End Imposter Syndrome And Boost Your Professional Confidence

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today I am excited because we're going to be continuing our conversation about money and career confidence. And today we're going to be looking at ending imposter syndrome and boosting your professional confidence. And this is so important because I talk to people all the time around a wide variety of confidence in different areas of their life. And when we talk about their career, even if they have a good job, even if they have years of experience, even if they're intelligent, even if they run their own business, even if they have a track record of success, there can still be a high degree of challenge with confidence in this area that manifests as imposter syndrome, which we'll talk about in a minute. If you haven't heard of it, you probably have. It's got a lot of it's widespread, people kind of know what it is or just general lack of professional confidence, lack of belief in themselves, in the way that they carry themselves. It doesn't show their track record, their success, their value, their ability, the show up. And so what often happens is they still are functioning and doing their job and performing. And on the outside they have a Persona of looking confident enough, they get by, but then inside it's a whole different story. It's a tornado in there, right? A lot of self doubt, a lot of self judgment, a lot of worry, a lot of over preparing for things ahead of time, a lot of rumination afterwards, a lot of doom and gloom, fear of the future, fear of being found out, shame, embarrassment, anxiety. That's what's happening underneath the surface. And that, you know, if you experienced it, it sucks, doesn't it? And so that's what we want to help shift in today's episode. And of course I'm going to give you everything I can in this chunk of time here, but to really make these shifts in a profound and powerful way. Nothing is going to compare to Coming to Portland to join us for Maximize youe Money and Career Confidence, the event that we have coming up at the end of January. It's January 31st through February 2nd, January 31st through February 2nd in 2020 in Portland, Oregon. And that's going to be three full days of really helping you master this area of money confidence. How to feel fully confident in your ability to earn money in the world, to know that you have value, to find ways to step up in your confidence in your career. Whether you run your own business or you want to, or you work for a company and you want to earn more in that field, it really comes back to confidence. I mean, you can learn more technical abilities and develop some of your skills there, but I bet that's not the issue for you. Or if it is, that's a minor thing. In fact, often confidence prevents people from learning the skills that they need. But usually it's not just a skill deficit, it's a confidence thing. And so we don't step up, we don't put ourselves out there. It's this fear of risk, fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of whatever. And as a result, we're limited. And any area of life that we're limited in, that you're limited in. I want us to be liberated. I want us to be free. So to come to that event. We're doing the super early bird promo right now. So this is a fantastic time to save over 80% more on the table. 90%, I think 80 to 90%. I don't know the exact numbers, but it's only for 1. 97. You can get your ticket, which is super discounted, as cheap as it's going to get. And that's because we want you to experience what it's like in the room. Cause I know, I know that there's some benefit that can come from a podcast and that could be big, that could be life changing and some from a book, some from a program. But nothing compares to being in the room. And it's not just because I'm so great, although I am, but it is because of the people and the energy and the community of all these people. Like minded people coming together to work on this issue. The power of that group shifts things and the conversations people have, the connections people make, just being around that is so radically different than our normal day to day. So I encourage you to come join. You can go to SocialConfidenceCenter.com and click on the Events tab and then there'll be a link to the event there. So go to SocialConfidenceCenter.com and click on Events. Or you can go to this page, Shrink for the Shy Guy, the webpage for this podcast Shrink for the Shy Guy and click on this episode and beneath in the show notes there will be a link to the directly to that event page. You can find out more about the event and book your ticket. I highly recommend it because it goes up after the super early bird. And I recommend it because don't you want to get this area of your life handled? Because money as you're going to you've heard in the last episode and heard in this one. Money confidence is not just about having a lot of money. I mean, that's what we all think. We think the solution to money anxiety is to have more money. And it's a very simplistic solution and it's not actually often true. Or at the very least, it puts the confidence in the future. I'll feel confident when I get X, when I've obtained Y. And the truth is, you often won't. Because what creates that discomfort, creates that fear, creates that anxiety, creates that insecurity is how your psychology works and how you're showing up in the world. And if you change your psychology, change the way you relate to yourself and show up differently in the world, with more boldness, with more power, with authenticity and willingness to take risk, you will start to feel more money confidence even before you have more money. And let's talk about a specific facet of money and career