I still doubt myself every single day. What people believe is my self-confidence is actually my reaction to fear.”—Will Smith
All of us are susceptible to negative thoughts like this at some point in our careers. They are like giant banana skins waiting to trip us up. To stop our own mind from being our worst enemy, we have to spot these ‘mind-traps’ and learn techniques to manage them.
One pattern of negative thinking that I frequently hear about from seemingly confident professionals is a sense of feeling like an imposter. We think that we don’t deserve our success. Eventually someone is going to spot that we shouldn’t be in our role and expose us, with horrible consequences.
Here’s what to do about it.
Imposter syndrome stems from emotional reasoning. Just because we feel something, we think it is real:
I feel like a failure, therefore I am one.
I feel like an imposter, therefore I am one.
If we start to feel like something, then the danger is that we start to behave like it too. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Here’s an example:
You don’t believe that you truly deserve your promotion. You see yourself as you were a few years ago, not as the capable person others perceive you to be now. You decide, perhaps sub-conciously, that the safest option is not to draw attention to yourself. You try to stay under the radar: you don’t speak up at meetings, build relationships, take calculated risks, make eye contact with senior people, or put your hand up for new responsibilities. Your body language betrays your belief about yourself. People start to question this odd behaviour. Inevitably you become correct: you are perceived as not deserving to be in your role. Your negative thinking has set off this whole chain of events. How do you stop it?
Smack the phoney!
There are two steps to chuck out your banana skin for good.
- Work from facts.
You have been hired in the role and have been given responsibilities. Are your employers idiots, who offer jobs to people who don’t deserve them? Give them the benefit of the doubt! Do people buy tickets to watch Will Smith in a movie because he’s a lousy actor?
Quantify the contribution you make to give you objective data of how good you really are. Understand your strengths and build on them. Of course you have areas to develop, who doesn’t? Get some mentoring or coaching and build a strong team around you.
- Act as if you deserve to be there.
Behave like a successful performer in your job would behave, do what they do, make the impact they make and look like a successful person would too. Give it 100%. Remember you are in a role, so role-play. Acknowledge the fear and behave like a self-confident professional.
Look forwards and outwards, away from your own vulnerabilities. Try my Mind Flip philosophy of flipping your focus away from yourself and on to the contribution you make and the problems you, uniquely, can solve for others. It brings meaning and confidence to work.
We are a sum of our repeated actions. Act like a successful person and you will eventually believe you are one. No one else will ever doubt you.
Don’t be so hard on yourself in future. We talk about ‘good enough parenting’, now let’s talk about ‘good enough working’ too – we can’t know everything, or do everything perfectly all the time. Focus your attention on doing the important things as best you can and don’t beat yourself up over the small stuff.
If you, or someone else in your organisation, needs help with imposter syndrome or any other mind traps then please call me to talk about my coaching and transformative workshops. Get out of your own way in 2018 and focus your energy on achieving goals and delivering results instead.