In this solo coaching podcast, Sally Z of Be Moved addresses imposter syndrome—a pervasive inner voice that makes speakers doubt their expertise—by shifting focus from mental tricks to embodied practices. After briefly referencing the broader "Four Horsemen of Visibility" (fear, perfectionism, people‑pleasing, and imposter syndrome), she argues that the body cannot be ignored and that grounding oneself physically can quiet the inner critic. She outlines three concrete, repeatable steps: (1) intentional breathing (nose‑in, mouth‑out, optionally square breathing) to slow the adrenaline surge; (2) grounding through the feet—feeling the earth, removing restrictive shoes, and gently bouncing the legs to reconnect with gravity; and (3) modulating energy by deciding whether to "go up" (expand, take up space with arms and posture) or "stay down" (anchor, press into the ground) depending on the moment’s needs. Throughout, she ties each bodily cue to mental clarity and audience impact, offering examples for livestreams, webinars, and on‑stage presentations. The episode blends practical, kinesthetic advice with an encouraging, supportive tone, urging speakers to inhabit their bodies fully as a strategy to overcome imposter syndrome.
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Hey movers, it's Sally Z with Be Moved. Let's go create some talks that will move this world. We're gonna talk with amazing speakers, share tips, tricks, resources, and we are going to be moved so that our audience can be moved. This moved me. What is moving you. If you've ever come to my lives over in the Facebook group, if you have ever seen me do a virtual presentation or keynote or training, I always get a comment about my graphic setup on my livestream. And the way that I'm able to do that is through a program called Ecamm. Now it's for Mac users. So if you're not a Mac user, I'm sorry. PS, while you're too Mac user, no judgment. Maybe I should have kept that to myself. When I shifted to Ecamm, everything changed. I'm a pro, but I don't think I really looked pro until I started using Ecamm. So if you are curious about Ecamm for yourself and have always wondered how we do that, you can learn more about it at bemoved.com/ecamm. It's like your new broadcasting studio in your own home. And if you go to bemoove.com/ecam, you can start your 14-day free trial. How cool is that? See if it ups your game, get creative, and take your live streams to the next level. We are gonna be talking about some important things today over the last few weeks. We've been tackling the Four Horsemen of Visibility. Fear, this idea that if we feel fear as we are becoming more visible, showing our face, using our words, that it means something. It's just part of it. Perfectionism, it's just part of it. Perfectionism rears its ugly head and says hello and keeps us from action. So we're going to show up anyway with perfectionism. We're also gonna just embrace the fact that not everybody likes us, okay? We, we exist in these extreme stories in our heads: everybody needs to like us and nobody likes us, right? We tell ourselves these stories. Both of those are false, they're not really true, and we make a lot of assumptions, and it keeps us from taking risks But today we're talking about imposter syndrome. Now, when I gave you all a poll here in the group, imposter syndrome was the winner, right? Because it is something that crops up, especially when we think about doing something big, doing something that we're not sure that we can do. Imposter syndrome is that little voice inside you that says, Maybe you don't know as much as you think that you do. Other people must be fooled. If they really knew the truth, like, it keeps us from really owning our space, owning our place out front. And so actually, the tack I want to take, like, the angle I want to take with you all today as we're talking about imposter syndrome is not more about mindset and things that we can do about mindset, because we've talked about that. In the past. We've talked about the mindsets, we've talked about the ways that we can overcome them, but I want to get really strategic— well, it's not really strategic, it's kind of strategic, but tactical— with you about the body. Because one of the ways that we can combat imposter syndrome is to actually not focus on the thoughts and the brain, okay? Because our brain is dumb sometimes and it is not helping us, but to instead bring us into the body. So my question for you is, how much are you thinking about your body when you're about to do something scary that is nerve-wracking? Because the body We cannot hide from it. The body is going to tell us where we're at. The body is going to reveal itself to us. And adrenaline is a big thing. But if we can keep ourselves in our bodies, present in the present moment, it takes care of a lot of that imposter syndrome stuff. It's like we don't even have time and space for it. Because we are present. We are in the body. Whoop whoop! So yesterday, did you guys catch the Instagram Live with Erica yesterday? We were— she's a very kinesthetic person. That's my word for Erica. She just moves all the time, and she's got an idea. It's just, you see it in the body, and the body is this incredible tool. We are not just writers. We are speakers. The words live in our body, and we don't often think about the body, or enough about the body. That's why I sometimes do a speaker dance party, because it brings us back to our body. So I want to share with you the 3 things that I do and that I encourage my speakers to do. So that they can be in their body and eject the baloney that's going on in their head, the imposter syndrome baloney. Okay, and the first thing that we do, none of this is rocket science, but it's actually really, really powerful and important. The first thing that we do is we breathe. Okay, so think for yourself, how does your body talk to you? Before you're about to do something big. Okay, is it your heart rate race? I sweat. Yeah, that's always been my thing. That's fun. Some people get really flushed, like their faces get kind of flushed. Some people's hands shake. Some people get a dry throat or their breathing gets really shallow. All of that is an adrenaline rush, and one of the ways we can calm our system down is we start to breathe. Breathing, right, if you study meditation, if you're doing self-care, like breathing is a part of it. We can't, we cannot focus on ourself without focusing on breathing. So we start with the breath, and I like the in through the nose, out through the mouth. When I was with some folks this weekend, And some of them were stepping out front and doing some big things. We start with breathing. Okay? That fear that creeps up, that who am I to be doing this? They're all going to see I'm crazy. Like, that's going to get your adrenaline up. And what we want to do is go, bring you back into your body. Eventually you'll be able to use your brain again to focus on your message. If we can breathe. So breathe, slow your system down, and I want you to do that for a good minute. