66: Powerful Tips To Thrive Out Of Impostor Syndrome - #GrowYourLife

Thanks for listening to the Grow youw Life podcast. My name is Jeremiah Grykowski, and on this podcast we talk about ways for you to grow in your life and your business, to empower you to reach your goals with tips, tricks, tools, and strategies that get results and work if you apply them. This week now, I want to talk about empowering you out of the imposter syndrome. But before we go into that, if you're not in the GrowYourLife Facebook community, join it. There's over a thousand people in there just like yourself that are growing in their life and and in their business that you can ask questions of. I'm in there doing my best to answer everybody's questions. Every single week. We have live group coaching, Q and A in there. And so if you're not in there, join it. Look up growyourlife on Facebook, and if this podcast has impacted you in any way, please share it with some people. Get the word out about this to help others grow into who they were made to be, to reach their dreams, to reach their goals, to reach their destiny. Okay, now what is imposter syndrome? Well, this could be the person who is a CEO of a company that made eight figures, but because they left that company, they don't feel like they have the skill or are good enough to help others grow in the same way that they did. Even though they've done it before, even though they have all the knowledge and skill, they don't feel good enough to do it on the level that they know is possible. Or maybe it's the pastor who he's really comfortable talking on stage in front of a congregation, but when it comes time to talking on camera, just melts. Doesn't know how to get the words out, doesn't know how to piece things together. Or could be the dance instructor who is amazing at empowering her students. But when it comes time to teaching a course or turning it into an online mentorship program, struggles to do that. Could be the artist that paints in private, but doesn't feel good enough to let the world see things. And oftentimes this starts in our lives when we at some moment in time were seen and heard and felt the pain of not doing everything perfectly or as good as we thought in the beginning, when we start doing the thing that we know that we can do. Especially if you're an expert or a master in your field. Experts and masters in their field actually feel the most imposter syndrome when they do. And the ones that learn a framework to break out of it which I'm going to share with you on this episode. I'm going to give you that framework to break out of imposter syndrome forever, by the way. You're still going to have moments in time as a human being that you feel it, but you're going to have tools to know what to do. I wish I had learned these years ago, and I'm so thankful that I have now. In fact, I even had just a little bit of something happen right before I recorded this podcast. I forgot to press the record button. Now, what's funny is that was one of the number one mistakes that I just am mortified when I make. Seriously, it's a silly mistake. It's a silly thing to be mortified for, but it's something that I just. It's, like, so silly that I'm like, really? And it's funny because right before I started recording and wanting to teach on this, that very thing that triggers my feeling of imposter syndrome happened. And so I had to go through the exact process that I'm gonna show you right here just to bring this podcast to you today in this way. Okay? And so what it is is that when we first get started with something, let's say that you are an expert in your field, the better you get at it, the imposter syndrome comes in. Know all that we don't know. We. We. We can see all that we don't know. We can imagine how little we know when we. When we get started. There's this kind of a thing that happens where when you first start something, you go from, you know, I don't know anything, whether. Whatever you're an expert in, could be art, could be music, could be as a parent, whatever it is. And then when we have a little bit of success, we just. We feel like we're at the top of the mountain. I got it all figured out, right? This is the beginner's, I guess you could say curse or whatever. That beginner's luck, that beginner's feeling of, I know everything. And then life gives us a fresh dose of reality, and we're like, boom, I actually don't really know anything. And then this is where imposter syndrome is. We're spending our time waiting until one day we can come back up and feel at that level that we were up here, but know that we know everything, that we have everything all together, that we're doing all the things perfectly, that we're not messing it up, that we're not making a fool of ourselves. Like we did in the past. And at the same time, we don't want to be arrogant, we don't want to be callous. We don't want to be a jerk to people, but we just want to bring excellence to the table. But imposter syndrome exists when we're stuck in that feeling of pain that we felt that first moment when we were seen and heard, that first moment when we tried something and realized, you know what? I don't know anything, and I need to learn a lot more about this. And so when it comes time to do the very thing that we were born to do, the very thing that we were made to do, we struggle to take steps forward, we struggle to take steps in the direction of our future. Because of that feeling, we end up manifesting the very thing that we are afraid of. And I'm gonna talk about that in a second, because this cycle that has actually got you stuck in imposter syndrome, we're gonna flip it on its head. By the end of this episode, you're gonna know how to. When you feel it, within seconds to break out of it, okay? And so this comes because we feel like one day, I'm gonna have it all together. I'm gonna do everything perfect. I'm gonna know everything, and I'm gonna finally be at the