of us are attached to control in some way - human brains don’t like uncertainty, so we tell ourselves that we are in control and create the illusion of it. 

We want to feel like we are organised, ordered and have all our ducks in a row, so that nothing 'bad' will happen. 

So we are trying to protect ourselves from this anxious feeling. But it’s addictive. The more control you think you have, or should have, the more you want that feeling. 

We crave control and order to some extent.  

But the reality is that you’re not in control of anything, except yourself - your own thoughts, actions, beliefs, etc. 

Some people find that scary, so we work even harder to gain or regain ‘control’ of the situation. 

At best, you can only influence other people and situations to an extent. If you’re constantly feeling like you should be doing more to control the uncontrollable, how realistic is that? 

So creating unattainable goals is another way to feed and keep the imposter entertained. Look at ways to create more concrete tangible goals that you can make progress towards.

3. What other people think

You can’t control what other people think. In fact, to take it a little further, “what other people think of you is none of your business”. 

Of course you might influence it a little, but at the end of the day, other people are responsible for their own thoughts. And to be honest, they’re far more worried about themselves and their lives than they are about you!

Worrying about what others think of you and trying to control it, trying to avoid arrogance, blowing your own trumpet… really, this is all about projecting your own thoughts onto others. 

Martha Beck (in her book 'Finding your own North Star) talks about the ‘generalised other’ - what ‘other’ people will think, say, do, etc. But if we actually were to list what we believe people would be saying about us if we did x or y, or if we make a mistake, what would be the worst case scenario? 

• What would they really be saying? 
• And who are these ‘generalised other’ people - can you list them by name? 
• Are they people you care about, or who care about you? 

When we worry about what others might think or say, what’s really happening is that we are projecting our own thoughts and self-judgements onto others. 

So who is really judging you here? It’s you. Is it helpful?

What can you do to change this habit?

4. Small talk

I’m always curious when coaching clients use what I call ‘self-diminishing’ or downplaying language, such as my ‘little’ project. 

“it was nothing…” “It was only…” “It was just a…” “I was only doing my job…”

Sometimes it can be a way of making big things seem easier or more manageable, but it can also have the effect of undervaluing your contributions and achievements and undermining your own confidence. 

Is this something you do? 

If so, it becomes part of the story you tell yourself. Your achievements aren’t valuable, or good enough perhaps.  

We might value the quality of modesty and humility, so don’t want to be seen as blowing our own trumpet or owning our achievements, and we definitely don’t want to come across as arrogant. But in the process, we dial it down too far. 

If we are going to ‘over blame’ ourselves for any failures, then in equal measure we should be ‘over blaming’ ourselves for things we have done well too! 

And whether you led or participated in a team achievement, your contribution at that place and time was unique and essential.  

People feel that they might be being inauthentic when they state the facts about results they have delivered. A good way to think about this is to consider sharing what you enjoyed and learned from a particular achievement, so that maybe others can share your enthusiasm and learn from it too.

5. Compare and contrast

Often unknowingly, we are comparing ourselves to others - or more accurately to how you perceive them to be. 

We all tend to put the best side out. So while others may come across as looking more confident, assured, skilled, and knowledgeable, most likely they have to work at that from the inside out. 

We can’t compare our inside to other people’s outside. 

We also compare ourselves to where we believe we should be in life.

I’ve heard clients say “by now I should be at senior management level” or ‘..should have had a family…”,  or “... climbed Everest” 

We are absorbing assimilated goals believing that everyone has to have hit certain markers at certain ages or levels of experience. 

So it’s time to reassess your own definition of where you are, where you want to be, and what success uniquely means to you.

We also can have an unspoken belief that if we put our heads down, knuckle down and do the work, that in a fair system our hard work will be rewarded one day. But in reality this rarely happens. 

If we are constantly ‘not where we would like to be’ then of course this plays into the ‘imposter’ mindset.

So by developing our self awareness, and paying attention to our conscious and unconscious beliefs about ourselves and “the story we tell ourselves” as Brené Brown would call it, we can start to break free of the Imposter and get back in the driving seat, for more of the time.

As always, if you have any questions or want to share your experiences and whats worked or not for you, please feel free to comment or share your thoughts.