Imposter Syndrome With Bibigi Haile

Hey, girl. Welcome to the get yout Guy coaching podcast. My name is Anwar White, but you can just call me your own personal dating and relationship coach. Each week you'll hear actionable advice, tips, and strategies that you can implement in your own love life. I'm talking about healing your heart, dating effectively, and understanding men so that you can, you guessed it, get your guy. Are you ready to level up your love life? All right, let's go.

I never felt the way I do about anyone but you.

Hello, my loves. I want to thank you so much for joining me today. I have such a special guest, someone who is close to my heart, who I just love, love, love so much. We have the personal branding activist herself, Bibi G. Hailee. The people that know her call her Bibi. So, Bibi, thank you so much for joining me today. How you?

I am fine. I'm super happy to be here.

I'm so happy that you're here too. And for those that are listening, we are going to be talking all about imposter syndrome and how it can take over one's life. But before we do that, can you just tell everybody kind of what you do and who you serve and the amazing work that you do?

I have just recently started saying personal branding activist. Before, I used to call myself a coach. And, you know, like, when you have shoes that don't fit quite right, you have clothes that are. And I was like, I'm not a coach. And then I'm an ex consultant. So I was like, okay, so my personal branding consultant. No advice. No, I'm an activist. You know why? Because I feel like personal branding is that vehicle that women in corporate and women as entrepreneurs can use to put themselves out there where they're the ones who are writing their stories, they're the ones who are owning it and who are making things happen for themselves. So personal branding activists, the women that I work with are typically women in corporate and senior roles. I don't really work with executives. Maybe a couple of times, but usually it's women who are senior manager, senior director, VP level, and recently more and more with entrepreneurs just because I am one. And I just really nerd out about helping, you know, women put themselves out there. So that's what I do.

Yeah, I love that. And how did you get into this work?

So it's a bit of a long story. I was a consultant in change management. I still have some. Some legacy projects. But when I did work women, after my son was born in 2015, I realized that I really needed communities of Women. So I build some for myself. And then within those communities, I was supporting women around, interviewing showing up at work in a way that worked for them. And then when Covid hit, I just didn't feel like going back to corporate. All of my energy was turned towards these community of women. And so I started getting a couple of contracts. And I'm just really good at this stuff. And I'm also good at it for myself. I have used personal branding to put myself out there, and I believe in it. I believe in women taking their place. And so that's how I ended up in this space. And it's work that I love deeply.

It sounds like you've been able to be an activist for yourself.

That's exactly it.

And I just love that you were able to let us know how amazing you are at what you do. How can. And this is a little bit outside of the topic, but how can we become activists but. Or our own brands? Like, what are some of the things that we need to think about? I think that this is, like, adjacent to the imposter syndrome that we're going to be talking about in this episode. I think the label of activists is so powerful and wanted to get your thoughts on how we can just, even in our everyday life, become our own activists.

I think you're going to love my answer because the answer is boundaries. And the way you put boundaries is by knowing what you are spectacular at. And one of the things that trips up women is that we feel the need to be spectacular at so many things that we feel like we're not being spectacular at all those things. And so we feel like a fraud putting ourselves forward. But I'm really bad at some things. A lot of things. The fact that I'm clear about. Yeah. But once you know that you are an unbelievable coach, the fact that you know what you're good at allows you to say, I'm not good at this. So you're putting boundaries around that and you're saying, I will show off about this because I'm the one who can help you in this space. But if you ask me, and this is my particular case, to manage a project for you, I can guarantee failure because I suck at project management.

Yeah.

I will forget details. I, you know, I don't know how to do details. So by being very, very clear about that one or two things that you're super good at, but also not believing yourself when that little voice says, but I'm not good at anything. Mm.

Mm.

It's those things that you think are so easy for you that come to you. Like, you don't even have to think about it. You're like, yeah, but that's not anything. That's like, can't everybody do it? No, no, no, they can't. So that's the. I guess the number one place to start is figuring out from where you are speaking.

Yeah, those one to two things too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. Okay, girl. Well, let's talk about it.

Right?

The big old elephant in the room, imposter syndrome. So what is it to you and how do you think about it? And I just want to let everyone know that although she has tooted her own horn a bit in this podcast already, she is the imposter syndrome expert. She is the person that knows the most about this in my life and that's why I have her on my podcast. So I just want to let you all know that you are going to be treated so much during this episode.

This is so meta because as I hear you say that it's like triggering me. I'm like, wait a minute, I'm not an expert. I'm sort of interested in this stuff, but I'm not an expert.