level of all of those people that I admire out there. I saw a diagram that I looked up online as well, another diagram. And what it is is that, you know, this is what we know, and this is what we think everyone else knows. We know this little bit, and we think everyone else knows this much. The people that are experts or masters or have done great things and that we can't be seen and heard or go out there or do anything until we're at this level level right here. And that keeps us stuck in a cycle. And it's time for us to break that cycle. It's time for us to start to go after our goals, start to do scary things, start to do things that we've been putting off and avoiding, and step into creating our future a powerful way. And imposter syndrome comes because we don't fully believe in ourselves. We might know that we're skilled at something, but we're worried that maybe other people won't think that same way. They will judge us in a certain way, negatively, based on how we talk, how we look, how we sound, how we do something, how we put it all together. And we also don't want to come across as a showboat or a narcissist. That is, look at me do that. We've seen people do that, that, you know, they're a legend in their own mind. They could never be told that they're doing anything wrong. So we don't ever want to get to that level either, of arrogance. And so we stay small, we play small, even in the arenas that we're so massively skilled at, even in the arenas that we have experience in. This is like the coach that has built a business coaching, but struggles to think that she can teach other coaches how to do the very thing that she does on a daily basis. This is like the mentor that has helped thousands of people in person, but struggles to think that anybody on the Internet would listen to them. I see this happen often, and actually, the more skilled somebody is at what they're doing, it gets a lot worse because they know the work needed to get to the level that they're at to get to the level that they need to get to. And so there's two things we can borrow confidence and courage from other areas of our life, but the other one is this formula of visualizing the outcome before it happens. You see, many times this is very hard to do when we're so connected to the pain of what happened in the past. And imposter syndrome, we don't want to experience that pain again. And what happens is you might have a big goal in mind, right? You might have this big, hairy, audacious goal right here that you want to go accomplish that you want to go do. You have this big thing that you want to set out to do your life. But that fear of failing is bigger than that. And our goal becomes bigger than our goal. Our goal of never failing becomes our goal, greater than the very goal it is. And we. We put on this cloak of, I better never make a mistake. I better never fail. I better not never, never look like I don't have it all figured out, lest I be judged, lest I make a mistake, lest I hurt somebody, lest I get hurt myself. And so we stay stuck in this cycle of waiting until one day when we're perfect and have it all together. And the truth is, that day's never going to arrive. We know this. We know that there is not a single moment in time we're going to finally make it arrive and have it all figured out. The most expert at this, by the way, Tom Brady. Now, some people might not like him, but Tom Brady said that he still had more to prove in his football career, even after winning. Was it six or seven rings I don't remember. But he said that now you might think, top of his game, right? How does he feel that? It's because we know that there's a greater level for us. We know that there's more for us to learn. But at the end of the day, we have to start to learn how to take action. Even in the face of imposter syndrome, even in the face of feeling like I don't have it all figured out, I don't have it all together. I'm not at 100%. And we make not looking cocky, not looking like a failure, a bigger goal than actually going after our goal. Okay? And so the way to break free from this is, is by visualizing yourself going into the thing that you're going to do, while simultaneously, if you can, remind yourself of the accomplishments that you've had in the past, remember who you are. Don't allow the words and criticisms of other people keep you stuck. You see, many times we believe that the inner critic inside of us is why we've been so successful. And if you've gotten to a certain point in time, you're like, well, the reason why I am so successful is because I've been so critical of myself up to this moment in time, and that's what has made me that way. I want to challenge you that maybe you've been successful in spite of that inner critic and not because of it. And that when you learn to silence the voice of the inner critic inside of your mind and start to focus on the future, you might start to manifest that. You see, what happens is when we're so focused on never failing, never returning to the pain of the mistake that we made in the past, never feeling like a failure again. So then I'm afraid to step out and actually let people see who I am. I'm afraid to let people actually see what I have inside of me because it's not at the level that I envisioned. We're actually empowering failure to happen. We're actually empowering the imposter syndrome because our mental focus, we're visualizing and manifesting ourselves failing. And so the way that you break this is you flip it on its head. You visualize yourself being successful. You visualize yourself crushing it when you do that course. You visualize yourself crushing it while you're doing that podcast episode. That's what I had to do on this one right here. So what I had to do when I do my group coaching, when I do any course that I've done, is visualizing myself As I go through to the end of it, taking action, if I stepped into that said, okay, I better not make a mistake. I