How many times have you asked yourself…

“Should I be doing this?”

“Am I qualified to do this?”

“Will I be found out?”

Well, if you’re anything like me, then the answer is yes!

Of course, I’m referring to the well used phrase and state of being that is known as the ‘Imposter Syndrome’, which relays to the thought we have going round and around in our thinking that we keep telling ourselves we shouldn’t be doing this ‘thing’ that we’re doing.

What if they, whoever they are, find out I’ve not done it before, that I’m working my way through it as I go?

The phrase ‘building a plane in the air’ springs to mind and if truth be told, we’re all doing it to some degree…

• If we parent, we’re working it out as we go.
• If we start to employ staff, we’re working it out as we go.
• If we’re building a community of like-minded individuals based around a concept and a particular outcome, we’re working it out as we go.

If we’re running a business, we’re working it out as we go, sure we may have all the ‘theoretical steps’ beautifully laid out, but the rub is, the DOING part of anything is ALWAYS worked out whilst we’re actually doing what we’re doing!

Pressures for us to operate at our optimum level, can weigh us down massively, as can pressures from our piers. That ‘thing’ we are showing others to do, can put huge pressure on us, if all the time we’re playing the internal loop “What if they find out?”

Have you ever asked yourself “What if they did actually find out this is the first time I’ve done this?” How would you actually answer that question if asked directly? Well, the best advice is…answer truthfully.

So many people hide behind self imposed masks, behind the bullshit, meaning, they say what they think others want to hear and in main, it’s the bullshit we feed ourselves that catches us out!

The thoughts we feed ourselves tend to lean towards self limiting matters…

• Am I good enough?
• How do I look?
• Will they like me or what I’m presenting?

The way to combat this is by accepting that YOU ARE YOU & you cannot possibly be an imposter whilst inhabiting your own body. What’s meant by this is if you TRULY are being you, no company bullshit, no actions of trying to impress others, no doing stuff because you think that’s way others want, instead by YOU DOING YOU, at your very core you ARE NOT an imposter. You are being congruent with who you are and how you show up in the world.

The thing you’re so worried about is a role, a position and representation of something you’re either selling, offering to others or wanting to share freely. IT IS NOT YOU…YOU ARE YOU, so go DO YOU!!!

Now, if you’ve been asked to do something by someone else, whether commissioned, instructed or ‘volunteered’, most of the time it’s because the person asking you has trust in your ability to fulfil the request, they trust you can deliver whatever it is they’ve asked you to do. This is exactly where the ‘you being truthful’ comes into play.

If you trust the relationship and you really do have imposter thoughts going on in your thinking, speak up, be truthful, let them know you’re concerned. Now the following may happen…

• They’ll reassure you that they do believe in your ability to fulfil the request, even if it’s your first time doing ‘x’.
• They may take it away from you and assign it to someone else or until such time that you are in the correct place, with the correct mindset, to do the job in hand.
• You’ll never hear from them again.

Either way, you will be doing YOU, you’ll know that you’ve either been lifted to a place of mutual understanding or you will realise you have to work on certain areas of your job, your career, your assignments to be able to be confidently deliver when asked again in the future.

All options will have your best interest at heart. Either option will help you grow froward, it may not seem like in certain moments, but truth has a way of building us up, even if at first, we’ve been broken down.

It would appear on some level we’re all up against the imbalance of the ‘social expectations thermometer’ of who we’re supposed to be. So, you may find it’ll take time and focus to stay the course when you decide to step out of your thinking and DO YOU and BE YOU in every given moment, to be really TRUTHFUL, to stop feeding yourself bullshit!

Others are not living your life, they have no frickin idea how to live your life and that includes me too, but what I do know to be true and it’s been proven many times over, is that once you adopt YOU as who you are, the self limiting chatters eases, in time it may diminish and is replaced with internal thoughts of…

“This is me, this is what I do & I’m doing it to the best of my ability and if anyone doesn’t agree like it, they can jog on”.

Remember YOU DO YOU, you’re the best person to know how to!