So this is very good.

Don't.

Do not believe her. She is. She is.

Let me talk about what it's not first, if I may. It's not a lack of self confidence. A lot of the times people will say, I wish I had more confidence, I wish I was more self confidence. And like, it's my imposter syndrome talking about. It's not the same thing. With lack of self confidence, you're going to be doubting your ability to do something. Often there is an inverse relationship with experience. So when you start in a job, you lack self confidence. When you've been doing that job for a year, you have more self confidence, et cetera, et cetera. Right? With imposter syndrome, there's a. It's actually the success and the ability has been demonstrated. So the definition of it is an internal feeling of intellectual phoniness felt by high achieving people when they're faced with a task despite evidence of success. So you have gotten that promotion, you have gotten that PhD. You know what you are doing, but you are attributing your success to everything but your competence. You're attributing it to luck. You're attributing it to that amazing team. You're attributing it to being at the right place at the right time. You're attributing to the fact that you spend all night doing it. Anything but the fact that you are competent at this. And then what happens is, what is very particular about it is that fear of being found out because you have succeeded. The door has been opened for you. You are in the space, but you are feeling like a fraud. You are feeling like somebody's going to wake up and realize that there's somebody who's not supposed to be in here, and that is me. And it's that anxiety that is typical of the imposter syndrome feeling. Right. Because you cannot learn anything that will take it out. Whereas with self confidence, you can say, okay, you know what, if I go in, I get that data management, maybe I might be more comfortable in this particular project here, you can learn anything. This is where you see women say, I'm going to get another certification. I'm the queen of certifications. I have degrees, I have certifications. Because every time I'm like, yeah, I'm not ready yet. I'm just going to go and get certified. Yeah, I'm not ready yet. I need a PhD. I need a second PhD. This is. This is not good. This was like a project. Now I need the research. You know, imposter syndrome for women comes to sit on, like, this fertile bed of societal, cultural, historical confirmation of our not enoughness. I think about imposter syndrome as a feeling of not enough. I'm not funny enough. I'm not experienced enough. I'm not competent enough. I'm not thin enough, I'm not insert whatever your medicine is enough. But then when society reflects that to you also, it's just like this love fest. Like, I think of this of myself, and then society thinks this of me. And so then, hey, it confirms this not enoughness. Right. And I think that is partly why it's more intense for women and traditionally marginalized groups.

Yeah.

Because society says the same thing as our inner critic.

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit because I think that we've concluded that everyone has this, even if it isn't as intense. Right. How do we act or behave when imposter syndrome is present or in the room with us?

Let's say I'm laughing because half of your audience is going to be like, oh, my God, I have it.

It's. Yeah, it's not a disease. I'm sorry, it is not. It's not a virus. It's not. Maybe it's a pandemic. Who knows? I just feel like it's always been there. Right. But I think that this kind of word now, right? This imposter syndrome is so big out there now, people are becoming more aware of it. And that's one of the reasons why we're talking about it. I think. It's present in so many parts of our lives. Not just work, but also in our dating and romantic life. But we'll definitely talk about that later.

So the way it shows up is I like to think about it as hiding behavior. And so this hiding behavior is we try to not be in the light, not be so that we're not found out. So we will procrastinate when we have something to do because we're like, oh my God, someone is going to see that I'm not good at this. And so we sort of circle and we don't do the work. And the danger with procrastination, and I'm the queen of it, is that procrastination leads you to a space of adrenaline. And a lot of us do our best work on adrenaline, right? So the behavior sort of feeds itself because you then succeed because you are so, you know, pumped full of that, oh my God, I have three hours left to, you know, write this paper. But the problem is it then feeds into. If anybody knew that I wrote this paper in only three hours, it would confirm how much of a fraud I am. So you're just in the self perpetuating loop, right? Then you have like other hiding behaviors where we will keep changing, we'll keep changing our job, we'll keep changing our business model, we keep changing our PhD, our city. You're just dodging that light. So I may just give you a little anecdote. I've been an entrepreneur for most of my life. You know, I tried the corporate gig once or twice and I just, I was like, nope, this is not for me. And the story I was telling myself about it not being for me is that I'm too independent. I don't like people to do my review, my annual review. I'm like, nobody's going to tell me the way that I should learn and develop myself.

And, you know, no one gets to judge me.