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Now, when you breathe out of your mouth, I want to actually hear you, okay? Not like, but like, like, really let your breath Come out. So in through the nose, you can even hold it for a second, do that— I think it's called like square breathing. You can hold it for a second when you breathe in if you want, and breathe out. As you keep breathing, you're going to start to feel the rest of your body come down just a little bit more. That is the goal, for you to come to the present moment, so that you can be with your audience and ignore the stories that you might be telling yourself in your head. Okay, so that is step 1. We breathe. Then I want you to, after you've done a minute of breathing, I want you to focus on your feet for a moment and your legs and really think of like grounding down. So as we breathe, part of what happens is our whole body sort of relaxes and we start to get a little heavier. It's kind of like gravity gets to take over with us. And I wanna keep that process going. When we talk about grounding, that's literally putting your feet on the ground. If you can take your shoes off and actually feel the ground underneath you, great. If you're wearing high heels, take them off, 'cause that literally keeps you from sensing and feeling the ground underneath you. There's energy in the earth, and what we're trying to do is really tap into the strength of that. So, because for a lot of people, when they're taking a risk out front, okay, even if that's, I'm about to go live and I'm nervous about it, I'm doing my big webinar, I'm about to go on stage in all the ways that it looks for us to show up and be visible. If it feels like an out-of-body experience, that's a problem. We want to get you back into your body. So we're going to focus on your feet for a moment and feel the ground underneath you. Okay. And I like to, I like to kind of bounce my knees, bounce my legs to just really feel the heaviness. It like just kind of re-engages the, the allowing gravity to do its thing. It sounds so good right now. I'm needing it. I'm needing it. So we breathe and we ground, and you feel the earth underneath you. And once you have done that, once you really can feel the earth underneath you, then in this third step is when we start to think about how we translate what the audience needs. These first two pieces are really all about you. These first two pieces are like, let me just forget about everything else for a second and just get back into my body. To breathe, and to ground. Once you have done that, I want you to ask yourself this: do I need to go up, or do I still need to ground down? And here's why I ask that, because in the moment, for some people, the way adrenaline can show up and the way imposter syndrome can look for us is that for some people, they're like, it's all like this. I don't know what I'm talking about, right? It can feel frantic and really out there. And what we want you to do is keep grounding down, focus down, think of groundedness, clear, steady, solid, right? Not up here. But down here. Okay. But for some people, it does the opposite. For some people, it's like you need to breathe and you need to ground down, but then you feel like a slug. Then you don't have the energy required to show up and wow in whatever context. And so if you are a down person, like, oh, I'm here and I gotta find my way to get up. Then what I want you to do is start imagining something is pulling you up from the back of your head and you're just taking up more space. Okay, and you're just going to use your arms and literally take up more space physically, because when we do it physically, it shows up emotionally and metaphorically. Okay, the body is so cool. Okay, we're going to start with the physical, and it will translate into something real for your audience and a different mental space for you as well. So if that's you, if you're a down person and you need to go up, you're gonna manipulate your body to do that. Now, if you're an up person and you're like, me, This tends to be me. I tend to be like frantic and like stressy and eh, right? That energy is not what we want to give to our audience either. And so for, for me in that moment, my job is to think of strength and groundedness and get like, I literally slap my legs a little bit and go, okay. I am standing on strong legs. I am standing on, on the earth, the ground underneath me. I am supported, okay? And I let that support really ground me rather than feeling all up here like this, okay? So this last piece is more about the energy that you want to show up with. Or that the moment needs or requires. And it's not just about like, what do I need in this moment? It's really, okay, now how do I want to show up? First, we breathe, we ground ourselves, we remember that we are in a body, okay? We are not just a talking head, floating head with thoughts. We live in this body, we breathe in this body, we show up in this body. There is space for you in whatever body you have. It's not about a kind of body or what the body is even doing. It's just your body, and it belongs in that moment for your audience. They are waiting for you, and you have to show up in your body. You breathe, you ground, and then you decide, do I need to go up, or do I need to go down? Okay, do I need to just ground down, stay focused and steady, or do I need to go bing up and out for them? Does that make sense? I think these are really— it sounds very, very simple, but these ideas, how we show up physically, has such a huge transformative effect in terms of how we feel, even how clear our thinking can be. They are connected, the body and the brain. So we're gonna battle imposter syndrome through the body. This is how we breathe, we ground, we go after it. All right, I hope this was helpful. Reach out if y'all have any questions. Talk soon. Bye-bye, everybody.