better do all the things right, that's when I've stumbled over my words, and I had to stop and delete the podcast. I have to delete the recording. It doesn't come out good because I'm empowering the fear. The fear becomes my focus. And so we have to untether ourselves from that fear. And many times, if the pain is really, really strong in there, we have to even go back and make some peace with some of that pain and silence that inner critic that's telling us, you're not good enough. That experience that we had in the past where we made a mistake and maybe somebody told us, you know, you're not gonna succeed, we took that on that criticism and put it into our own head to validate our story that we're never going to be good enough. So that every time that we go after it, we feel that same feeling of pain and failure that we felt the first time that we made a mistake. And this cycle keeps us stuck in the imposter syndrome. It's not going to serve us long term. We have these little blips and these little moments where we silence the inner critic, and that's where we start to succeed. You see the moments when you've actually succeeded or when you've succeeded at silencing the inner critic. And so if you switch it upside down and silence the inner critic, when it comes up and tells you you're not good enough, you can't do this, people are gonna judge you. People are gonna think that you're a fraud. People are gonna whatever, yada, yada, yada, yada. That voice that we tell ourselves inside our head and say, be quiet. You don't have power over me. I visualize and I can see myself being successful and going after this goal. And then we remind ourselves of the accomplishments that we have made in the past. You see, oftentimes we're reminding ourselves so much of the mistakes of our past that's our cycle, is reminding ourselves of all the times we sucked and failed and when people judged us, when people didn't listen to our podcast episode, when people didn't watch all the way to the end, when people didn't engage with us on social media, when people buy our program. And all of that memory of the past mistake is what we are manifesting in our mind, because that's what our focus is. And so silence that inner critic and shift your Focus onto the outcome that you want to have out, the outcome that you can see for yourself. Visualize yourself accomplishing it and remind yourself of your accomplishments, not your failures. A failure is only a failure if you empower it to control your life for the rest of your life instead of learning from it and going after your goals. And many of us, we've tried this visualization thing. We might think it's even hooky, spooky, kooky, doesn't work because it didn't work at one time moment in our life before. And so we're afraid to try it in this situation. Next time that you feel like if you get on a sales call and wonder, are they going to think I'm a fraud? Are they not going to trust me? Even though I've been successful in this area before, even though I know that I can help them, even though I know that this person's life is going to be changed for the better, listening to me or buying my product or whatever it is in your life. Next time that comes in, visualize them loving what you're producing. Visualize them applauding it. Visualize your audience not criticizing you. Visualize them praising it. And again, I had this belief, well, if I did that, that is going to get me stuck in that arrogance cycle. No, it's not. This is the only way to break free from imposter syndrome. It really is. You're not ever going to be perfect enough that you finally break out of it. You're not ever going to achieve enough that it finally ceases until you start to do this and visualize the outcome that you want to have. Visualize the best expected outcome. Detach your happiness from the outcome. Going perfect, that's a big one. Your emotions no longer being tied to perfection. That whether I fail or succeed, it's all going to be okay and I'm going to learn from those failures. We get so stuck and tethered into perfectionism. We get so stuck and tethered into doing all the right things because last time when we made a mistake, how much pain we felt that we just keep reminding ourselves of what we better not do instead of encouraging ourselves of what we can do. This is self care. This is taking care of ourselves. And so I want you to start doing this. Encourage yourself in what you're good at. Encourage yourself in what's possible for you. Encourage yourself in the thing that you've never tried before that you're about to do, that you're about to step into. Visualize it all going well for you, visualize it all going perfectly, no matter what happens, and remind yourself of all the good stuff that's happened instead of all the failures of the past. When we do this, excitement comes in. We are reminding ourselves who we are. We're reminding ourselves of the excitement when we first got started. This little diagram right here. When we first get started, right, we're in, we're starting off, and there's the little beginner's luck that we get to. We feel like, okay, I got it all together. I got it all figured out. When I first learned how to program and code on a computer, I thought that until I learned I don't have it all together, I don't know anything. And we get in this cycle where that moment when we learn that we don't have it all together, we get stuck in this falling cycle. That pain when we crashed and burned that one time. And so we constantly keep criticizing ourselves to knock ourselves down. It's time to start empowering yourself. Flip it on its head upside down. See yourself succeeding at the thing that you're going after. See yourself doing great at it. See yourself crushing it in that sales call, crushing it on that social media post, crushing it on that video, crushing it on that POD podcast episode. Crushing it at writing that book. Visualize the results from it. And you