Are You Unknowingly Making These Life-Altering Mistakes?

One of the things I've learned is we're only as sick as our secrets, right? If we believe that, then we're putting it out in the world. So in this episode, I'm going to break down why imposter syndrome exists, why it's actually a sign of growth, and how you can shift from self doubt to self trust. Even the most accomplished people feel frauds at times. Imposter syndrome is not about reality, it's about perception. The key to overcoming the realizing that the growth naturally comes with doubt. That nagging feeling that you're not as good as people think you are and that one day you're going to be found out foreign. Welcome back to the Inside man podcast. I'm Gary. Katie, or you can call me gk. And today we're tackling something even the most successful people, men especially, secretly struggle with. One of the things I've learned is we're only as sick as our secrets, right? If we believe that, then we're putting it out in the world. So in this episode, I'm going to break down why imposter syndrome exists, why it's actually a sign of growth, and how you can shift from self doubt to self trust. Let's take a look at why imposter syndrome exists. Even the most accomplished people feel frauds at times. Imposter syndrome is not about reality, it's about perception. The key to overcoming the realizing that the growth naturally comes with doubt. See, as entrepreneurs, you can put 100% of this in place. See if you agree with me that we don't know what's going to happen today, tomorrow, next week, next year, but we think we do. And I just did the one on Control the podcast before. If you haven't seen it, it'll address it. But how do we get into, like, I'll give you an example. You know, this idea, like, I wrote this book in 2006, Million Dollar Dentistry, when I was, you know, primarily in the dental industry and developed 7,000 dental practices. When I was writing that book, I just felt like, you know, I'm not a dentist. Who am I to do this? You know? And I'm going to deepen that a little bit as forward. But, you know, it goes back to we don't know and we think we should know. So that's the first part of this, right? And the second part of it is something I call the unevocable inner roommate. It's another way to say ego. The ego mind. The ego is not our amigo. And that's. That's thoughts coming out. We wake up in the morning, we have thoughts about how the day is going to go. And it doesn't always go that way. Right. But we think it's going to go that way because we believe the ego. And then there's the other thing called the identity. I call it the identity. The I. You know, do you ever have, like, the conflict in your head where you're like two cats in a cartoon, like. Like you're going against two things? Well, when we break it apart, the unevictable inner roommate, also known as the ego or the identity. Right. Your true self. What you want to really start looking at is the voices and the thoughts that come through automatically. Like they're happening automatically, and they're telling you one of two things. I don't belong in this group, or I'm not enough. And I believe I'm not enough is also at the core of I don't belong in this group. Right. So that's where the roots of imposter syndrome starts happening. See, I like to get to the root cause of things. I don't want to talk about all this airy fairy stuff. That's not going to really get to the bottom of it. I want to get to the bottom of it. I like really knowing why and then having a structure to deal with and to actually deal with this situation that we have here, which is nuts. Again, I want to start distinguishing. We have these. This inner roommate who is darting thoughts, and it's not for us. You know, I start using this word, ants. They're automatic negative thoughts. They're automatic. They're not usually for you, and they're just thoughts. They're not reality. And what happens is we live in what I'm going to call listening to now. I want to break this apart. Listening and hearing that thing is never going to stop. Your ego is going to keep darting at you. If you listen to it, believe in it, and engage, then you get hooked like a fish. And you're operating from that place. That's why it's hard to be present. Because you can't be present if you're relying on the voice to guide you, because it's just going to send you all over the place like a frigging crazy town. So I was like, oh, all right. So we want to break free from that, and you want to go and begin to hear your thoughts. So when I hear I don't belong. When I hear I'm not good enough. Hearing is different. I don't sit there and, like, get I love the fish. So, you know, it's like, it's like a hook. It's like I don't even need the bait anymore if I'm listening, engaged, and believing in it, right? Like that I suck. I'm not good enough. I shouldn't be here. That's not true. That's just some ego spewing stuff that has never been true. But I've been believing it. Now we're going to un collapse that and you're going to put a doorman at the door of your thoughts. And your exercise this week is to begin to notice when you're buying in and believing it, because then you're going to come from this deficit and then you're going to try to do the survival mechanism that. That get you there. Like, I'm going to be smarter. I'm going to work hard, I'm going to do really cool things. I'm going to dress well, I'm going to look good. All those things are driven by, I'm not good enough. I don't belong here. So I'm going to show you that I do. See, that's where the inauthenticity comes from. But when you come from the identity, the identity is more. It's the true self. It's another way to say true self. It's like it's who's underneath. When you're just flowing with things, you're connected. Because I'll