Shadé Zahrai separates self-love from selfishness and connects self-worth directly to confidence. She defines imposter syndrome as feeling undeserving despite a track record, and suggests reframing achievements to focus on effort and repeatable strengths rather than luck or timing.
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I think self esteem is the basis.
Of everything I see. And self esteem, how is that different from self love? Is it essentially the same thing?
Good question.
Sade is known as a self mastery expert. Her strategies have helped people and companies do their best work by putting emotional intelligence and humanness at the core. She's been featured in Red Table Talk, in Vice, in Ad Week, in the New York Times, Yahoo Finance, named Mentor of the year in the 2019 woman in financial Services Award. We are going to hear her wisdom on how to defeat imposter syndrome, boost our confidence, and crush it at work. Sade, welcome to the mindvalley podcast.
Now, I think there's a, there's a risk with language of self love because some people view that as the authority to be selfish in the sense that I'm going to be selfish and put me first to everyone else's detriment. And so we, we want to move away from that association of self love with selfishness. And I am more important than you because it links to ego. But if your view of self love is, hey, I genuinely love who I am and the value that I bring, then it's very closely linked. It's also closely linked to self worth. It's very easy for someone who doesn't necessarily believe in themselves. It's very easy for someone to say, well, I've never done this before. I don't have a track record in this area and therefore I don't have the belief that I can do it. So a really great little reframe here is don't think about achievements in terms of outcomes. Don't think of them, of what you achieved by way of I delivered this or I got here. Think of it in terms of the effort you applied, the effort, the skills and the strengths that you applied in the past. And then ask yourself, can I apply them again in the future? Will they help me in this current environment? And I can guarantee you will find a way to say yes to that. And that reminds you that you have what it takes and it can be a really great antidote to imposter syndrome. Let's define imposter syndrome first, because we throw this term around a lot, hear it a lot, but there's a very specific definition when we look to the research and to experience. Imposter syndrome means that you feel undeserving of your prior successes and undeserving of prior achievements in spite of a track record of performance. So you don't believe you deserve to be where you are. But if you objectively look at what you've achieved. You've achieved amazing things. So the distinction is some people just think, if I'm in a position that I've never been in before and I'm feeling uncertain, then that's imposter syndrome. That might just be self doubt. And so we actually need to be really careful how we're interpreting and defining something, because some of us will use, I feel, like an imposter as an excuse to hold themselves back. I couldn't say yes because I had imposter syndrome. So we almost use it as this fallback to make ourselves feel better for not taking an action when actually that just might have been self doubt. And that's about changing the relationship that we have with that.
I experience it sometimes and I thought at a certain point it goes away. It doesn't.
It never goes away. And that's a good thing.
And why it happens, why it happens, even to someone like me, who's made it to the CEO level in my work, designation is upward counterfactual thinking. I compare myself to other CEOs and go, damn it, their business is growing faster than mine. And it's funny, it's not something that you ever come out of unless you've truly mastered all of these principles together. And I'm doing my best to get there, but I don't think I'm completely there yet.
We're all doing our best. It's a lifelong journey. I think every step of the way, we're just looking at improving and growing.
