9. Struggling with imposter syndrome and self-doubt

Four primary Personal and Emotional struggles

1. Imposter syndrome and self-doubt

Personally, I don't believe in the concept of imposter syndrome as a real thing. Instead, I see it as a way of describing an aspect of feeling inadequate when sharing your talents and skills with others. Self-doubt also touches on feelings of inadequacy. What I find incredibly interesting is how we can flip these struggles upside down or, rather, right-side up and use them to support our growth process and become more successful in what we do.

Imposter Syndrome refers to feeling like a fraud or that you do not match the image projected to the world, and then painfully wanting to match the image. However, what if it's true? What if you're not really that person, character, or image, and that's completely okay?

I would suggest that the painful aspect of imposter syndrome is not so much the mismatch between who you are and how others see you, but rather that the pain comes from thinking you should match that image. However, you are not “an image,” and you are not the thoughts that someone else has about you.

The pain of inadequacy is an alarm that says you’re trying to be something that's not a real something.

The pain arises from attempting to become something that's impossible (either an image you create or an image created by others) and from trying to take credit for something that you truly cannot claim credit for.

• Small Example: Someone says to you, “Wow, I think you’re really cool.” The imposter syndrome says, “Okay, but I don’t think I’m cool. Am I a fraud?” You'd only be a fraud if you were trying to be cool (pretending) in an effort to mask a sense of non-coolness. However, this effort to appear cool or to appear smart, or whatever, misses the point of being human via a small misunderstanding about life and reality.

• The 3-Part Misunderstanding

  1. How other people see you isn’t about you.

     While feedback from others can be both helpful and hurtful, the pain we feel from negative feedback often comes from seeking our identity in the minds of others or in external images.

     To give an analogy, it's like believing you are the game piece assigned to you in the game and assuming that others' thoughts about your game piece are thoughts about you. Moreover, if someone likes or dislikes your game piece, it only reflects their biases. For instance, if they dislike the color red and your game piece is red, they may not like your game piece, but does that mean they don't like you?

     Maybe you can see here how it is we often cause trouble for ourselves by worrying about how others perceive us. However, there is a greater opportunity to let people have their biases and perceptions without needing their approval or acceptance of our “game piece.”

  2. What we really are is not a product of imagination.

     Depending on how deeply you are eager to explore the nature of suffering and how it relates to the search for identity, you’ll eventually discover that emotional pain (suffering) is the result of constructing an identity based on illusions (images) and then witnessing those illusions crumble. This crumbling is like a death; it’s the loss of who we were thought to be.

     As it relates to imposter syndrome, the pain comes from wanting to be that image but also realizing you’re not that image. Yet, the realization is still divorced from reality, as the pain implies you ‘could be’ that image if only you were “better or more worthy.” This is the painful feeling of inadequacy, “If only I was that image, then I could be whole and complete.”

     My HeartBased recommendation is to drop all images and stop trying to find your worth and value in your imagination or in the imagination of others. Let the game piece be the game piece and play with it. Let everyone else view it as they wish, based on their own conditioned biases.

  3. Wanting to take credit

     There is a funny attribute of humans that desperately wants credit, which is also like wanting things to be personal. We want things to be about us as a way of validating our sense of self. This seeking of validation, of course, is why we tend to take everything personally when, in fact, it is not personal at all. Humans, adorably so, are master storytellers and can turn any situation into a declaration of their worth and value.

     • Someone didn’t text you back? “What does that mean about me?”
     • Someone says they don’t like your offering? “What does that mean about me?”
     • Running low of funds? “What does that mean about me?”
     • Life didn’t happen how you wanted? “Does that mean God hates me?”

     Just because we tell stories about our worth and value that are tied to the everyday happenings in life, doesn't mean those stories are true. There's a profound liberation in watching this play out. We start to notice the enormous amounts of energy (life force) we spend on trying to manage these stories when we could simply stop believing them or not engage with them.

     This determination to make things personal also reveals itself in how we show up in our work or service. We are searching for other people to validate our worth and value, rather than searching for product or service validation. This would simply be understanding what is or isn't valuable about what you offer. If you spend your precious time seeking the approval of others, you're going to miss out on the opportunity to objectively improve your offering.

     Consider this: a genuine artist cannot take credit for their art, as if their imaginary character was solely responsible for its creation. The artist understands that they are merely a conduit, a vessel through which art is expressed and shared. The true reward is not the celebration of others or the world; the true reward is the beauty of allowing art to flow through you. Your service or offering is this art. Your skills, talent, and growth are gifts from life that are waiting to be shared back to life. Your task is simply to get out of the way, and one of the biggest hindrances to this is the “need” to take credit or make things personal.

  On the Flip Side

  From a practical standpoint, there's another reason you might feel self-doubt, and that's simply because you are not showing up in a way that truly honors the life and opportunity you have. You will have to be incredibly honest with yourself to discover this.

  If you find that your time and days are highly distracted, your resources wasted, and you are engaged in activities that do not serve your overall well-being and potential, then you have an excellent reason to doubt yourself. However, if the opposite is happening, and you are clear, focused, and honoring your vision with your time, attention, and resources, then experiencing self-doubt is more difficult. Self-doubt might still creep in now and then, but you can use it as fuel to become even more clear and focused.

  The point is, we don’t need to fight self-doubt or feeling inadequate because there is an immensity of wisdom in it. Here are a few questions to ask yourself if self-doubt or inadequacy pops up.

  1. Am I trying to be something I’m not, instead of simply enjoying the process of effectively sharing my heart with the world?
  2. Am I wanting other people to validate me, rather than validating myself through honoring my time on this earth?
  3. What could I learn, or where can I focus on growing, that might give me a bit more confidence in how I show up?
  4. How and where am I distracting myself to avoid exploring the boundary of my comfort zone?