No one gets to judge me. And then when I started doing research on imposter syndrome, it was like number one up there where people who suffer from this want to stay away from that spotlight and from judgment and from people telling them that they might not be as good as they think they are and that they will live it as a failure. And so what I thought was my autonomy, my liberty, and look at me, this free spirit was me dodging people's judgments. So I found that, like, an interesting decision to have. The other behavior we might have is we don't finish things. And the reason you don't finish is, again, if you don't launch your project, if you don't launch your product, no one can judge you.

Right.

You're the one who can say, well, yeah, no, I'm still refining the business model. I'm still, you know, I have a couple of tweaks to do here. Like, imposter syndrome does not deal well with an agile model. Right. Like this half. We're going to put something out there and then we're going to tweak it and prove it. No, it's just we don't finish so that we are not judged as an entrepreneur. We might undercharge because we undervalue. I'm not an expert enough. I couldn't be charging this level of.

Pricing or when we're getting a corporate job, we don't negotiate as hard as we really should or want to because, yeah, that's absolutely.

It's exactly the same thing. We'll take the first thing that that is offered to us because we're like, you know, we don't want to be found out. Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So those are some of the behaviors that you will typically see. And I put them all. This category of hiding, like dodging that bullet. You're moving. So you're a moving target. Right, for judgment.

Yeah, you mentioned this a little bit, but I want to talk a little bit more about this because I think that this is really important and how imposter syndrome creeps up with women and minorities specifically. I work primarily with women of color and I hear about this a lot. Obviously not just in work, but also with dating and so many other aspects of their life. And how do you think that this is represented in their lives? Or how do you think that it is different for minorities vs non minorities?

Can I give you an example?

Of course.

Because this came up yesterday. I saw a video that I was like, oh, my God, this is a perfect example. So let me just set it up first. When you are not enough feelings, like I had said before, meet the world, telling you you're not enough. You have this thing happening where it's like, oh, it's confirmed. The world is telling me the same thing that my inner critic is telling me. Right. And that is what is happening a lot of the times. With minorities, with women. Recently in Quebec, there was the first black man that was hired as the chief strategist did you see that?

Yes. For the bank, right?

Yes. For one of the largest institutions in Quebec. And he was hired as the chief strategist economist. And he was interviewed. And in that interview, two things happened. Number one, the interviewer called him by his name without the normal trappings of respect that one might expect when you speak to someone at that level.

Mm.

Then the second thing that happened is the interviewer spent a lot of time, and I was looking at his body language. So this is. This is me. I will own that. This is me analyzing that video. But the interviewer spent a lot of time on the fact that he was the first, quote, unquote, diverse person to have been hired by that position. That was the first question he asked. And if you look at the face of the strategist, he's like, I can't believe this is the first question that was asked of me. And so the way he asked that question was in this surprise tone of voice. And then he said, so how does it make you feel as a person, Ish. From diversity to have been hired to this prestigious organization? So this is a man who. He's there for a reason, and he's. He's seeing what is happening. So he is. Okay, but imagine if your inner voice is telling you you are not made for this role. If your inner voice is telling you you're only here because there was an affirmative action quota. If your inner voice is telling you, we have been in a space. There's been so much activism around getting people of color and minorities into roles that they have just knocked at my door to bring me in here. It has nothing to do with my competence. So if your inner voice is telling you that, and then you have an interviewer that is like, so how does it feel as a person of issued from the diversity to have been put into such a prestigious role and to be the first one, it confirms to you that you don't belong. It confirms your imposter syndrome. So I think that is one of the dangers that we might live. And I say we, as you know, women, people of color, people in minority, like, we meet this skeptical space. Look. That we confirm in our heads. That we might confirm in our heads.

Thank you for that. Let's talk about how imposter syndrome can manifest itself in our careers. Right. What I do know is that my clients and my listeners out there are very serious about their careers and their money. And. And this is something that I think potentially hinders them. So I would love to get your thoughts on how this shows up and how they can even potentially overcome it in the professional space.