confidence, which is professional confidence, confidence in your career. So this is outside of just money, although it's all linked with money, right? But let's talk about how you feel day to day at work. How confident are you in yourself? How confident are you in your roles and responsibilities in your job, whatever level you are in whatever company, whatever size, or even if you run your own business and you're in a leadership position, then, right? Or maybe you're already in a leadership position in a larger company. How do you feel? Like, just between you and me, I know you got the Persona on at work and you don't reveal if you're anxious, you want to show up sobbing, but inside, on your way to work or at night when you're at home and no one's around, or your kids are asleep, or you know, you're just with your spouse or you're just alone in bed, like, how do you feel? What's your experience? Do you feel fully at peace? Then are you like, yeah, I did a great job Tomorrow, today I'll do well. Tomorrow I got this. Or is there a lot more anxiety than that? Oh, lot more insecurity than that. One of the biggest insecurities people experience around career is what has been dubbed imposter syndrome. And what this can be described as is you feel like you don't deserve to be in the role that you have in your company or in the business that you work in, or even running your own business. And people are paying you for services or for products, whatever. The role doesn't matter. Anyone can experience this. And it can be. Here's some language people use around it. Like, I don't feel like I deserve to be there. I don't know why they chose me. I can't really do the stuff that they hire me to do. I'm not really good at it. There's people that are way better than me at it. I don't know enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not skilled enough, I'm not creative enough, I'm not blah, blah, blah enough. And therefore I am less than. And not even if, but when, if people found out, and when people find out, because they inevitably will because of the failure that I am, you know, they're going to be appalled, they're going to be angry at me, they're going to be like, look at you, you fooled us. You imposter, you huckster, you quack, you know, and so we're afraid of failing and we're afraid of shame, we're afraid of ostracization or upset from people. And this can all be in the background as you walk into a work meeting. And this is especially true for people when they're new to a job, when they're new to a role, like they've been promoted, or they're not even new to a role or a job, but they're like they're taking on a new project or they're working on a more challenging level of a project. They're managing more things, they're taking on more responsibilities. That's often what leads to more money, confidence, but also money coming to you is adding more value into the company or into the world. And that involves usually taking on some higher level task or doing something new. So to earn more in a company, usually you need to be in a leadership position, right? So if you're at the technical level, you're probably not going to make as much as someone in the leadership level. So when someone moves from the technical level to a leadership level, they might feel a lot of imposter syndrome. Like, oh, I don't know if I can really lead people, and I'm just pretending and I don't know what's going on. So do you relate to any of this? Do you know what I'm talking about here? And it could be large and it could be small, it could be all the time, or it could be infrequently, just kind of certain triggers for you. So what does that. Here's what we want to do. We often try to solve this externally. We say, you know what? I need more skills, I need to learn better. I need to read books, I need to study. And I think that's all very valuable to learn skills. But the biggest issue here is not competency. You can build more competency. You can learn whatever you need to learn about leadership or whatever. The biggest issue here, again, is confidence and the way you relate to yourself and your inner game and how you see yourself. And what's probably happening when we create the imposter syndrome is we have a critic inside of us that's part of our safety police. And that critic is terrified of failure and rejection. Those are like, it's two demons that it's most afraid of, failure and rejection. And it's constantly on the lookout for ways that you might fail and ways that you might get rejected and looking to prevent that. And so what it will try to do is it will try to prevent you from even taking the job opportunities in the first place, even taking the promotional opportunities, even going for the new opportunity. You're starting that business or whatever it is you want to do. It will. It'll try to head it off at the pass and say, who do you think you are? You can't do that. It's not going to work out in any way ever, no matter what, for you. And for most people, that will keep them in their role years longer than they naturally would want to do. Keep them at a certain level in a company, in a certain position, in a certain industry, in a certain job. Not changing jobs, not changing industries, not changing careers, not starting their own business. Because that voice just heads it off at the pass. Now, let's say, though, that. So that's like imposter syndrome, and then you just kind of collapse. The other kind of imposter syndrome, which is very uncomfortable, is you don't buy into that story and you say, you know what? I'm going to start my own business anyway, or, you know what? I'm going to go for that leadership position, or, you know, I'm going to do this. And then they hire you or they promote you, or your business starts to work and you get