Have you ever had that nagging feeling that you don’t deserve the success and recognition you’ve earned? Maybe you constantly worry that you’ll be exposed as a fraud, despite evidence of your competence?

If you can relate to these thoughts, then you may be battling a little something called imposter syndrome.

In my coaching work, this is often the foundational obstacle to not achieving one’s absolute best in any performance, or life, situation.

As I have been working on a new Master Class regarding overcoming imposter syndrome, I thought I would share a few thoughts about what imposter syndrome is all about, how it affects your performance, and most importantly, how you can conquer self-doubt to take your performance to new heights.

So, what exactly is imposter syndrome?

Well, picture this: You achieve something amazing—an impressive promotion, an award, create a new piece of art or maybe even begin to launch your own successful business. But deep down, you can’t help but question if you truly deserve it.

You might brush off your achievements as mere luck or convince yourself that others are just overestimating your abilities. That, my friend, is imposter syndrome in a nutshell. It’s like wearing a mask, pretending to be someone you’re not, all while fearing that you’ll be unmasked as a fraud!

Imposter syndrome can also mess with your performance. Picture a talented musician who refuses to perform in public because they believe their skills are subpar. Or imagine a brilliant student who downplays their achievements, thinking they got into that top-tier university by sheer chance. When you doubt yourself and attribute your success to external factors, it’s like slamming on the brakes of your potential. You become stuck in a cycle of self-sabotage, afraid to take risks, try new things, or even acknowledge your worth.

It’s like having a front-row seat to your own performance downfall.

Thankfully, there’s hope! You can break free from the clutches of imposter syndrome and unleash your full potential.

Here are some tried-and-true strategies to help you overcome self-doubt and enhance your performance:

Your mind is amazing! It is in the full time business of keeping you safe. It reminds you to be careful. It warns you of not acting too foolish. It points out everything that could possibly go wrong if you take too much of a risk.

It absolutely LOVES to hold you back from anything and everything that might hurt you physically, emotionally or in your relationships.

It’s on the job 24/7, running like clockwork.

As great as that may sound, there is a problem with this – there is rarely a good reason for living a life of safety. In fact, as a newborn you came into the world absolutely fearless! Research tells us that the only 2 universal fears that everyone on the planet arrives with is the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. This means that every fear you possess as adults, and that your mind carefully guards against, is LEARNED.

Negative experiences, painful relationships and distorted teaching all led to the creation of your own unique set of fears, fears that were actually non-existent at birth.

As a child, you accumulated fear after fear which, with each new fear quietly growing within you, led to the disappearance of that outgoing, joyful, fearless part of you that made life so exciting and fun.

Before learning to be afraid and anxious, however, every day and moment was a possibility of experiencing something new and wonderful. If it went well, we loved it! If it went poorly, who cared, because the next thing in our life might be even more wonderful!

Yet, I wonder what happened to that bright-eyed, risk-taking explorer. Where is that creator and adventurer that lived each moment to the fullest? Did the fears that you learned permanently bury, under layers of cautiousness and anxiety, your potential for an exciting life?

Well, I have great news,

You never, EVER lose that part of yourself.

In spite of the anxiety you feel, the things you anticipate, and the worries you obsess over, somewhere, sometimes way, way down, is that original, loving, caring ‘wild and crazy’ child inside of you who really knows how to play and live.

Fear and anxiety can feel like they come out of nowhere. In fact, it is hard to even understand what is going on. This ‘unknown’ aspect of fear makes us feel even more anxious!

Understanding what the foundations of anxiety are is a critical first step to overcoming our fears. The more that we are aware of the ‘unknowns’ the more we can stop filling in the “What ifs” with false, fear inducing information and then apply practical steps to think and do things differently.

I have found that the best way to understand how anxiety develops and how it interferes with effective performing is what is called the Stress Model of Public Speaking Anxiety.

Under stress, whether real or imagined, several things can affect your performance. I say real or imagined because either way your body reacts the same as if the reasons for the stress are real. Preparing and actually presenting or performing can create real pressure and physiological stress.