have a doorman at my thoughts and go, am I listening and believing into that thought. And by the way, if it's good or bad and I'm listening to it, then it's still the same thing. It's just a thought. But if you begin to go, hey, here's what I stand for, here's what I care about. And start putting that in and then checking to see if your actions are aligned with that, not just your thoughts and feelings. Now, I know this might be difficult to get initially because we're breaking something apart that didn't even think that it needed breaking apart. So I really get it. I want you to not have to go crazy here or even drop out because the mind's going to want to drop out right about now because it's telling you that it doesn't understand this. And by the way, the ego mind is going to try to kill me off right now. It's going to say, go get busy. Oh, you're going to get distracted by an email. A text bell is going to ring and you're going to go, what? And you're going to get out of here. Your ego is not your amigo. It does not want you to get what I'm telling you. So, look, it took me years to get this, but I'm working to simplify it so you can get it quickly. It's much more complex and you'll be able to go deeper with one of our mentors. Carolina really breaks this apart step by step. And I work with her once a week to get this. But I'm giving it to you initially here because, dude, I sat there and I would be yawning my. This is what the ego does. It makes you tired. I would sit there and I would have to fight through to listen to what she was saying to me because I really wanted it. Hey, where I, where I needed this, and I'm going to give you the story about it. Where I needed this the most was when I exited the company, when I exited the business, my ego, my unexpected inner roommate said, you know, hey, you don't have anybody on your schedule this week. You're a piece of shit. You're unworthy, you're undeserving. Look at you. And by the way, I'm crazy successful. I just sold out. I should be celebrating. And you know what? I'm. My ego is going, dude, look at you. You have nobody on your schedule. My value was what I had in my schedule. And by the way, if you're feed, we say don't feed the bears. Don't feed the fears. If you're feeding the fears, buying into this, like, so I panicked. I literally panicked. So I'm sharing the story about how breaking this imposter syndrome by breaking down the unevocable inner roommate, which is the ego and the identity or true self, and then breaking it down that the ego is going to get you. Try to listen to it. The ego can only stay alive if you buy into that and you're eating from that. And by the way, 99% of us don't know this. So the first time somebody brings it to you, you're going to check out on it. It happens. Stay with me. You might need to listen to this again. Please stay with me because I want to speak. I'm speaking to your true self now, not that ego that's trying to kill me off. Because I'm telling you, the ego's going. He's giving him information that's going to kill off this thing and I won't have a job. Egos don't like not having a job. And so what happened was I built all these constructs, all these things that kept me in survival, all these things that showed that I mattered in the world. And that's all my ego stuff. And so all the voices that were being thrown at me from my unexpected inner roommate were all fear based. See, I want you to begin to get a new relationship to fear. You are the one at home. Your true self. You know who the stranger is, the unwelcome person is fear. That's flipping the script. Consider that we. I have been thinking I am fear, and this true self just kind of comes in. I want you to flip that. So if we look at it another way, let's look at clouds in the sky. The inner roommate are clouds and you let them flow through, right? The clouds flow through that. You know, those are thoughts. The sky is always there. Your true self is always there. So that's where we want to get to. So you want to get that the true self is at home and the thoughts and the fear are strangers in your house. You starting to see it now? Good. You know, another way is I'm a New Yorker. You know, I used to say, all right, there's a subway car. And in that subway car was some crazy guy who's mentally ill and needs help. You know, Sal, I have a lot of compassion for that. My family, right? And me on my way to me being crazy. So. But if I use the equivalent as when the doors open in that subway and there's a crazy guy in there, let's call that your thoughts. I have a choice to jump on that train and go for a ride with that thought. Or I could say, see ya, and let that train door close. And then my day is different. You know, I used to get hooked on these thoughts. And then I would have to go to my son's game. Here's how it cost me. I would be at his games and I'd be thinking and obsessing about work, and I wasn't even there. My body was there, but I wasn't there. I was so wrapped up and I was missing out and I missed out on a lot of things. I was present. At least I was better than what my dad did. He wouldn't even show up to games. But I wasn't present. Present where my body and my mind and my true self were there. And I was watching my son and I was connected to the magic that it is when you see your son or daughter play, do whatever they do, Right? So my point is this. It's like we want to begin to just Overcome the narrative, right? We want to get through the narrative. This thing is a pattern, right? So we're interrupting the pattern. That's key. You want to reframe the narrative that's coming through. You want to say, am I listening to this? Am I believing this? And is this my true self? Now, this is a red flag. You might not know who your true self is, because this might be the first time someone's