customers or clients, and then instead of being like, hooray, you see, you see, Critic, you were wrong. I am valuable. Look, they hired me, right? Does your critic just recede into the. Go into that good night quietly? No, it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute. And it keeps going. It says, wait a minute, it was a mistake that they hired you. They don't know. They don't know that you're a fraud and imposter. They'll find out, though. Just you wait. And so it's running this, like, really ineffective survival program to try to keep you totally safe. And it's just. It's misfiring, though, right? Because you're already in that position. What are you gonna do, quit? I mean, it'll try to tell you that we had a client in our mastermind who was switching jobs, and she got, because of her networking and connection, that she worked at a previous company. People from that company, this is in the tech space, moved to another company, and then they, you know, recommended her to that new company. And then they. She got an interview and she. They hired her. And she was gonna be starting her job in about two weeks. And she was on a mastermind call with us, and she was just flooded with, like, you know, her critic. Like, you can't. I can't do this. I'm gonna fail. I'm gonna get fired. And the crazy thing is, she already got the job. They already hired her. People recommended her to the company because they knew of her skill sets. So everyone in the group could see, like, wait a minute, this doesn't seem very accurate. And it's always harder to see that for ourselves because that voice is so convincing and so compelling. And so one of the most important things that you need to get out of this episode and in your life is to be able to identify when it's your critic and it's your safety police. Then anytime there's any imposter syndrome going on, just know that that's the case and identify it. Call it what it is. Ah, this is my criticism. Ah, there's my safety police. It's terrified of stepping up in the world, terrified of going bigger, terrified of taking positive risks which could lead to amazing rewards and results. But you gotta take the risk in business and in life and in your career, and so that voice will try to stop you. So step one is we gotta be able to identify and say, you know what? That's the critic. Now, step two is not go hustle and learn 7,000 skills and read 18 books and blah, blah, blah, because I'm not against. I mean, I'm very. For ongoing personal education, being a lifelong learner. I have books all over my house. I got Audible books all the time I'm listening to things, I'm learning like crazy. But when we do that from the place of buying into what our critic says and from that place of deficit, then there's never enough, right? Because you're trying to get some sense of security. That's what you're trying to get. And so that's what step two's gotta be. Step two has gotta be finding a sense of ground or security or strength or safety in inside of yourself. And there's a few different ways that I can offer to do that. And of course, that's what we're really going to be building over the course of three days. I mean, there's some guidances and some tidbits I can give you here, but really, these are like shifts inside of yourself that take deeper work. And so I'm going to point out some of the steps here. And of course, there's going to be a second reminder to come join me. I'm going to say this multiple times because, hey, part of offering in life and in business is boldly asking for what you want. I'm going to boldly keep asking you to join me at a live event. And maybe not this one, maybe a future one, but one day, one day I'm not going to stop trying. So that's another offer to come to the event. Come check it out. Go to shrinkforthshyguy.com and below this episode, click on the link there. That's one way to get to it. So what we want to do, though, is we want to build this sense of security in ourselves. So what can you rely on? What's like, your bedrock that you can fall back on that helps you get a sense of security and certainty in yourself or in something beyond yourself? Like, how can you find that ground inside of yourself? So there you are. You gotta go handle that bigger project. And you're like, I don't know if I can handle it. And your critic's like, yeah, I know you can't handle it. Bleh. Right? And then, okay, now you've identified. Okay, that's my critic. I don't want to listen to that voice. So what do you do? Have you found your strategies for that yet? Cause you want to find some Strategies, you want to practice the hell out of them and rebuild your psychology to operate in that way in a new pathway. So one thing here's just going to give you several ideas that I found very helpful for me and for clients. One is to own your value. You got to own your value because what's happening is the critic is doing some funhouse distorto mirror where it's just showing you all the ways that you're deficient and it's completely deleting all the ways that you're amazing. And so you gotta forcefully, repetitively re guide your focus to own your value. So there's several ways to do that. One is like just making a list. That's what we encourage that Mastermind member to do is like, okay, they hired you. Why did they hire you? Make a list of 10 reasons why they hired you. Why you can bring value to their company. Maybe they don't even know all 10, right? They just got a sense of you and learned some of your skills and we're going on the referral for you. But you know that you can add value to their company. What are 10 ways that you know or think you can add value to their company or the environment or their business in terms of their systems or operations or income or sales or marketing, whatever it is