However, the imagined pressure, the imagined stress of worrying how you are going to do, what people are going to think of you, whether you might ‘blow’ the presentation or forget what to say, can affect your performance in an even more negative way.

The Stress Model is comprised of the effects of both how you think, the cognitive effect, as well as your body’s physical response to the stressful situation. This week, let’s take a quick look at the Cognitive Effects of Anxiety.

The cognitive, or mental, side of anxiety includes the self-doubts that you begin to have, the self-criticism and the negative self-talk where you talk to yourself in a judgmental and critical way.

You might begin to have a loss of focus because you’re getting stressed out or are feeling so anxious. You question if you are prepared enough and wonder if you are going to look and do okay. “What if they see that I am nervous?” “What if I cannot concentrate and stay on track with what I am performing or presenting?”

This kind of self-questioning and negative thoughts are a part of the cognitive side of public speaking anxiety.

The first step to slow down our brain and its focus on feeling afraid is to become aware of the many “What If’s…” that flood our thinking.

Without such an awareness, we cannot replace these thoughts with more focused and positive ones that are NOT based upon imaginary fears (See my past post on not believing everything you think).

As a result of this awareness and replacing negative thinking with thoughts based on what is actually true, then we can turn our attention to getting our physical self under control. We will look at the physical part of our ‘brain on fear’ in my next Post.

As I shared in my last post, the key challenge if you struggle with anxiety, whether on the stage, in business or in life in general, is that your goal is most often to be liked by others rather than having the goal of liking yourself.

Real change, then, always begins with an awareness that the foundation of your anxiety and lack of risk-taking in life is low self-esteem.

I would like to share 3 powerful principles and steps that you can use to take the awareness that we talked about last week and apply it to learning to accept and love yourself.

1) Give Yourself Appropriate Praise

Praise yourself every time you accomplish something, no matter how small. If you are struggling with the fear of speaking in front of a group, no matter the size, and you say to yourself, “Well, all that I did this week was volunteer to lead the presentation at work, but then I felt panicky all week and almost pulled out of the meeting” instead tell yourself, “Great job! I made the attempt and am starting to go outside my comfort zone!”

Usually, any positive step gets discounted in our mind, it gets wiped out and none of it seems to matter or count. It is time to give yourself permission to feel good about any step, no matter how small, that you take to overcoming your fear.

We typically do not talk to our self in that kind of positive, forward looking way. So, no matter how small your victory is, it is crucial to get into the habit, and it is a habit, of praising yourself.

2) If you make a mistake or blow it, ask yourself, “What should I do next?”

When you do fall short of a goal that you have, or you make a mistake, which is inevitable, do not shame yourself but, rather, ask yourself, “What should I do next?”

When I was very young, I used to spill my glass of milk a lot. I don’t know why, but I would be at the kitchen table and accidentally knock the milk over. Now, I had a very caring and loving father, but he would give me this stern look as if I was this terrible person for spilling the milk and I would get very nervous.

As a result of feeling so anxious, did I stop spilling milk? No, I became the champion milk spiller!! It became part of how I saw myself, my identity. I saw myself as clumsy and anxious that I would not please him. It was as if whenever we went out to a restaurant I was subconsciously saying, “Oh excuse me dad, there’s a table over there with a glass of milk on it, I’ve got to go knock it over – that’s my job, that’s who I am.”

Instead of growing up and hearing from him, “That’s okay, let’s just clean it up and move on,” in my head I would beat myself up.

The key principle here is that when you blow it, when you make a mistake, instead of putting yourself down, give yourself a positive, helpful suggestion on what you can do differently next time. What can you do to create a different outcome next time? Be aware of the mental picture, or identity, that you have of yourself and commit to changing it in order to feel less shameful and be more kind to yourself.

Sometimes you need someone else to help you with making this kind of change. It can be a therapist, a coach, or a friend, someone that can say to you, “It’s okay, let’s just understand this.”