un. Collapsing the fear and the ego, and that's the imposter syndrome. Darting thoughts for you. And you're sitting there going, holy shit, I better fake it till I make it here. I better act like I'm doing what I'm doing. And that's the mask. See, you can't be authentic if you're masking up. If the inside, your. Your insides, your. Your. Your thoughts are like. You know, you're. You're out here thinking you're all this in a bag of peanuts, and you're not. You want to get. You're gonna get this congruency where you're actually gonna be able to tell and share, and some people call it vulnerable. You share where you're coming from. Like, hey, I don't know. Something. The other thing about imposter syndrome is this reframing. I don't know. It doesn't mean that you have all the answers. See, that's one of the things that I think comes up. You know, I had a consult. I have a consulting business. I've been consulting for 30 some years now. And inherently, you have to know, and I'll never forget it. Doctors Gabin in Secaucus, New Jersey, was my first client. And by the way, I wrote this book. It took me years to write this book. This is my original. This is the OG look at this dude with the dark hair and the weight and everything. And when I wrote this book, I kept saying, I'm not a dentist. I don't know what I'm doing. And I kept marching forward, and I wasn't okay. And I didn't have what I just gave you with regard to listening and hearing to the thoughts. But what I do know is that I know that I know business. And dentists didn't have a business. And I codified a business for dentists, but I was like, well, I'm still not a dentist. So anytime somebody had a dds, I had this fear like I was a fraud, because I wasn't a dentist. Like, a lot of people in my industry were people that were successful dentists and then began to consult dentists I was one of, I think the only one at the time. I was a business owner who knew business and codified a methodology that had the fundamentals in business. And then I delivered it now, because my voice now this is, I want to give you, like how hearing and listening happens. I didn't look at that as an opportunity until somebody gave me. They go, you know, it's actually a gift that you're not a dentist because you're not going to give us more of what we do. You just looked at it and blank slated and gave us what we really needed. So I really like this. So it changed my thing. So I want to give you another thing that happens that will help you see how listening and hearing and how the inner roommate and the true self come aboard. So, as you know, recently I had a mountain biking accident where I broke my femur. My right hip replacement for the third one because it was. I had to replace a right hip replacement. I did it 20 years ago and then I broke a clavicle and I went in for surgery. And so I started listening and engaging and believing that I was a broken down piece of crap and that, you know, I'm old and unworthy and undeserving. So those are my thoughts now. I been studying this work for seven years now, this work of inner roommate listening and hearing. And I started buying into it. So it doesn't mean that you go away from this just recent, you know, just last week. So I go to the mail and there's this newspaper, it's a local newspaper, it's called the Sonoran News here in Cave Creek in Carefree, Arizona. And if you see it says a dozen ways to die in the desert. That was a dozen ways of dying in the desert. And I came close. My Apple Watch woke me up and they sent a drone to find me. And I pretty much had a good shot at dying out there. Nobody knew I was out there if I didn't have all that going on. Another thing that came in the mail was cremation done for you. Just call us, right? So when I listen to that and I'm hooked and I'm listening to, you know, the unexpected in a roommate believing and engaging it. And I'm like, gosh damn. And. And I got pissed off and I got into argument with. With my wife. My son was home. I really didn't even pay attention to him. And I missed out on a lot. And it cost me a lot. Like, when you start getting the cost of operating this way, you really want to make Changes, right? So a week later, the same thing, the same ad comes into my mailbox and I laugh my ass off about it because, you know, I've been doing my therapy and I was, I did lunges, man, like full on lunges, squats, like I'm back after 90 days, like, and, and, and a shift came over me and I feel great. Now I'm sleeping again and, and I stop. I just hear those thoughts like, yeah, you're a piece of crap. But like, you know, and even like the validation of doing, you know, lunges and squats is cool, but it's like still the like, see, see ego. See, I can do it right now. It made me feel better, right? But I still don't buy into the positive side of this. So that might help you start to distinguish whether it's positive or negative. It's called non duality. It's still feeding the ego. It's still feeding that ego. So you want to just be real. It's a cunning, baffling thing. But I had a laugh and then I didn't throw this out because it really hit me so hard that day. I started laughing my ass off because I was coming from a place of true self, not from a. I go, I'm a broken down Corvair. Some guy goes, you remember those? They used to blow up. I didn't know. I just remember Corvair was a sucky car, right? I could probably, could have used Yugo or some other crap. But you know, it's like that. It's like you really don't have to buy into it. And putting the doorman between your thoughts and what you hear. See, when you start getting into hearing, what happens is the voices get quieter. Like I don't have a lot of conversations going on in my mind all day. Where it used to be cluttered with I got to do this, I got to do that, I got to do. And