Hey everybody, welcome back. Today we're talking about
imposter syndrome, what is it and how you overcome it. And I'm
going to be teaching you a very simple two step process that you
can use every single time you start to feel that imposter
syndrome. So, for the best advice, and guidance and
support, please subscribe to my channel, I drop a new video
every single Thursday. If you don't know who I am, my name is
Tess Brigham. I'm a licensed therapist and board certified
coach. And for the last 10 years I have been working with and
helping young adults just like yourself, gain clarity and
confidence so that they can go out into the world and make a
huge impact, which is really my mission in life. So let's get
started. Let's talk about imposter syndrome because people
talk a lot about imposter syndrome these days. But if you
haven't heard of it, it's basically imposter syndrome is
it's a psychological pattern, where you constantly have these
doubts about your abilities and your achievements. Right. The
imposter part is, it's this constant fear of being seen as a
fraud. So does any of this sound familiar? Is this something that
you feel like? Yeah, I really struggle with that. It said that
70% of women struggle with imposter syndrome at some point
in their life. And I have to say, based on my experience
working with young adults, 99.999% of my clients,
especially my female clients, really struggle with imposter
syndrome. And I too, I have struggled with this on and off
my entire career. And it's a very normal, natural thing to
feel. And it's not a good thing or a bad thing. It's really just
about being able to recognize it, and finding ways to combat
the imposter syndrome that you feel. Because when you let
imposter syndrome get the best of you, all of that anxiety that
you feel it gets in your way from really going after the
things that you want. There are a lot of reasons why, you know,
you one person would have more imposter syndrome than another.
I mean, it's sad to believe that if you had like super critical
parents, that maybe you might have a higher chance of having a
posture syndrome. If you are perfectionist, sometimes it's
the outward stuff, the circumstances of your life,
right, where you might have imposter syndrome, where maybe
you're the only woman in the room or the only person of color
in the room. And that can be really overwhelming. And so the
imposter syndrome starts to come in and like how did I get here?
Why am I here? So here's the two step process. Okay. The first
one is it's two things it's accept and acknowledge. So
acceptance is being able to accept your feelings for what
they are feelings, right? They're not. They're not bad,
they're not good. They're just simply feelings. So when you've
gotten a big raise or a promotion, it's completely
normal to feel like, Oh, this is paying me a lot of money. I'm
this is a lot of work. And, okay, you know, I hope I rise to
the challenge, that feeling of like, okay, I want to do a good
job, that's fine. Like, we tend to be so absolute with ourselves
of like, No, no, don't feel that, you know, if you, if you
feel fear in any way, shape, or form, that means that you're not
qualified to do the job. It's like, No, you just feel scared,
you want to do a good job, and that's okay. You're accepting
the feelings without any judgement. Now, acknowledge goes
on one step further, which is to say, an accepting that I feel a
real mix of feelings, both good and scary. And I'm acknowledging
and saying, I'm going to, you know, get take in people's
compliments of me. That's another thing that's in and I
struggle with this too, or someone comes to you and says,
Oh, my God, You did such a great job on that presentation. And
then you're like, Oh, no, it was nothing. I, you know, just
whipped it up, or Oh, no, it's you know, it's not such a big
deal. It wasn't that good. I flubbed flubbed in the second
part, right? Don't we do do that I know I do it. And I hate it
when I do it. And what I really been working on is what I want
to encourage you to work on, which is to simply say thank
you. I have worked hard on it. I'm really glad you enjoyed the
presentation. Thank you. That's so simple. A lot of times my
clients will think well, if I don't you know, if I if I if I
you know, just say thank you, and this person will think that
I'm full of myself or stuck up. And it's, you know, no one
thinks, right, and if you put yourself on the other side of
it, right, you don't think that way about someone.
And a lot of times people will also think oh my god, I'll
become a narcissist. It's like, that's not how narcissism works.
