24 ways to break the hold that imposter syndrome has on your dreams.
Today you will stop letting imposter syndrome stop you from doing the daily work that you want to do. You are going to stop letting imposter syndrome put your dreams on hold. And you are going to start getting into action.
If imposter syndrome has become your golden cage, this is for you.
If imposter syndrome is a giant mental stop sign, perhaps you will find something here to paint over the stop sign and bend the bars of your golden cage.
This is meant to mock the syndrome, not you. You: you’re precious, a wonderful myriad of interests, inclinations, intuition, and emotions living inside a multi-celled organism.
You have a programming, a subconscious framework in your mind that feels discomfort as you stretch into new areas.
Your early days were the programming for what was without your comfort zone and realm of reasonable things for you to achieve, and what wasn’t. When confronted with things that you want, but which your subconscious has a disconnect/incongruency with, your brain wants to keep you where you are. Insert imposter syndrome.
Here’s the thing though. The world has changed since you were young. You can no longer dictate your dreams and desires based on the programming that adults provided when you were young and which you incorporated into your own subconscious beliefs and standards.
You are alive today and ready to go. You are teachable, you are capable, and you have potential. You have crossed the velvet rope. You’re in da club.
Seriously, can you even picture that you’re alive in the same time, in the same online spaces as some of the people or one of the people who you admire the most?!
If you weren’t supposed to be here, you wouldn’t be.
If you weren’t able to succeed at some version of what you deeply desire, you wouldn’t be in this space. You wouldn’t have that desire pounding within you.
Listen, if you really thought you couldn’t cut it here and it was a mistake for you to be here, you wouldn’t be.
But that’s the thing. You are here.
You weren’t cut from the team.
You self-selected, “I am going to be on the team. I’m signing myself up to be a entrepreneur/content creator. I’m making a choice about my future and my identity.” You said this to yourself in one way or another.
Stop acting like you’re characters in Season one, Episode one of the Good place.
Now maybe you weren’t ever wondering, “Am I supposed to be here?” but there’s a part of me that being in certain online spaces and groups definitely activates my own version of imposter syndrome.
I recently joined Chris Do’s Futr Pro Group. Its amazing and its stretching me. First I’m super excited and inspired by all the creative people and what they’re doing and how accomplished they are. Then 20 minutes later into spending time on Circle or on a call, I’m thinking, “Wait, I’m not accomplished. I’m not tracking to make $120,000 this quarter, I haven’t written a book, I don’t have a production company, I don’t have an employee, I hardly have childcare for 3 hours a day.”
This could easily spiral. But I have learned to know myself well enough. Yes, I’ll still go down a comparison path for a few minutes, but then I dis-engage from what’s sending me down comparison path. I make a break and re-engage with something that reminds me of what I’m good at, that I’m human and therefore good at some things and mediocre at many more, or take a break to go dance to happy music for 4 minutes.
I like to play around with different ideas for how to deflate my fears and engage the silliness factor to get me out of “Comparison-sad-land” and back into “Doing-the-Best-I-can Land.” In case you have never tried this method, here is some creative play to get you to stop taking your imposter syndrome so seriously.
Creative Play to Deflate Imposter Syndrome
- You could rename it Imposter Slytherin-drome.
- You could have an ice cream sundae every time you accomplish your goals for the week.
- You could ask all your business peers who think you are truly an imposter to declare it in the comments- and watch when you hear the entire opposite being declared.
- You could print yourself a shirt that says Imposter Bimbo.
- You could buy business cards that list your future accomplishment and then its really official.
- You could bury a time capsule for 10 years from now with a letter to yourself about how life is now, how you think it will be in 10 years, and what you’re so grateful that has happened over the last 10 years.
- You could get yourself a tattoo that only a person who has accomplished the thing that would make you not an imposter has done.
- You could listen to Brene Brown or Tabitha Brown on a loop and see if that helps your attitude to improve.
- You could try to bring back heavy metal and mesh that with your thing that you’re imposter-ing at.
- You could convince us all to start saying “imposter-ing” like its a real world.
- You could put yourself on the Wiki page under imposter.
- You could rewrite imposter to say, “I’m poster….child. I’m the POSTER child.”
- You could buy yourself stickers, pokemon cards, lollipops, or something fun every week to celebrate your incremental progress.
- You could go to a sacred site of a patron saint and pray to be anointed with a miracle talent.
- You could schedule a Telehealth appointment and ask your doctor if imposter syndrome is terminal, chronic, or contagious.
- You could get a second opinion from a professional if you have imposter syndrome.
- You could question if its viable for an imposter to accurately diagnose themselves with imposter syndrome.
- You could make a remix song where you sing, “I love it when you call me Big ImPoppa.”
- You could tweet to 23 of your favorite celebrities/role models ask if they will be your friend if you achieve the thing that you are masquerading being accomplished at.
- You could spend time helping out someone who is homeless/recovering from drug abuse or recently incarcerated and then see how much time you have
- You could drive by an elementary school, roll down your window and yell, “IMPOSTERS” to the building.
- You could create a fake tombstone that reads, “here lies your name, who died of doing something that he/she/they wasn’t immediately successful at.”
- You could meme about it.
- You could blow up a balloon with the word “imposter syndrome” written on it, then pop it in dramatic fashion.
Any one of these could take the air out of the thing that’s holding you back from sharing you, acting on your inclinations, taking that daily step towards your desired destination.
To get support beyond a good laugh and a desire to reach beyond your current block, schedule a free coaching clarity call or book a psychic session. https://soulpioneer.com/free-consult/