that you do. What, what can you. What are 10 things? And she looked at me and was like, 10. And I purposely picked an uncomfortably high number because it's like, well, if you're not, I mean, if you just do a little bit, you're not. We want to overcorrect that. You know, we want to retrain ourselves. Just like if you're learning a new golf swing and someone, I don't play golf. But you know, this is how it works with any sort of training. You have your old swing that's say, not working very well. And so you go to the golf pro or golf lesson and they say, okay, do it like this. And they show you a new way. And then you do that new way once have you corrected your swing? I mean, you know the new way to do it, right? Well, no, because it's not in your body yet. You have to. How many times you gotta practice that new swing? Probably even more than 10, you know, probably like 100 or more. So when it comes to training your focus, it's no different than training a golf swing. So training yourself to say, what value do I bring? Other fun ways that I like to ask this question, which are, you know, just different. Looking at the same thing. Through a different lens or prism. It's what's awesome about me. Why am I awesome at work? Come up with 10 things. It's the same thing, right? Just a different way of asking that question. Maybe what value I bring doesn't trigger the same ideas. Maybe asking, why am I awesome? Why is it of benefit for the company to have me? What makes me special? Like just generating some of those things will help you start to own your value. So when that critic says you have no, you can't do, you've never done anything. It's like bumping up against reality. Some parties gonna be like, bullshit. I know that I offer all this value another thing. And you can also look at past experiences to get that sense of value. What have you done? What kind of projects have you completed? What's your track record in the past? And give a chance to really acknowledge those things. Cause so often in business and in career, it's just like I completed that. Now on to the next thing, and on to the next thing and on to the next thing. And we don't stop and say, whoa, look at that, I just did that. So do that now. What are three accomplishments that you're proud of in your career? Small or big. Recent or a long time ago. In fact, if you want to play with it more, you can come up with three old ones, like three big ones from any time in your whole career and then three small ones from the last couple months. Do you see what I'm going at here? There's no end to how many different ways you can retrain your focus. So there's different ways of looking at what it is, the value that you bring. Because the more connected you are to that value, the more you will feel that sense of ground and of certainty inside of yourself. But how else can we get that? Because there's many, many, many ways. Another one is to train yourself to trust more. And I think there's two things that we gotta. And this is not just for business and career and money, but for health and for relationships and for life. There's two things that I think we have to train Our trust in. 11 is trust in ourselves. I mean, so first of all, confidence means with faith or with trust. CONFIDES from Latin so what do you have trust in? What do you have faith in? And I think there's two big things that we need to develop. And this especially applies to professional confidence. We gotta have trust in ourselves. And so knowing your value helps build that trust, but it goes beyond that. Cause maybe you're doing something you've never done before, and so you don't have a sense of like, well, I've done that, so it's going to be easy. You're like, I don't know if I can do that. I don't know if I can pull it off. I've never done it before. And then your critics right there by your side being like, well, you can't. You're not gonna. It's gonna fail. I mean, it's gonna be even worse than failure because you're gonna start to succeed, and you're gonna do that for a little while, and then you're gonna fail even worse. You're gonna fail even bigger. It's gonna be awful, right? So that voice is gonna be right there by your side, probably for life. And our goal is to learn how to get on our own sides and learn how to gain control inside of ourselves. So that voice is not in control. And that voice starts to lose power over you and just becomes noise. That doesn't affect you in the same way. It doesn't affect your behavior at all. And the ultimate goal, I think, and this is what I talk a lot about in my upcoming book, which you'll hear a lot more about as we get into the beginning of 2020, when it's going to be released. Omos on My Own side. I'm very excited about that one. But it's like a field manual on how to work with that inner critic. I mean, this is something I wish existed. I read tons of book on how to deal with your inner critic, but a lot of them were super dry and heady and honestly just didn't plain work. So I took all the years of experience from my own working with my own inner critic and all the clients, thousands of people I've talked to over the years and condensed, like, here's what you do. Here's how you relate to your critic in a way that can neutralize its power over you. And so the ultimate goal is not just that it doesn't affect your behavior. It actually doesn't affect your emotions either. So that you're going to go start that new thing at work, and that critic says it's going to fail, and you go, okay, all right, I get it. You're scared. Off we go. And you don't feel any anxiety. You don't feel any sense of impending doom. You don't feel like you're a failure. None of that. That's what we're going for here. So trust in yourself, trust in your Ability to handle things, trust that