Episode 19: 3 Ways to Combat Imposter Syndrome in Your New Business

Full Episode Transcription:

(00:07):
Hello, beautiful souls and welcome to the “Ditch the Classroom” podcast. So today’s episode, we’re diving deep into something that a lot of people have, but they don’t know that there’s even a name for it, a definition. And it’s this idea of imposter syndrome. So good old Google says that “imposter syndrome is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments, and has a persistent, internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud.” So basically it makes you feel like you’re fake. Who am I to do this? All of those types of feelings. There are countless people who experience imposter syndrome, even high level executives, CEOs, and celebrities experience these feelings. And 75% of people are said to experience imposter syndrome. And I’m gonna bet you that the 25% who don’t just like, don’t know how to identify their feelings.

(02:04):
So many people deal with this. I still deal with this all the time. And so I wanna provide you with some really good tangible ways to combat this feeling, because I know you’re teacher thinking about ditching the classroom, wanting to get into new areas of service, where you didn’t necessarily get training in college on these things or whatever, but you still have the ability to figure it out. And I’m gonna go a little bit deeper into that in a minute, but I just wanna give you three ways to combat these feelings of imposter syndrome.

(02:38):
So the first one is positive affirmations. These positive affirmations should be affirmations that you truly believe. So you don’t wanna just write down things that you don’t even believe internally within yourself. It needs to be something you already know about yourself. Examples could be, I’m a great mother. I’m caring towards others. I have a great attention to detail. Just a couple short sentences that you can write on a paper and just kind of reference whenever you’re feeling doubtful of yourself, just go to this paper and read these statements that you already know make you who you are, you’re really good at. And this will kind of help you flip the switch of, “okay, I was having these feelings like I’m a fraud and whatever, but I may not know how to do this thing, but I know that I’m really good at these other things. And I know that with time I can practice and figure out this thing I’m not feeling confident in.” So first one, positive affirmation statements.

(03:42):
Second one, keep a “feel good” folder with screenshots of positive emails, text projects that you feel like you did a good job on. You can keep this in your email, like keep a little folder for it. Or my favorite is my phone, ’cause I’ve always got my phone on me. So I have just a folder in there called “testimonials” that I just put pictures in of screenshots. Whenever a client says something really positive to me or doesn’t even have to be a client, can just be someone you love in your family, whatever. But it’s just a really good thing to do to scroll through them when you’re feeling like a fraud and help remind yourself that you’re a badass. Kind of like the positive affirmations, like you’re just reminding yourself, you know, I have the ability to figure things out. Maybe I didn’t know how to do this before, but now my client’s telling me they love what I did for them. And I was able to figure it out.

(04:37):
So that’s number two. Number three is just practice. If a client or a potential client asks you, if you can perform a specific task for them, try creating one for yourself first. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it 10 million more times YouTube and Google are your best friend. Just Google your heart. Ask for help from your support system to figure it out. You have the ability to figure things out. And I know you do. You’re a teacher. You’ve got that ability. As I’ve said before. Also 90% of the things that I’ve done for my clients were things that I had never done before. And it’s just something I figured out as I went along, you don’t have to lie. You don’t have to lie to your potential clients and say, “oh yeah, I’ve done that before.” If you really haven’t, but you can say, “You know what? I don’t have experience with that specific platform,” or whatever, “but I do have similar experience using this other. And I know that I could figure it out. I have the ability to dive in and figure it out as I go. And as long as you’re okay with me, maybe asking a few questions as I go and just getting feedback, then that’ll work.” So I just want you to know that you can, you can figure things out in a really good way to do that is just to practice and do kind of a fake project for yourself to, to develop those skills.

(06:11):
I know personally from my own experience and just working with all of the amazing women in my program, that teachers make amazing freelancers and virtual assistants because we all have this amazing capability to just figure shit out. Whether we’re thrown a new lesson that we’ve never done before, or given a difficult student, we will try ever way we can think of to accomplish something. So before you think, “oh, I could never do that. I don’t have any experience doing that” blah, blah, blah. Remember that this is just that imposter syndrome rearing its ugly head. And now you have the tools to go to war with it. So I’m just gonna cover them again. First one is positive affirmations. Second one is keeping a “feel good” folder with screenshots, either in your email or your phone. And then the third one is to practice. Okay? I know you’ve got this. You can beat that imposter syndromes, but just need some tools to do so. And I’ve got your back.