know, even as I'm saying this, I. I can sense that some people might be listening to this and think, yeah, but isn't that just deluge, being in a delusion that I think that I'm gonna do this? No, it's not. The delusion is when we believe that we're not good enough to ever go after our dreams. That's the delusion. The delusion is that one day we're going to be perfect enough to accomplish it. That's the delusion. The truth is that even an expert and a master at what they do still has good and bad days. And nobody is perfect. The people that are successful just failed and made more mistakes than you have. And the only way that you're going to be successful is to start to step into taking courageous action, being okay with making mistakes, leaving behind the delusion of perfectionism in every single action, visualizing yourself being successful and then giving it your best shot. Do your best and forget the rest. It doesn't have to go perfectly for you to be safe, for you to be secure, for you to be worthy of that result. Your worth isn't tied to what you do. That's a hard one, especially when it comes to making money. Right. If I don't perform, I'm not going to make an amount of money. But when we're so stuck on our performance and making money, I guarantee you that's a way to never make money. It is. That's when I made the least amount of money was. Now is trying to and fearful of making money and not making it. And the times when I started to be successful, when I became successful and made the most amount of money, was when I did this process. Visualizing the outcome, visualizing it working out, visualizing it going well, visualizing it coming together, a plan coming together and being okay with whatever happens, Learning from the process and stepping into that future. You might have to remind yourself of this multiple times while you're going through this process to empower yourself out of the imposter syndrome. You might have to remind yourself of who you are more than one time throughout the day. A really great way to do this is to spend some time in the morning to ground yourself, to meditate, to pray, to remember who you are, to worship, to spend some time talk to God and remember who God says that we are. That's another thing for me that helps is to realize that I was made with a purpose, with a plan, with a destiny, and I can go after it. And that even if I don't do it all perfect, it's okay. I don't need to be perfect. It's absolutely okay to give it my best shot, to do my very best to bring excellence forward. And no matter what happens, it's good. It is. There's a part of us that tells us, no, that's not good enough. That voice inside of our head that might say, no, that's not good enough. I have to do perfectly before I can get started. That's that inner critic that is breaking us down. That is trying to beat us down. That is a. That is a mirror of experiences that we've had in our life. That's a mirror of all of those times when we failed. That's trying to keep us stuck right where we are because it's our comfort zone. The inner critic never wants you to succeed. It always wants you to stay right where you are because it's safe. So sometimes we need to say, thank you. I appreciate you keeping me safe, inner critic. But I have a plan and a future that I'm going after. I can see it in my mind. I can see it in front of me and I can see how it's going to play out. No matter what happens, it's going to Be okay. People are blessed when they work with me. People are blessed when they're impacted by what I can do. I don't need to go out there and showboat and prove it. I don't need anybody to tell me that because I have that belief inside of myself. And the number one thing that breaks the imposter syndrome is self belief. Is believing in yourself, even in the face of criticism, empowering and encouraging yourself in what's possible, encouraging yourself and where you're going, reminding yourself of your accomplishments, visualizing the outcome the way that you want it, and having hope for the future, not being worried of being punished or feeling pain or what might happen if you make any sort of mistake. I know in the past, maybe we've made a mistake and it's hurt and it's been painful before, but I want to tell you this, you learned so many lessons through that process that have brought you to where you are right now, today. In fact, if you're listening to this podcast episode, you are a survivor and you are somebody that is thriving and you are somebody that is rising strong. That's the name of Brene Brown's book about tenacity. Her book is all about. This thing that we're talking about right now is if you've been successful, you've been at the top of the mountain, you crashed and burned, how to have the grit and the tenacity to keep going, to keep moving forward. And that's what I want to encourage you how to do, is that no matter what happens, no matter what the outcome is, this is how you keep the cycle going and moving forward. For you to go after your goals, for you to break past the limiting beliefs that are in your mind, that are telling you, I'm not good enough until I do all things perfect. You are good enough right now to do everything that you've been born to do, that you were made to do. You are good enough right now and skilled enough. And the people that you can impact will be blessed when they meet you. And so today, when you go on social media, when you go and make your content, when you get on your sales calls, when you coach with people, when you teach, when you write your sales copy, remember who you are. And if you need help in this area, if you're somebody that is still struggling with this, that needs help, knowing what to do, knowing how to reach your goals, knowing what path, what decision, what choice to make, ask for help. You want to know the worst thing that imposter syndrome does? It keeps us from ever Asking for help because we feel like, well, I