Giving The Green Light
For the past 10+ years, I have worked primarily in a world where imposter syndrome is a way of life. Imposter syndrome is the belief that you don't have a legitimate voice to do or speak about something and you are just waiting for someone to come along and call you a fraud. It can be quite debilitating and frustrating.
When I joined WA (just mere weeks ago), some of that imposter syndrome reared its ugly head. All the questions cam rushing in:
1. Will anyone ever go to my on my site?
2. I am just a teacher, will anyone think I am capable of running a business?
3. Do I really have anything worthwhile to say?
It's like a little hamster wheel running in the mind on a continuous loop and the only way to get off is to confront it. The real problem with imposter syndrome is its root: fear. Fear of failure, fear of success. Good, old-fashioned fear. For many of us, fear is the killer of our dreams because we stop before we ever get started.
I understand well the job of learning and teaching but, to get that understanding, I have battled imposter syndrome and, sometimes, the very things I feared came to fruition. Those are the hard moments. When we are on a new journey, any criticism, no matter how well-meaning, is like a blow to the stomach. It can knock us down. It can knock us out.
How do we keep going? How do we get back up? How do we not quit? By giving our self the green light. We are constantly looking at setbacks as complete failure and criticism as the gospel truth. Setbacks are not, always, failure and criticism is not, always, the truth. However, sometimes a setback is a failure and a criticism is true. By giving our self permission to embrace those moments, we can move on.
For instance, if the first niche doesn't work, we might decide it is a failure. That's great! That is a green light to move on to another project that is better suited for us. We can acknowledge what we did well and shed what we did poorly and move on.
The same is true for criticism. With feedback comes criticism and sometimes it is true. If we are told we are spending to much time on shiny objects and not enough time on quality content, that's great! We can take that advice and make some tweaks or major overhauls or DO NOTHING and move on.
Both instances are opportunities to face our fear of being an imposter head on and ask better questions, such as:
1. Does this instance have something worthwhile to teach me?
2. Can I use this moment to make my life better?
Whatever the answers, after we have them, then we have the green light to move on and keep working towards our higher purpose and the goals that have brought us to the world of business to begin with.
The best defeat for imposter syndrome is to become the success we see in our heads!
Recent Comments
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Your welcome Billy! I fight overwhelm on a daily basis. The nice thing is the learning curve gets less and less steep with every step we take!
I agree with that and, yes....I feel my confidence growing little by little every day. Thank God for this community where I'm never really alone on the path...and thank you for your kind reply!
Hi Saca -
Great post, wrestling with the demons within. Glad to see you've decided to poke a stick at your mental hamster wheel to keep it from spinning! You might even say: The Key to Success? Fail fast! A thought - add your website to your profile (under your picture). You'll get a backlink to your site from a WA page with a page rank of 3, and you'll get a bit more traffic as members here visit your site - both good things to have happen.
Best of luck!
Dennis
Hi Dennis!
Thanks for the comment! I was hesitant to add my site as it is still pretty bare. I am into Course 2 and just starting to build content into it. Do you think I should add it anyway?
Absolutely! You can also ask for feedback on your site by going to Need website comments? the give and take comment thread You'd be surprised, others may have suggestions that relate to improving the skeleton of your site - even before you've begun to add content!
Dennis
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Hi Saca, so true. Become the success. Take care.