So one of the ways it shows up is what we discussed around your capacity to negotiate for what you're worth. But there are a couple of places also where it shows up. So one of the things that is behind imposter syndrome is what is called your competence model. So think about it as how you answer the phrase, I am competent when I. And so I am competent when I can do everything by myself. I am competent when I know everything about a subject. I am competent when I don't need to study to know something. It comes to me naturally. So there's a model, there's a mental model that we have around the way that we think about competence, and that feeds into imposter syndrome. So imagine if your mental model is, I don't need any help to do this. You come into a project, you're given a new task, a new project. You don't ask for resources, and women do this a lot. You don't ask for a budget. You don't ask for human resources. You don't ask for a subject matter expert. You don't ask for time. And then you go out and you assume that you can do all of this by yourself. And then you freeze like a deer in the headlight because you realize that you can't. But now you think it's because of you, because your model says, I should be able to do all of this by myself. Yeah. So it puts us in situations where we have set ourselves up to fail. And not only have we done that, but we have set ourselves up to fail in a way that will confirm our lack of competence. So understanding those models, understanding the way we think about competence, allows us then to see our behavior when we are hired in an organization and we think, I should know everything about everything. We know this is our model. So we'll say, hey, do you think I could book a round of interviews with a few people here so you can teach me the culture? Hey, do you have any documentation that I can read? And I'll take a month to get onboarded properly, and then I'll be ready to go for the project rather than, yeah, tomorrow I'm able to do this. I remember one mandate that I started. I did not ask for help. And this was stuff that I had no idea how to do. I knew the big pieces, but there was an expertise, a subject matter expertise that I needed the clients to give me. And I didn't ask because I assumed that I was supposed to know how to do it myself.

I think also what happens too really quickly is that if you ask for help, right, there's this level of feeling like you're incompetent. Right? But so many people ask for help so many times. I was just chatting with a client and she's going up for this promotion. And I was like, okay, well, you need to talk and create allies with people that are going to be interviewing your old boss, this potential new boss that was all foreign to her. I was like, no, we need to create relationships here. Right. And ask for what you want. Right. And allow people to help you without thinking that it means that you're incompetent to actually get this job. If anything, it's going to help you and they're going to feel honored to actually help you and be asked to help. Right?

Yeah, 100%. 100%. It's really, really critical. And it's the only way that we're going to stop the inner critic and the voice in our heads if we're able to stop and say, this is what I need. And it brings us to the beginning of our conversation when you ask me, how can we brand ourselves? If you know what you're excellent at, you can say, I can do this piece. But for the rest of it, this is the type of help that I'm going to need.

Yes, Yes. I love that. Okay, girl, let's actually talk about dating and imposter syndrome and dating. I know my listeners are like, okay, this is really good. This is, like, great information. But, like, what does this mean about my love life? So I want to ask you about imposter syndrome and dating and kind of what that looks like for you, and then I'll share my thoughts.

A couple of things here. And I actually made some notes about this to manage my own imposter syndrome. Okay? So I think one of the characteristics of imposter syndrome that I talk about, right. Is this notion of not enoughness. Right? Or even the feeling that everyone knows something that you don't, that you are not that person who understands, who gets it. Like there's something happening that you don't get right now. Imagine coming into the dating space with the feeling that there is something that you don't totally understand. This feeling like you're on quicksand, something is happening that you don't get. The first thing that's going to be impacted is your standards.

Yeah.

How do you set standards for what it is that you want? When you're on quicksand, you're like, I'm sure. There's something I need to be understanding here. So you're not setting yourself as I'm allowed to set standards, I'm allowed to say what I want. If you're coming from a place of I'm not enough, how do you say this is what I want, These are my boundaries. So standards is number one, Number two is boundaries.

How do you say, let's talk about standards for a second because I think this is so, so, so, so critical, right? That if you are thinking that you are a fraud, that you are not lovable, right? That just because you haven't had a consistent boyfriend or a long term relationship that you are unlovable, then your whole threshold is so much lower than it needs to be. And then it's like a perpetual, It's a cycle, right? It's like I keep on attracting these not so great guys because I'm using my history that maybe isn't super full as an indication of my potential, my love potential, my lovable potential, all of that. And so I think standards are so important because some of us will actually accept lower than what we know of ourselves to be because we would rather have something and feel we've done something, we've accomplished something, when deep down inside we know that we're being an imposter even in our own love life, 100%.

And part of that what will happen with those standards is again, it's self perpetuating because you take somebody who's much lower than what you would want for yourself. And I'm not talking of them as being low as a person, it's just you. This is not your standard of what you.

How they show up in the world and what you need in your life.

Yeah, exactly. But so because you're feeling this way about yourself when this relationship tanks, because it will. What do you say to yourself? I cannot believe this person. I let this person in my life. That's not what you say. I wonder what I did wrong, that this failed. I wonder what.