You're not going to become a narcissist overnight, because
you simply say thank you, when someone compliments you.
Alright, so accept and acknowledge are two really
important steps have all this except the feeling, acknowledge
the compliments, even if it feels you have a weird fix of
feelings, like, you know, inside of you, you're like, Oh, this is
really hard just to say thank you. But I'm going to do it
right? That's okay. part of the process. All of these things are
a practice. Okay? So the second part of it is changing the story
in your head, right? So what I want you to do is start to learn
how to change the internal dialogue in your head about
yourself. Because if you're someone who has had imposter
syndrome for a long time, you are very used to this constant
negative, like you don't know what you're doing. Any moment
people are going to find out, you have no idea they're going
to fire you any second, like those fears that you have been
thinking about that you think maybe Oh, it's good. It's, I
need to always be right on my toes, right? I don't ever want
to think that I can't get fired at any moment, right? those
fears that you have, those are, you know, it's it's quite normal
and natural to have these fears. But it's not healthy. And the
best thing for you to continue to listen to them and bite into
them. Right? The fear of constantly being fired is if you
go back away is it's really about your survival instincts,
which are very much in tune, we have cave person DNA, right, we
are really built, our brains and bodies are built for survival.
So that is it's a way for you to protect yourself. But the
constant internal dialogue in your head, if it's always where
it's incredibly negative towards yourself and your abilities,
it's very easy for those thoughts to multiply. So what I
want you to do is when you have one of those imposter syndrome
thoughts, like, well, they just promoted me, Oh, my God, am I
gonna do it? I don't know, oh, what if you know, what if I
really fail? What if I can't, you know, stand up? What if I
can't do these presentations that they want me to do? Or do
this big project, I want you to the moment you recognize it to
say to yourself, stop, stop, stop. All right. I, I was
promoted, because I worked hard. I was promoted, because I know
how to do this job. And if I run into something that I don't
quite understand, or that's challenging, I know exactly
where I need to go or what I need to do to, you know, work on
it, or fix it or do it differently. It's really about
you, you don't even need to say like, Oh my god, I'm gonna be
amazing. And I'm awesome. And I'll phosphate or I'm this from
that, right? You don't even need to go into the super positive
place. You can make very neutral if you wanted to. But it's
really about learning to change these stories about yourself and
not allow yourself to spin and spin and spin and spin in these
old imposter syndrome stories. Does that make sense? So much
about what I'm talking about is learning how to reframe your
thoughts. And it's about learning how to, you know,
accept your thoughts, not judge them, you know, change them and
shift them so that you're having healthier thoughts, and then
being able to move forward. And, and if you even catch yourself
once a day, once a week. If you can catch these imposter
syndrome thoughts and start to reframe them, you will notice
it's not going to happen overnight. But you'll notice in
several weeks that you're like, wow, I feel really, okay. I'm
starting to feel a little confident. I'm feeling good here
about what I'm doing. You know, I'm in a groove. Okay. So that's
the two step process. Every time you find you your imposter
syndrome gets the best of you. acknowledge and accept. And then
number two, change the story. reframe your thoughts. Alright,
so if you're, if you're struggling with imposter
syndrome, or you're at a point in your life, where you feel
like I need some more help, then I have something for you. The
link is below, I created a quarterlife crisis Handbook,
it's completely free. So click below download it, this handbook
will help you start to think about what is it that you, you
know, what is it that you want to focus on right now? What's
important to you, you know, where are the areas of your life
that aren't really working? And how do you start to develop a
plan of action to get there? All right, so thank you so much for
being here. As always, if you like this video, please hit like
please comment below. If you feel like you have a friend who
could really use this advice and this help today, please share
the video. The more shares the more we can get spread the word.
And we can really help each other get past this imposter
syndrome thing because this is something that's really, really
affects so many women, and we've got to just push forward and get
over it so we can go off and kick All right, thank you so
much, everybody. I will see you next time. Bye bye