Do you judge your performance against your colleagues? Do you question if your presentation was good enough? Do you watch others deliver their work and tell yourself how much better at it they are than you? Or perhaps the comparisons are how you look, your financial independence, size of house or status?

Through my work with businesses and life coaching clients I have noticed how imposter syndrome shows up is not always immediately obvious. We always don’t recognise when it is happening and why. To be able to manage it better we first need to explore what it means for us.

Is this your voice you hear?

Are you familiar with these thoughts or similar ones?

• “They are clearly better at this than I am”
• “They have more experience than I do”
• “Why would they want me”
• “What would people think/say about me”
• “Who do I think I am!”
• “Their business is clearly doing much better than I mine”

What Am I Doing?

All of those thoughts are indicators of imposter syndrome. These thoughts and inner are the inner dialogue which gets in the way of our success and enjoyment of life and work. They are not helpful.

In reality you are:

• Magnifying failures
• Discounting achievements
• Judging yourself and others
• Focussing on what you can’t do rather than what you can do
• Being incredibly hard on yourself
• Creating competition and rivalry which is unlikely to be healthy or helpful

Symptoms

There are a multitude of ways in which imposter syndrome manifests itself. Which of these do you relate to?

• Inability to recognise your achievements and accomplishments
• Believing that others have an over inflated opinion of you!
• Success has come from luck or being in the right place at the right time
• Worrying that you will be rumbled/found out as not knowing your stuff
• Feeling like a fraud
• Devaluing what you do – “anyone can do that”
• Focusing on the can’t do rather than the can do

If we don’t feel good enough what we do is over compensate by pushing ourselves harder and increasing the effort we put in to the task. This results in more success and and increased feeling of imposter syndrome which causes more feelings of not good enough!

It is not uncommon for people who suffer from imposter syndrome to experience high levels of stress because they are not comfortable with their position or their performance.

You might feel paranoid, feel a lack of confidence, you might stop doing things or hold yourself back.

What It Stops You From Doing

• Applying for a promotion
• Voicing your opinion
• Promoting your services & products
• Changing job
• Starting your own business
• Promoting yourself and your business on LinkedIn or social media platforms
• Trying something new

Try This

• Reflect on your career and identify positive moments, successes and achievements.
• Get comfortable with celebrating your successes.
• Be clear on what success looks like for you! You are unique and so is your business. It doesn’t have to be big wins! Be realistic.
• Use your energy to do more of what makes you feel good.
• Check the reality! Don’t assume that others have had a quicker or easier path to success. We don’t get to see or hear about the failures, the lessons learnt and the sacrifices others have made.
• Be kind to yourself. When we don’t get the job or the promotion take time to reflect on what went well and what you might do differently next time.
• Choice about how we think, how we see the World around us and how we react to it.

​