I want to stop you there because you said failed. And I think it's important to understand that if you are entering into a relationship with huge imposter syndrome and not showing up as your full self, super vulnerable and talking about, as you noted earlier, the things that you're not great at and being vulnerable and sharing all parts of yourself, ultimately your relationship is going to fail. Bibi is 100% correct, right? That like we cannot allow ourselves to kind of navigate our relationships with this. I'm not enough. They're gonna find me out. Right. And once they find me out, they're gonna break up with me. Because you're going to be representing yourself in a way that is not true to who you are. And what I do know is that if you are doing that, they're never gonna be able to love you because you're not showing up as you 100%.

And, I mean, the logical next one is boundaries, right?

Yeah.

You and I have talked about this so much, and boundaries is space of learning for me, Very much so. But how do you set boundaries if you're struggling with imposter syndrome? How do you set boundaries if you feel like you're not enough? How do you say to somebody, this is. No, this is my limit? You know, I remember having gone on a date, one particular date where he was an hour late. And I didn't ask myself if that was a problem. Literally didn't. And it's in hindsight that it was like, what just happened there? Somebody showed up an hour late, and you did not ask yourself if that was a problem. So the setting of boundaries is something that will be really, really impacted by the way that you think about yourself and whether you think you're enough or you're not enough.

Totally true. And also, sometimes you're gonna have to set those boundaries before you actually figure out that you are enough, which is so hard. Right. And I think that's my value add for so many of my clients. I'm like, no, we're setting these boundaries, and you're gonna catch up to the boundaries. Right. Because what will happen is that when you set those boundaries and you actually see people following them, you start to have physical proof of possibility that, oh, I'm worth this. I'm enough to have these boundaries because people are following them. All I had to do was just set them up.

Absolutely.

Right. So it's important to realize that, like, it's not one of these things that, like, one of these days, you're just gonna feel like you're everything. And, like, now I can set my boundaries. You're gonna have to set your boundaries well in advance. That's how the order of this goes. And people don't do that. They're waiting. They're waiting to work on themselves. They're waiting to, like, get their shit together. They're waiting to, like. When I'm together and I'm not a. That I. That's when I'm gonna, like, come in and I'm gonna kill it, and I'm gonna get my.

It's not a Cognitive process. It's not a process that happens in your head. It's not a cognitive process. It's one where, and this is, you know, in the dating space, but in any space, it's one where you do not believe. And I'm saying this from a place of love and self compassion. You do not take for granted the chatter that's going on in your head. You do not take it for granted. And what that means is when it is telling you one thing and then a coach like you will say, look, trust me, no, you do this, you do it. And then it demonstrates another option to you. And so you see that there is more than one possibility, more than one reality. And you can be like, you know what? The reality of waiting one hour for this fool to show up is not one that I want to continue entertaining. And now you have an option because you have tested reality B. That feels much better.

And then what does that do? What that ultimately does is it puts into question all of the other crazy, shitty, non serving thoughts that you may have and gives you possibility, gives you expansion to have a new reality, right? Or at least be open to seeing a new reality. Which I think is transformational.

It is right. It is 100% the very idea. And this has been transformational for me. The idea that the fact that you have a thought in your head does not mean that there needs to be an action related to that thought is absolutely transformational. It's not because I think that I am not enough, that I need to act upon it. I can question it. I can be like, well, what if I was? What if that's not true? What if he's the one who's the biggest loser in town? You can edit that if you want, but what if he's the one who's.

We're not editing that.

He's probably the loser.

You know what I'm saying? So, so once that thought creeps into your head, now all of a sudden you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I need some time. Because there's a lot of questioning that I need to do around the things that I was taking for granted and I was taking for a fact. And now like you said, you have options. And this applies to dating. But the truth is the work that I do with women is around seeing those possibilities for themselves in the workplace and in putting themselves out there.

I think part of imposter syndrome and dating also relates to the fact that I think a lot of people will either like self shame or they're always thinking it's their fault, something that they did that actually messed everything up. And it's my fault because I didn't do X, Y and Z. And part of dating is realizing that there are multiple parties. There's not just you involved in dating. Right. That oftentimes it's the other person or it's both of you. Right. It's not always just you. It's kind of egotistical to think that it's all because of me, that this didn't work, or he didn't call or he didn't text me, or he didn't show up for the date on time or. No, it's really on him. Right. And I think that to be able to kind of put some distance between yourself and the situation and the other person is so important in realizing that not everything is your fault. Which means that you don't have to be the imposter. Right.

Not everything is about you. Like you said, not everything is about you.