fear was residing because that's why it was darting thoughts. See, when fear's in the house and not the true self, it's running every scenario, every what if, and trying to control environments and it's just, you don't know how it's going to go. And just staying present and being in your true self and training yourself to hear but not buy into allows you to start making decisions from the person you are, not the person you're not. See, consider that fear and the ego are not you. Because how do you know that? Because did you want to have a voice come tell you that you don't Belong here and you're a piece of shit. No, I don't want that. But I thought that was me, right? So reframing the narrative. Start looking for evidence that proof of your competence. See what happens is those darting thoughts you believe and then you find whatever you're looking for. You'll find whatever is in your viewfinder. You will see you create your own reality. I know this, I don't want to get too woo woo on you, but it's true. We don't realize that we actually create our own reality and it's where you're looking from, where you filter from. So like if I say I'm a piece of crap, the, the, the. Let me give you another example instead of that. When I wanted to buy a 911 with ice metallic gray and black with the traditional wheels and the yellow calipers, brake calipers, I'm like, I saw that car everywhere the minute I bought it. I didn't see it. Another example, when my wife was pregnant, every woman around me was pregnant. Now it was around 9 11. We were in New Jersey and New York. And you know, a lot of people got pregnant after that, you know, because a lot of us had friends die in that. But whatever you're looking for is looking for you and whatever you have in your present. Like when I drank, when I drank I thought everybody drank. Now I realized that's not true. I just wanted everybody else to drink to justify my own drinking. So this is how powerful this thing is that we unpack today on imposter syndrome. So I really want you to go to um, this concept of really owning your growth from shifting from I don't belong here as this entrepreneur in this business. And by the way, that was my first client. I transformed 7,000 dental practices in North America, Canada, every state, the Caribbean, Australia, Africa. This thing went viral because it worked. And now I've, and I've since, you know, expanded and I coach entrepreneurs and specifically men because I've always done that with dentists and now I want to do it as a general practice. And I still support, I'm a board member and founder of that company, Next Level Practice that I founded. And it's crushing it. And I got out of the middle of it and so all these tools that I'm giving you, I use to get out of it. And the number one thing is when you exit, if you don't get this distinction, you're going to lose your mind. And by the way, that's why you're not exiting your business a Lot of people don't exit their business because they don't know what they would do with themselves if they didn't have anything to do. By the way, I'm DJing now. I am a badass DJ. I am photography. I am like head of class kicking ass. Because, look, how you do one thing is how you do everything. How you do one thing is how you do everything. And I want to play to be the best. Like my wife said, we're not playing for mediocrity. Now, am I the best? It's subjective, but I'm playing to be the best. I'm looking for the little nuances. I'm showing up at class, I'm doing my homework, I'm participating. You know, people say I have beautiful photographs. So I'm going with that, my DJing. I'll know if I'm lighting up Vegas, you know, someday. I don't know, maybe that's where I want to go. But I spend less time and outcomes and more time in experiences. And that's really what I want for you. Because when you get to your deathbed, it's not going to say, I wish I spent more time, you know, in the office. And undoing this mechanics, the iOS, the identity operating system iOS really building and understanding your machinery as an entrepreneur and as a man will allow you to be a better dad, a better husband, and a better business owner. So here's the key takeaway. Feeling like an imposter and a fraud is normal. It's natural. It happens. It's proof that you're growing. My call to action for you is this. Please subscribe if you want to get more episodes, you don't want to miss the next one. And share this with a friend and I'll see you on the next one. I want to do a model for you. I want to show you the model. I have this model and I'm going to share it with you. I'm going to share my screen. This is the Modern man model. Now I want to share this model with you. It's the first time I'm going to share it. All right, so it's the Modern man model. So here we go. So the first thing is when you're dealing with imposter syndrome and all the things that I share with you, the root cause is the worthiness of self. Then what happens is when you start getting the worthiness of self, you start getting connected in relationships in a way that you never had. Then what happens is you want to get simplified health. I had to just see something that was showing up here, then you're going to have bulletproof money. When you have worthiness of self, you can have those things. When you're grounded, you're going to go from masking to liberated. This is the area, that top area that I got you to today is that going from masking to liberated. And if you don't move from here, what happens is I'm going to show you the three things that I gave to you today. Number one is awareness. Number two is acceptance. Number and number three is to get into action. That's what we did today. So thank you for the privilege of allowing me to share with you. I'll see you when I see you. On the next episode.