Why Impostor Syndrome Never Goes Away (Until You See This)

Do you struggle at work? Not necessarily out there, maybe you're doing your job okay, but in here and in here where you feel a sense of, I'm not quite there yet. Maybe people are going to discover something about me. Maybe I lucked into this position. Maybe I'm going to be exposed in some public way. They're going to see I'm going to fail. It's all going to go badly. It's going to unravel. And there's a chronic feeling of maybe incompetence. You're just not quite up to snuff. Other people in your role would probably do it better, right? And underneath that maybe is a chronic feeling of self-doubt at work, not believing yourself, not trusting in yourself. And when you try to look back at accomplishments and other things, it just, it doesn't seem to work, right? If you relate to this, there's a term for it. It's called imposter syndrome. Maybe you've heard that term. And a lot of the solutions are a bit more superficial, and I'll cover some of the key mistakes I see people make when they're trying to solve this, as well as maybe you just try to push through, right? Here's how do I show up with executive presence? And we try to operate on top of that festering self-doubt. And if you know anything about me, I really want to get down to that root and actually solve it and heal it so you can be free in your life. I'm Dr. Aziz. I'm the founder of the Center for Social Confidence and the author of numerous bestselling books on confidence, including the most relevant one to this discussion, which is called Doubtless, just came out not that long ago, a couple months ago. And it's about how you can fundamentally believe in yourself and then move forward and trust in life beyond that. And this, this believing in yourself is such a clichéd phrase, and yet it is the true antidote to imposter syndrome. I'm going to show exactly how to do that in this video. Okay, ready? So the first thing is what people try to do, which usually doesn't work, is again, push through it. Just, I'm just going to gear up for this meeting and then get through it. And then you do. But I've talked to people who've been in their professions for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, and they still feel it. So if pushing through is going to work, it would have worked by now, right? And I don't mean work in terms of progressing in their careers. I talked to people that are CEOs, high level, and they still feel this inside. So I'm talking about working inside where you can actually feel a sense of confidence and ease and joy and creativity. In this work that you get to do in the world as opposed to strain and just getting through it. Another thing I see is people flip to the other side where they over-prepare like crazy. They're just maxing out their preparation in anticipation. They're ready, they're over-prepared. And then again, they get through it and they say, ah, you see, I got through it because I over-prepared. Although they wouldn't call it that. They call it, I just prepared. And then they do it again and again and again. And it starts to consume them. And by the way, preparation doesn't mean official sitting there with a spreadsheet or a keynote presentation or something. I'm talking about a lot of rumination too. Just worrying about it, thinking about it. Their kids are there and they're like, huh? Yeah, I don't know. I got to think about this thing. Right? So it's a kind of consuming preparation or rumination that doesn't actually either produce results or enhance the quality of your life. Do you relate to these? Maybe there's other things you've tried. What else have you tried? And what I found is that— oh, one other thing, very common. Just focus on your past accomplishments. Just make a big list of all the cool stuff that you've done. You look at that and be like, I'm obviously so great, right? Have you tried that? Does that work? And interestingly, why not? So what I hear from people is it kind of worked for a minute and then it fizzled, or it just doesn't work at all. And I'm going to share something with you in this video about how to really solve this at the root that'll explain exactly why that is. Okay, so let's get to what I believe is the real solution, which is we've got to look larger than just this one meeting at work. The issue here is not work. You might say, oh, it's my workplace. They're discouraging. Oh, my boss is critical. Oh, this place is threatening. Maybe, maybe. I'm not saying maybe your workplace sucks. Maybe your boss sucks, right? Maybe they're too critical. But has this feeling persisted with you across multiple places? If it's only just this one place, And as soon as you were to leave, you're like, I feel super, super confident in myself. In fact, I'm going to start my own business because that's how confident I am in myself. Well, then you don't really probably have imposter syndrome, right? You got a shitty workplace. You could just, you know, find an exit plan. Sometimes we can't leave tomorrow. Maybe it takes a couple of months to find your way, but that's a very different thing. But most people I talk to, maybe you can see in your own experience, is this persisted for a bit more than just this one workplace. And most likely will probably follow you the next one until we really solve this. So what we want to do is look bigger and stop looking out there and start looking in here. What am I doing to create this pattern? It's not about the environment. It's about me. I'm using the environment as the current place for my drama to play out, but inside I'm doing something. What am