Yeah. It's an important lesson to learn. And I think that a lot of, specifically a lot of women do make it about them are saying, it's because I said this that it's not working out. It's because I did this, it's because I didn't text really quickly that girl, you can't do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing to the right person. I truly 100% believe that. And doesn't matter what you did, as long as you're able to communicate that and actually come to the table and be able to connect and be vulnerable and actually talk through a variety of different things. That's what this is about. This isn't about the things that you did or that thing that you said or whatever like that the imposter syndrome comes out in dating when you're not trusting yourself enough to be able to be yourself 100% of the time and to own all of yourself in a relationship. Right.

Can I jump in there?

Of course.

Anwar, for one particular thing. You talked about vulnerability. We often think about vulnerability as something that you are for somebody else in a relationship. But I've come to think about vulnerability as something that you are for yourself, being vulnerable to yourself, and so fully showing up for yourself, like actually seeing what's going on, the good, the bad and the ugly, and just being like, I'm okay with this, like, I welcome the person that you are before you can put yourself in front of somebody and be vulnerable with them. It's again, that self awareness thing. Right. You have to be vulnerable to yourself and I have found in my own journey that that is what was the hardest thing. Yeah. It's being vulnerable and self compassionate with yourself so that then you can do it with somebody else because you can't practice with somebody, something that you're not able to do with yourself.

That's so true. So true. Vulnerability is actually when you have a lot of imposter syndrome, one of the hardest things to do.

Right. So when I talk to my clients. Right. Who are smart and successful and have achieve so much, but still have that imposter syndrome that they're trying to run away from, but it's always following them wherever they go, however much they achieve. That's why it's so hard to be vulnerable. And that's why I have a whole module on it. Because if we don't get that right early in my program, we're not going to find a lot of success or getting toward your love goals because that's the center of it all.

Yeah. If you think about imposter syndrome behavior as hiding, how can you be vulnerable if you're hiding?

Yeah.

From everything, from everyone and from yourself. Like, I'm good. I can do this. I got this. I don't need help. I'm fine.

I'm okay.

Yeah, I'm okay. Like my particular brand of medicine was, I would ask you once if I see in your body language that there is the slightest hesitation, slightest, you might blink because you know there's a piece of sand in your eye. I'm like, I'm fine. I got this. Don't worry about it.

Yeah.

That's not vulnerability. I don't got this. I actually need help.

Yeah. That's so important. I wanted to talk a little bit because I work with women of color and oftentimes what happens is a lot of them have either studied at PWI's predominantly white institutions or have worked in a corporate setting with a circle that is mostly white wealthy. And so what I hear often is that a lot of the women of color that I work with also feel this imposter syndrome when it comes to the men of the same race. Right. That they're dating and they're talking to. So give me your thoughts on that. Right. Especially black women. Right. Black women, I think sometimes will feel like, I don't really know if one, I get black men and two, if black men are even checking for me. Right. Because there's so much in society and oftentimes black women specifically are not necessarily supported or feel supported. And so what are your thoughts about that?

This One is a touchy one. I'm going to talk from my own personal experience. I lived and grew up in a lot of different countries, but mainly in Western schools. So French schools, French from France, we met them. And then coming here to. To Quebec and like you said, I've always, you know, more often than not been the only black person in a corporate setting, the only black woman. And I was not raised understanding the culture a little bit, but I wasn't raised as an Ethiopian or Irandees. And so basically, I think what happens is you don't understand the codes. You know that there are expectations, there are codes there, there are things going on, but you don't understand them. And so that feeling of not enoughness is something is happening here that I don't get. And so it's very difficult to trust. It's very difficult to be vulnerable because you feel like there are layers happening of codes that you should understand, but you don't understand. And if you are feeling any measure of imposter syndrome when you don't understand something, you don't think that it is the responsibility of the other person to give you the code or the key. You think, why am I not understanding this? It's me. What did I do wrong that I don't understand this interaction? Why are other people finding it so easy when I'm not? And so I think this is more of a very weird reversal of situation where you look like the people, but you don't have the cultural codes, so you don't know how to interact. And then you feel like an imposter just because there seems to be something going on. You know it, you can feel it, you can see it, but you don't understand it.

