What is Imposter Syndrome?
What causes imposter syndrome…and how to overcome it
You have been working hard and putting in a lot of effort, and finally someone going to pay you to do what you love…yet you feel like you don’t deserve it. You have this nagging worry in the back of your mind, what if I’m not good enough?
There isn’t a single person who hasn’t experienced this feeling. It’s called “imposter syndrome” and even celebs like Oprah and Beyonce have come out and said they have experienced this feeling too. I know it’s not enough to make it go away, but in this blog post I will share with you 3 things you can do to give yourself some grace and actually move forward.
An example of imposter syndrome
The first time I experienced imposter syndrome was when I landed my first freelance client. What if this middle aged man knows more than I do about social media marketing? I started to relax when I realized he didn’t even know what a landing page was.
Fast forward a few years and I realized time after time, that I actually knew a lot more than these clients did about tech and online business. People keep telling me, over and over again…you need to teach people how to do what you do. Fortunately I had a great mentor to push me forward.
I learned that calling yourself a social media manager, or a freelance marketing strategist, or a virtual assistant is completely external. It doesn’t really matter what you call yourself, if you’ve done the task successfully, then you can do it for someone else.
Don’t let your inner mean girl voice show up and start telling you that you can’t do something as good as someone else. Some people call this negative self-talk or a negative mindset.
In business, your mindset is everything, so kick that mean girl voice to the curb and get unstuck by following these 3 steps.
3 Steps to Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
- Call Yourself Out
- Contemplation
- Logic
Use your journal to literally call out the belief that is holding you back. This is called a limiting belief. “I’m afraid of what my sister will think of me if I fail.” or “I can’t be a freelancer for that topic, I didn’t go to college for that.”
You have the experience; if you’ve done the thing…even if you haven’t done it for a client….if you’ve done it for yourself, then you can do it again.
On the flip side, if you have never done the thing yourself, then you probably should not offer it as a service to a client. Here’s an example: You can’t just go through a course on building an online business and then expect to teach other women how to build an online business if you haven’t successfully done it yourself.
However, if you’ve done the thing, like created a Facebook page, then you can offer it as a freelancer. Here’s another example…Do you love Pinterest? Can you offer pin creation as a social media management service? If you love to browse Pinterest who says you can’t pin for clients during your work day? Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. Want to up level your knowledge about Pinterest, specifically? Check out my Pinterest specific training course here.
Think on it. Toss your limiting belief around in your mind so that you can put it to rest and stop worrying about it. Maybe you’re worried that you will disappoint those around you. Maybe you are worried you won’t like this new thing. Maybe you’re worried you won’t make enough money to sustain living the life you are accustomed to working a traditional “outside of the home” type of job. Whatever is holding you back, think about it from all different directions. Write about it. Writing helps us organize our thoughts better than just tossing it around in our mind.
What is your inner mean girl saying to you? Mean girl voices can show up in all kinds of ways. “I should have started sooner.” or “I don’t know how to do that.” or “I’m not as young, pretty or smart as she is.” Don’t listen to these voices. You called them out, you contemplated on them, now it’s time for the logic.
It’s important to take the emotion out and look at just the facts. I don’t know how to create a website so I can’t be a freelancer. Creating a website is just one skill. There are literally 50 other skills and tasks that I could list for you right now and I am willing to bet you have 25 of those skills that you could offer starting today as a freelancer.
Don’t believe me? Grab my FREE List of 50 Skills that Business Owners Need Help With, and that YOU can offer as a freelancer.
Remind yourself, making mistakes and failing are part of your journey. The more you fail, the better you’ll be about to learn, grow and become the best possible version of yourself.
Now that you are in a clear and unemotional frame of mind, you need to reframe that limiting belief and either write in your journal or pin up on your wall. Clarify it, and reframe it. Instead of “what will my sister think if I fail” write it as “My sister is proud of me and will support my new business.”
These 3 steps are actually really powerful. Commit and you’ll stop being a victim of your own circumstances and be able to move forward.
You are the only person who can do the thing. If the thing is start an online business and make $50,000 in the next 6 months, you don’t have to do that in an instant, but doing something today to move you forward and make progress. Progress will help get you there.
So lets get you a roadmap and a plan to get moving. If you’re interested in creating a successful freelance business for yourself so you can work from home and better balance work with the time you need to be a better mother and a better wife, then lets get you started.
Start by downloading my free list of 50 skills you can freelance with, and I’ll email you some bite-sized actions you can take to get to the next best chapter of your life!