I doing? And that's the first thing is to really get curious about what you're doing. What pattern? How am I creating this? I'm creating this sense of imposter, this sense of not enough, this anxiety. Okay, then what? Step 2 is what can I actually discover when I look inward? And if you look inward, what you'll discover is that the issue is not that you don't have accomplishments or that you're not capable. The issue— and people say, ah, well, the issue is I have a very critical voice inside my head that tells me that I'm not enough. It tells me that I'm insufficient. That's true. But there's something underneath that because a lot of people get to that step and they say, yeah, that this harsh inner critic. And I try to argue with it. I try to say, no, I'm pretty good at my work. Look, here's all the stuff I did. And then it comes in and attacks me more. Or I try to fight with it. Now I'm arguing with this voice in my head. You're not enough. Yes, I am. You're not enough. You're going to fail. No, I'm not. Oh, you're right. I am. And it's just this endless battle or we just eventually relent to that voice inside. You know what I'm talking about here? Okay. So what do we actually do? Well, the real way through this, and that's what I put forth in Doubtless and all my work with people, and I work with clients in workplaces all the time and executives and other people, and here's how we help them radically shift this in their lives. You see that the voice is coming from a place, and when you get where it's coming from, you can shift it. And that voice, That critical voice is about uncertainty. And when there is uncertainty, that voice will flip on and get loud and criticize you and tell you you suck and usually tell you it's going to go badly, right? I mean, that voice doesn't say, you suck and you're going to do great out there, tiger, right? It says, you suck and therefore you're going to get fired. You're going to be embarrassed. You're going to be humiliated, right? And so it's saying those things with absolute and total what? Certainty. It knows the future and it is bad, right? So that seems— and then we go prepare, then we ruminate on whatever, all that stuff that comes out of that. But if we stop and look at the core pattern, we say, okay, this voice activates, it gets very self-critical when uncertainty goes up. What kind of uncertainty? I don't know, a meeting that you don't know how it's going to go. I've seen people that I work with who they get a promotion or a new opportunity in their workplace. And they could grow in their career, they could become more, develop more skills and experience, they can make more money, whatever it is. And then this boom, this imposter syndrome explodes, it blooms. Why? Because they're stepping into a new role, new position, new responsibilities, new things they've never done before. New, new, new equals what? Uncertainty, uncertainty, uncertainty. And so that voice is like, oh my God, this is so much uncertainty. Let's shut this whole thing down. Because that's where that voice of self-doubt and self-criticism is leading you, right? It's like, well, because you're not enough, because you're an imposter, because you don't belong here, what should we do? Well, we should shrink down into the most safe, small version who just eeks through life. Of course, that has its own litany of problems. But that's that part's plan. Are you tracking with me here? Because this is super important to see. Otherwise, we're just going to repeat the same pattern, bashing our head against the wall at every new workplace. This video could be profoundly life-changing for you if you really get what I'm saying and apply it. So we have to see that I'm creating that. It's this critic inside of me, but actually that comes out of uncertainty. So, okay, I'm with you so far. What do I do with that? Well, essentially, you increase your capacity to be with uncertainty without freaking out. And the freakout manages— and the freakout emerges as this critic, right, who's trying to collapse the uncertainty. So we have to stay in it. And at first, it's like, stay in it? That's like staying in an oven or staying in an ice bath. This is terrible. But, well, is it? It's— that's another thing to investigate. What actually makes it terrible is how you relate to the uncertainty with fear, with doom, with ruin. And so increasing your capacity for uncertainty is actually the most powerful way to liberate you from imposter syndrome at the root. And that's what that book, Doubtless— you want the deep, deep dive. Of course, you can keep watching videos on this channel. You can check out my podcast as well, Shrink for the Shy Guy. You can work with me if you want to go to my website, draziz.com, and apply, see if it's a fit. But I would recommend starting with this, Doubtless, because this will show you exactly how that pattern— the whole book is a study of doubt and how that voice works and how it tries to control you and how it tries to shrink your life. And so this will absolutely transform your workplace and your feeling of imposter syndrome there. But also it goes way beyond that, right? That feeling of not enoughness, that chronic insecurity, That is what we're here to really liberate ourselves from. And so let me know in the video, in the comments down below. So let this one— so let me know in the comments down below what you're finding most valuable from this, what questions you might have, and I look forward to hearing about your experience with the book Doubtless. All right, until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. I'll talk to you soon.