What you're describing is also how people feel not just in their dating life. I'm talking about those people of color that have gone through the different ranks and they come home to their family, right? And friends back home and they've almost. This sounds really shitty, but I think people will get it at home. They've almost graduated from their family a bit. So going back home, at least I'll speak about my personal experience. Went to boarding school. Then when I would come home, it'd be like, this is weird. This is different. This isn't my life. It's familiar, but it's not my life. I don't get it. I don't understand it anymore. But I know that I belong here in some way, shape or form. So I feel this pressure to lean into this, to try to make this Happen. Right. And one of the reasons why I was bringing this up because I think it's important. And one thing that I wanted to say in this podcast is that for women of color, I want you to be dating all kinds of men. I don't want us to feel limited that we have to date specifically in our own race. And I know there might be some people that are going to be pissed that I said that. I don't really care. I am focused on getting my ladies love, whatever it looks like, because I know that the majority of the time it doesn't look like the way that we idealized it to look like. I'm focused on you finding someone that's going to be there for you and support you. And I think the pressure of finding someone in your own race can be overwhelming for a lot of women of color. And when you have that pressure, plus this kind of imposter syndrome around your culture, around black men, Hispanic men, Asian men, it can be a very hard and almost intimidating space to try to navigate and enter into when it comes to dating. Right. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to kind of bring this up and realize that you don't have to feel that pressure. Right. You get to date and talk to whoever you want to talk to. And if they get you, which is really what we want to focus on, versus us trying to focus on trying to get them and making them the priority, we're doing this wrong. Right. We want to make sure that there is a vibe there and there's some compatibility there. What are your thoughts, Bibi?

I do tend to date primarily black men. I do hear you on the capacity to be seen and heard and recognized and the difficulty that can come from that. I think it's multi layered. You know, there are so many different experiences that come from there. And I think part of the way to navigate that at least my journey is understanding what I want and what I need to create around my own experience, boundaries, comfort levels, standards, so that I can go after what I want without compromising who I am and my self worth. I think there's space for everybody. But the problem is when we go at it from a place of not enoughness, that is what I'm trying to avoid, to feel like I'm not enough in any kind of interaction. Once I have that clarified for myself, then it's about the work of creating a trusting interaction with a man.

We've talked so much about imposter syndrome. Let's talk about how we can start to overcome It Right. Because I feel like this is obviously can be a hindrance for a lot of people, but there are ways in which we can overcome this and we can succeed and thrive. And so I wanted to ask you what are the ways in which you work with your clients to help to overcome this?

It's very strange to hear someone say that. The cool thing about imposter syndrome is that it's one of those that once you see it, you can't unsee it. When I give webinars or talks describing the behaviors and describing like the competence model, people are like, oh my God, I get it now. And just the I get it now turns on a switch that makes them do and think differently. So number one is at least understanding what is happening for you so that you can pattern interrupt. There are some behaviors that you're going to want to change and like you said, you have to do the thing first and then believe the result that you see.

And that's gonna feel weird.

It's going to feel really weird. And or I talk to myself, I stand in front of the mirror and I talk to myself and I tell myself a lot of things and then I put my hand on my cheek and like I do a lot of exercises that feel strange that I'm like if there's a hidden camera people are going to think I'm crazy. But it does have an impact when I touch my cheek or my arms and I pat myself. It has a physiological impact when you take your child in your hands and you hug them. That physical feeling of touch has an impact on your brain. And so when I'm feeling triggered, I will put my hands on my cheek and I'll say, are you okay? Everything is going to be okay. What's going on? And so I have that. It sounds weird, but when you do it, you're creating this feeling of internal safety where that triggered person inside of you is going to say, okay, I really hate it when you go on a date with this man. But if you don't do that self compassion thing and you show up for yourself, that voice is not going to come up and so you're going to go on a second date. That was a little bit of a tangent. But one of the things is around showing yourself that self compassion. The other thing is understanding what your imposter syndrome scenario is. And so it's like what is your imposter syndrome movie? It's going to be different for me and it's going to be different for you. The questions are what triggers it because you're not going to be triggered for everything. I know that as a mom, I have zero imposter syndrome. I wasn't trained at this. We all woke up one day and we were parents and we're like, whoa. But I don't feel any imposter syndrome with this ever. But I do know people who do feel as parents who have that feeling of imposter syndrome. So it will show up differently for each of us. And we need to understand our triggers. We need to understand the physical reaction of imposter syndrome for us. So I'll feel it in my heart, like, sermon. I don't know how you say in English, like, it. It's pinching, like in my chest. And then. So understand what situations give you that. That feeling. And so when you have that movie in your head, you know to interrupt it when you start. When I feel the pinching in my chest, the next question that comes up is, huh, I wonder what's going to happen? Or now I get curious about what's around me because something's happening in my body that's sending me a message that there is a potential issue. Another thing that you can do, and that's critical. And I think even in dating is super important. And I think this is work until the day we die is change the way you talk yourself. I read somewhere, I don't know where, that our brain is always listening. So if you tell yourself, oh, my God, I can't believe how stupid I am, oh my God, I'm such an idiot. I can't believe I just said that. Oh my God, how could I have said such a dumb thing? Your brain is primed to feel stupid, idiotic, and dumb when you are in an interaction with somebody. So you have to check the words you really do. Even when it feels uncomfortable when you use the word stop yourself. Or even I don't know, or even I don't know. And you taught me that. Actually, you taught me that to take the time when I don't know comes out. Just. You know what I do know. Let me just give it. What if I knew, what would it be?