We so often put ourselves down automatically without even realizing it. It is not as though you sit around and say, “Hey, I think I’ll have a poor self-image today. I think I’ll be unhealthily dependent on people today. Let’s see who I can let control me.”

Become more aware of how you are talking to yourself and say, “Wait a minute, stop. Don’t. That’s not right to say to myself.” Refrain from calling yourself names or putting yourself down. It’s been said that life is hard enough and no one deserves to be humiliated, even by yourself! Become aware of what you tell yourself.

Today I would like to share some great news with you.

You are guilty.

(Not quite what you were expecting to hear, was it?)

Yes, believe it or not, accepting that we are guilty is powerful and can be the beginning of growth and change.

Determining if we are truly guilty of something can be the initial step towards resolving our offense and moving forward. Whether we have hurt someone we love, procrastinated working on our next important project or made excuses to ourselves about what we are capable of, we are guilty.

But … being guilty of something does not mean that we need to feel shame. Whereas guilt says that I have broken a law, or have done something that hurts either myself or another, shame goes deeper – much, much deeper.

In fact, the difference can be summed up in the following:

Guilt says, “I made a mistake.”
Shame says, “I AM a mistake.”

Wow, the implications between “I made” and “I am” are HUGE!

Destructive feelings of shame focus on past failures, feelings of wrongdoing, deserving punishment or that I am no good.

Constructive guilt focuses on the person I have hurt, the mistake I have made and the possibility of FUTURE CHANGE.

Yes, shame holds us hostage to a focus on the past, on ME instead of the future and what I can do differently next time. It keeps us from learning when we mess up or from being a part of healing an injured relationship.

“Shame is a soul eating emotion.”
~ C.G. Jung

Shame focuses on how bad I am while true constructive guilt focuses on the other person and what next step I must take.

In a strange way, shame is actually selfish. It’s about me and rarely leads to any meaningful change. It is kind of like confessing a sin, feeling better afterwards and then continuing to repeat the behavior.

Shame does not lead to change, only a beating up of one’s self.

Only a true acknowledgment of guilt leads to the possibility of becoming a new person.
So, the question becomes what do I do to keep from beating myself up with shame when I blow it?

Here are 3 things needed to identify and overcome destructive feelings of shame:

1) Determine If You Are Wrong

This sounds so basic, yet it is so easy to assume that we did something wrong. If we have low self esteem, we might assume that if a relationship is going poorly, then it must be my fault. Or, if I fail to follow through on a project I am working on, then it must mean that I am lazy – I am “guilty” of being a failure.

Ask yourself, am I really wrong. Did I actually blow it or am I assigning all the blame to myself when there might be many other variables involved in things not going well. It’s possible that the guilt that you feel is based on numerous ‘shoulds’ that you grew up with.

“When we played softball, I’d steal second base, feel guilty and go back.”  ~ Woody Allen

Maybe you’re not a lazy person, but rather afraid of rejection if you complete your project and put it out for the world to see. There is absolutely NO room here to feel shameful. Ironically, feelings of shame will lead to a greater possibility of not finishing … leading to more shameful feelings until you give up completely.

2) Discover Where You Are Wrong

Yes, there are times that we blow it (for myself, there are many times!). The key principle is that once we become aware that we are actually guilty, then we can use this awareness to discover exactly where we went wrong.

For example, maybe you were hurt by something said to you, leading to defensiveness and then saying something hurtful back. Take time to discover your part, knowing this kind of honesty can set you free to change.

3) Decide What You Need to DO About It

In the example above, you might feel a ‘right’ to be defensive, yet need to take responsibility that you hurt the other person and apologize to them. You are guilty and can help repair the injury by taking action. Again, there is no room for shame, but rather to take charge and do something about it.

Maybe you are feeling terrible about yourself for putting off something you made a commitment to finish. Acknowledge you have blown it and then decide to take charge and get back on track without any further negative self-talk.

 Make a commitment today to acknowledge when you are guilty, take steps to learn and heal and stop shaming yourself when you blow it. And remember that you are never, ever a mistake!