better not look like I don't have it all together. I better not look like I don't have it all figured out. So I'm not going to ask for help because that will make me feel like a failure, that will make me look less than to the people I'm asking for help from. And that's the very thing that we need to do, and that's the very thing that I want to break free from. I want to help you break free from in your life is that if you have a goal, you have something that you want to go after, something that you want to accomplish, something that you don't know how to do, that you feel empowered to ask for help and not afraid of being judged, looked at as less than, or that your failures equate to your identity. I know that maybe some of you might have even grown up in your life where unless you did everything perfect, it wasn't safe in your house, maybe even as an adult or as a teenager feeling that way, that you always had to know everything, that you had to know all the answers to everything to be safe, that you had to come up with answers on the fly and they had to be perfect or you would get punished or in trouble. I know what that feels like. And what happens is we take on that voice in our head that tells us that we're not good enough unless we do everything perfectly. And so we have to silence that voice and tell ourselves the truth. You know what? It's okay if I make a mistake. It's okay if I give it my absolute best shot today. It's okay if I take care of myself and rest today. It's okay if I get a little bit of extra sleep. By the way, sleep is actually a strategy for the imposter syndrome, helping you get more sleep. Because we feel like I'm not worthy enough to sleep until I do everything perfectly. If you're somebody that's been struggling with that, I want to encourage you. Get some sleep. Take care of yourself, take care of your health, take care of your eating, take care of your family, take care of your business, take care of your life in these areas. Many times we're so stuck in taking care of other people that we never take care of ourselves because we think that it's selfish. Self care is not selfish, my friends. You don't need to wait until one day when you have it all perfect for you to finally take care of yourself. Today is the day that you can do this and every Little moment that you have, imposter syndrome is a chance and an opportunity for you to step into self care. For you to be focused on the vision that you have for your life, for you to manifest your destiny, for you to see yourself accomplishing the very thing that you know is possible for you, for you to remind yourself of what you've done before and to walk into your future. Now you might be saying, well, yeah, but what about taking action? Well, once you get there, once you get to the point where you're no longer worried about making a mistake, that's when you take action. And nothing can stop you, Nothing can stop you from taking action at this moment in time. When you know who you are, nobody can tell you otherwise. Nobody can tell you who you aren't. You're solid in your conviction. You're solid in knowing where you're going. You're solid in knowing what direction you're headed. You have a plan and a blueprint and a path for your life and a strategy to reach the next level. Taking action becomes as easy as walking and brushing your teeth. When we break out of the imposter syndrome and we can see ourselves manifesting our destiny, that's when we can take massive action and our goals start to become accomplished in our life. You have to take action. You can't choose to not take action. I've seen many times people will visualize themselves into inaction and they're still at that plateau, that edge of taking action because of that fear. And there's some other layers to that. And if you're somebody that is still feeling that way, this is one of the biggest areas that I work with a lot of people that I coach, that I do one on one coaching with. I love to talk with you and I'd love to work with you. If you haven't yet, schedule a 15 minute call with me. They're free. You can go over to my website, schedule a 15 minute call with me where we can talk through where you're stuck, what your goals are and help create a strategy for you to get to the next level. If you want to win a 30 minute, that's a 15 minute one on my website. But if you want to win a 30 minute coaching call with me, you can go over to my Instagram and leave. Grow your life. That's GrowYourLife. One word, the name of this podcast on my Instagram in the comments. And I pick one winner every single week on Sunday to win. Listen, you can beat this imposter syndrome thing. It's gonna take practice. It's gonna take some time. But in those moments when you do, this is your formula. Remind yourself of what you have accomplished in the past. Visualize the future. Remember who you are. Remember where you're going. See yourself being successful. See the outcome that you want, and see the people that you're impacting, being blessed, and telling you that you did a good job, if that helps you. And most of all, tell yourself that you're doing a good job no matter what happens. I got this. Believe in yourself. When we do this, the energy that then we project into a situation says, because I believe in myself, Other people start to trust us. When we come across with belief in ourselves, we project that energy, and it shows people that they can trust us when we don't have belief in ourselves, when we feel imposter syndrome, that's the energy that we project. And other people say, there's something off. I don't know if I can trust them. And then we wonder, okay, now it validates that pain cycle, right? This is why we want to flip it. We want to twist it. We want to turn it around and step into the future. Step into confidence. Step out in courage to do the things that we fear the most. To manifest our destiny, to grow our life. Grow your life, everybody, and we'll talk soon.