you can learn things. How can you develop that trust? How can you find something inside of you that knows, I can handle whatever happens, I can handle whatever happens. I can learn whatever needs to be learned. And for me, sometimes just repetition of that is valuable. I can handle whatever happens. I can learn whatever needs to be learned. No matter what, I'll handle it. Just repeating that again and again and then finding evidence for that from the past, finding truth, how you did handle it in the past. And I also like to go into the future. It's like, well, what if this happens? Because your critic loves the what if scenarios and it pulls them out of nowhere, right? Like, what if this, what if that? Well, what if that. Okay, let's face that demon. I'll handle that. And I'll handle that too. Doesn't mean it's going to be pleasant or comfortable, but I'll handle that. Including your biggest fears around money failure, professional failure that's seen and known by others, public failure, you know, not making sales, not making the cut, getting laid off, getting fired, losing money in an account, having money stolen from you, going bankrupt. Like, whichever your particular flavors of fear are that come up for you around money, take a little bit of time to face them. It's uncomfortable to say, you know, what if that were to happen? I'm gonna handle that. So not facing it, as in like you're driving around in worry at 2 in the morning, being like, oh my God, what if that happens? That's not facing it. That's ruminating. I'm talking about getting into a powerful state in your body, standing tall and intentionally saying like, okay, let's go in, let's go face that Dr. Dragon right now. What is my fear? I'm fear of what? Running out of money or my business? Going out of business or getting laid off or getting fired. Okay, let's just say that happens. What would I do then? And kind of come up with a mental plan of how you would address it, how you get through that and get to the other side. And that gives you power, that gives you trust in yourself. The last thing I want to mention about trust is going to be trusting in something bigger than you. This is absolutely essential when it comes to any higher level of confidence and deep ease in your body, but especially with money, because there's no amount of money that you can accumulate, no amount of career success and accolades that you can pile up that give you a sense of total certainty that nothing will happen to you in the future, that you won't get laid off, that you won't lose money. So that fear, as long as we're like, but I need to know that nothing's going to change, I'm going to be safe no matter what. If that's our requirement and we're not trusting that we're going to. Not only that I can handle anything, but also that I can trust in life. I can trust in the unfolding of life, I can trust in the universe, I can trust in God, I can trust in my well being. I can trust that there's some guiding forces that are giving this life meaning and purpose. And maybe this is where you get into the realm of personal philosophy, spiritual beliefs, religion. But for example, one belief system that I have which is really helpful is what I put out into the world will come back to me. And I believe that to be true. And so if I'm stressed about, oh my gosh, what if something's gonna happen, death, loss and ruin in the future, say, you know, what if I keep showing up with an open heart and serving people and delivering value and helping people, then all my needs will be met. Because that's what I'm putting out into the world. And that doesn't mean that everything comes easily or that there's no discomfort or no challenges. It just means that I believe that what you put out comes. And that's a, what is that? A metaphysical belief, a spiritual belief, philosophy and energy, Something like that. I'm also a big fan of Taoism and the idea of right action and right timing and there's this flow, this current to life. And so it's not just like, what do I want? I'm going to make it happen. It's like, what do I want? My will is part of it. But then there's also this divine plan or this dao. And if I'm banging my head against a wall, that doesn't mean. That just means like the dao is showing me it's not that way, it's a different way. Tune in, listen, change what you're doing, change your approach, go a different direction. And there's so much there around thousand that's super valuable. Maybe I'll do a whole other episode on that. But anyway, there's a lot here. Let's turn this into action. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step for today is to do one of the action steps that I suggested earlier in this episode, you know, we were talking about. I'd say the best one would probably be the coming up with your value. So come up with 10 things that make you valuable in your company, in your business, in your field. 10 ways you bring value, 10 ways that you're awesome in work. You know, different ways of asking it, which I did earlier in the episode. I want you to actually literally make that list. Do it on your phone right now. Open up a file on your phone right now and put them in. Because it will start to shift something in your focus and in your psychology and you'll literally notice a difference when you think about work and when you're at work. So thanks for being with me today. I love this stuff. I love this topic. I love you. I love being able to share. Thank you for listening. Thank you for participating with me in this, in these teachings and this experiment of confidence, Operation Mass Liberation. And I look forward to seeing you in the future, hopefully at the Maximize youe Money and Career Confidence event in Portland. Until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.