Fellow Imposters…
Those of us who suffer from imposter syndrome, are not shy about setting challenging goals.
We set these goals and work towards them because we believe our purpose in life is to produce things in the world so that we may ensure our value in it.
However, those with I.S. feel a secret sense of incompetence. We “fake it till we make it” because despite our education, skills and experience we are pretty sure someone is going to find out what we really are…a total fraud.
Our belief is that if we work hard and do ALL the things, we will get to our goal and finally others will take us seriously.
The thing is….in order to get real with ourselves, we need to admit that the reason we work so hard is not about achieving a particular goal. It’s about achieving a feeling of worthiness.
This is the reason why when we FINALLY achieve a promotion, earn a degree or certification, are awarded an opportunity to present in front of people as an expert or receive a bump in salary we feel a quick rush of accomplishment but very quickly end up feeling neutral about the achievement. This feels uncomfortable because the worthiness we expected we would feel does not appear. Our brain loves to validate our hard-earned belief systems and therefore, it thinks “Well, I achieved that goal. That’s fine, but it must not have been the RIGHT goal. Let’s set an even bigger and better one!” Thus, the cycle continues, and we find ourselves in a lifelong pattern of setting a goal, using our amazing work ethic to achieve the goal, either not hitting the goal and feeling devastated or hitting the goal and feeling the urge for more, more more!
But…fellow imposters, what if we changed our perspective? What if we set a goal from a belief that our value is already determined? What would our achievements look like if our focus was not on the goal, rather, it was on who we needed to become in order to work towards the goal?
I recently earned my coaching certification. It was an incredibly intensive nine-month long program where not only did I have to learn how to coach, I had to take a very close look at my own beliefs, thoughts, feelings and actions and the results that I was putting out into the world.
I tell you what I learned….
My purpose in life is not to be the expert, or more accomplished or have all the degrees and certifications.
My purpose in life is to experience every moment as an opportunity to describe who I currently am and decide if that is who I want to be.
Imagine if we could wake up every day and know without a shadow of a doubt that we are valuable. Everything we have done and everything that we are has already brought value to the world in both small ways, big ways and ways that we don’t even realize.
We could actually decide in every moment that we are BECOMING the expert, the leader, the teacher or the role model.
How, fellow imposters, would we see ourselves differently?
