How To Stop Feeling Insecure All The Time

Today we are talking about self doubt. It's that particular kind of self doubt that gets in your head maybe when you've gotten a promotion or you just started dating someone that you feel like is a bit out of your league and it says, you don't deserve this, you shouldn't be here. It is called imposter syndrome. And unfortunately what it does is it can make you self sabotage that thing that you just got, so you fall back to where you feel comfortable, even though in fact you were deserving of what you had. So we want to work on conquering it, crushing it once and for all. And there is a mindset that does that. No problem. But before I get to it, I have to say, if you suffer from imposter syndrome, thank you. Thank you so much. I think and truly I feel that we live in a world that needs more imposter syndrome because it is full of imposters. And you might have seen some in the YouTube ads coming on here, people that are promising you that they can teach you how to get rich. And some of them not saying all of them. If you dig into it, you see that they haven't gotten rich the way that they are proposing you do. They are trying to get rich by having a business that teaches other people to, to get rich. We need to be skeptical of our own skill set. We need to not overstate what it is that we do. So if you have that healthy dose of skepticism, you're not sure if you're an imposter, great. I'm going to help you find out in a way that exposes that and also gets those of you who really do need and can step up to do so. So the mindset is this. When you're being promoted, when someone is dating you, if you're thinking of putting a video on YouTube to share some expertise or some knowledge that you have, the world, your boss, the person that's dating you, isn't expecting you to necessarily be the best in the world. We're not even expecting you to be a quote unquote expert. We're expecting you to help to improve something in the way that you say that you can. And if you do that, you're not an imposter. It's that simple. We're lowering the bar from having to be perfect best in the world to can I help in the way that I promise that I can. That's it. Now, this has three concrete ways that it's going to change your behavior. First off, you will not overstate what you can do. Going on now. I know a lot of people when they're trying to get promoted, they get this promotion. The boss says, okay, we're going to task you with this task. Can you handle it? And it's one they can. So they go, yep, I got it. He says, awesome. Since you've got that, how about this other thing? And this other thing you sense is not just a stretch for you. You can't do it without mentorship. You're not ready. But you want to please them. And you say, I've got it now. You've fallen into imposter syndrome. Much better is to draw a line around your current abilities and say, look, here's what I can do, here's what I can't yet do. Now, I could learn this, but I don't want to over promise. And there were times that this happened in my own career, right when I was doing coaching, back when I taught people charisma, I felt comfortable. I'd studied it for years and years and years. But I had one client who was a manager of several people at a large company. So he comes in and he's looking for managerial advice because he thinks that falls under the umbrella. If I start telling him about the newest management trend and all the things he can do for his compensation packages, I'm in, out of my depth. I'm going to mess up. He's going to know it. And now I'm an imposter. So what I said instead was, look, I can't help you there. That's not my area of expertise. I've never done anything like that. What I can help you with, and this is good, say not just what you can't do. What I can do is focus on the underlying psychology. We can talk about basic human incentives. So I can't help build the compensation package, but I can help you understand who might need a bit more praise, who might be someone that would shine a little bit more if you would give them the opportunity. So that is what we did. And it went well. So that's the first thing. Draw a boundary over what you can and you can't do today. The second thing is going to be to take an honest stock of your past and to write it out. Can you help in the particular situation that you are in? One of the things that happened when I first started sharing videos and posts is I would put them on Reddit. And Reddit can be brutal. It's honestly awesome for honest feedback. So what I would get are all these comments and there'd be a Lot of really nice ones. And then mixed in there one or two that were like, this is trash. I knew this. I don't need this. And I would spend 80% of my energy focusing on responding to these people, taking down every point they said one by one, and addressing it such that 80% of my thoughts got to the point where I'm not very good at this because that's where I was spending most of my time. What was incredibly helpful was just looking at it from top to bottom and going, okay, I'm going to like an analyst. Count the number of people who voted up the thing that said, this was spectacular. Okay, there were 30. Okay, let's look at the person who said, this is terrible. There were no upvotes. Can I then make a reasonable assumption that this is helping? And it changed the way that I felt about my own work. It made me put it out there more and I think ultimately helped more people. So go through your own track record and write down, this was a win, this was a loss. This was a time that somebody said, I did well. This wasn't. And if you want to even ask people around you for honest, candid feedback, it goes a long way towards telling you where you are. And the third thing is this. We're all trying to grow our skills, but there's really two main ways that people do it. Some people shoot for credentials when they're training. They want to be some sort of an athletic trainer. They go for the certified buy, yada, yada, yada, and they get that rubber stamp over the weekend. And then there's the person who wants to be a trainer and says, you know what? That rubber stamp is nice. Maybe I learned something. But what's important is, can I deliver results for my clients? So let me take three of my friends, train them for free, and see if in four months, I can make a visible massive difference in their life. I would propose to you that that second person is a better qualified coach than the person with credentials. Assuming that they can't do what they can because people don't want you to have something on your wall that says, I'm certified. They want you to change their life in a positive way. So when you're looking for opportunities to grow and you don't want to be an imposter, focus on creating results for the people around you. Whether that means working for cheap for free, or if you're already getting paid, doing it for clients and really focusing on what it is that you can do to improve their life. That is going to take you out of the imposter camp and and into someone who is truly making a positive impact. So I hope that this has helped you. For those of you who are maybe standing there going you know what, I might be the imposter good grow in that new direction and for those of you who are feeling like I need to step up, I hope you do. So either way I have an exciting announcement for everyone which is that we just started a podcast channel. Now we do discuss charisma themes on there some of the time but it's for Ben and I to kind of just share the things that we are most interested in. I find it fascinating if you are interested in what we are doing outside of this particular channel. I recommend that you check it out. We'll have a link here on screen and in the description as well. So I hope that you enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.