Yeah, exactly.

So that's really important. Language matters. Language matters. We all know that for so many things. And how we talk to ourselves matters. And then this is this notion of what you believe and what you don't. You know, you and I talked about this during the. In the middle of the podcast, I think where taking our thoughts for reality that has to lead to an action. If I think this about myself, it means I Need to do this. But what if it was something else?

Right?

He's an hour late. I must not be that attractive. He's an hour late. He wasn't raised right. One is about me, one is not about me.

That's right.

Both of those exist. Which one do I choose? So it's that question. Just even if you don't make the choice, because that's like the other step. But even if you don't make the choice, ask the question. What if it wasn't that? What if I didn't believe that first thought that comes to my mind and I looked for an alternative thought? So those are some things you can play around with.

I love it. So we had here. It sounds like physical touch actually does help us to become secure within ourselves. Right. The way that we talk to ourselves, I always say talk to it like you are your child or speak to your inner child and not necessarily adult you. Because adult you, I think, is not even, like, really there. It's really like when you're triggered. You gotta talk to your own inner child or even like a best friend, especially in the third person. Right? Anwar, you got this. How are you feeling? Why are you feeling this way?

100%.

Understand your body roadmap and understand where you are feeling triggered when your imposter syndrome is starting to come up. For me, it's my stomach, right? It's like the left side of my stomach. I know, like, okay, something's going on here. I've got to figure out what's going on. And I'm asking myself, okay, why am I feeling this way? What's going on? Yeah. And then thirdly, you were talking about.

Do I believe this thought or do I not believe this thought?

Having the choice to write, to create opportunities or possibilities of interpretations of what's going on, about how, like, my first thought might not be the final thought or reality, that it can actually be something else. And realizing that there are multiple realities, not just the first one that comes comes to your head. There are plenty of them. Yeah, I love that so much. Bibi, thank you so much for coming and helping all of my listeners better understand imposter syndrome and how it may or may not be affecting them. Right. And how they can kind of overcome some of those thoughts, the hiding right. That happens so much with imposter syndrome and avoidance. For my listeners who want to continue this work to level themselves up and put themselves on another level in their career, in their dating life, in all aspects of their life, how can they connect with you? How can they reach you.

There are two ways. I am a LinkedIn nerd, so you will find me there all the time. Bibiji Hailey. So you can follow me there. The other way is I deeply believe in community for women. And so I have a Facebook community called Reggies and Beauvoir and they can join. And so it's a bunch of amazing women who are doing this work together and supporting each other. And so they are more than welcome to join us there.

I'm going to have all of this in the show notes because I know some people out there like Booj.

What? What?

What did that girl say?

So people go to the show notes, click on those links, join the Facebook group, find her on LinkedIn, connect with her, have a conversation with her. What I love about your work, Bebe, and is that you create possibility in individuals that have had a limited view of their potential.

Yeah.

And I think the beauty of your coaching is helping people become their own activists, but also being their activists until they can take over the reins a hundred percent.

Thank you for saying that. On my website, I used to say what I want is for you to fire me as a coach.

Yeah. That's what it's about.

That's my goal. Fire me so you can just be your own badass self and you don't need my voice in your head. Yeah.

Yeah. So people reach out to her. She is going to help you if you feel like you need the help for this. Phoebe, thank you so much for joining me, girl. This has been so much fun and so amazing. I'm so glad that you've been here and been able to share all of your knowledge. As you'll tell, I let you go, girl, because this is your domain. It is not mine. And I wanted the people to hear it pure and from your mouth. So I'm just so happy that you were here. Thank you so much.

Thank you. I love being here. I loved hanging out with you, and I hope that your listeners take a little bit of something that can be.

Useful for they're going to take a lot of it. I know I have.

Thank you, Anwar.

Hey, girl. Thank you so much for listening to the get yout Guy coaching podcast. If you like this episode and want to want to talk with me personally, please book a free consultation at www.getyourguycoaching.com apply or subscribe and leave me a review. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, talk.