Imposter Mobster
How impostor syndrome and limiting beliefs are robbing you of your potential.
In my coaching practice, one topic comes up more often than any other. I talk about this subject with at least one client every single day.
Some career and business challenges are more common among women. Others arise frequently among immigrants, people of color, or neurodivergent folks. This issue affects nearly everyone I talk to. It is surely affecting the fuck out of me.
Many of us struggle with the belief that we are inadequate, insufficient, or in some sense not fully valid or deserving. We labor under the fear of being “caught out” as ill-qualified for our own jobs, for the jobs we want to get, or for the career we want to have.
We describe reasons or factors for why we can’t or won’t be as successful as we’d like, even while admitting those explanations are, on some level, ridiculous, not based on evidence, and more or less made up.
Does that sound like anyone you know?
Imposter Child
It sounds like me! If it sounds like you, you’re not alone. The most successful, powerful, and accomplished careerists I know have all confessed the same feelings — at least once in a while. I see self-awareness in someone who reveals these feelings. I feel inspired by and admiring of leaders who admit it.
For me, it’s a devilishly inconsistent affliction. Sometimes it’s a little better, and sometimes it’s a lot worse. One day I can march into an unfamiliar business situation and feel in charge and in control. Three hours later, while talking with a client I’ve known for years, I’m stricken with the overwhelming sensation that I am no more legitimate than three puppies stacked in a trenchcoat.
This is known, of course, as impostor syndrome. (Spell it with -er or -or. I’ve tried both, and it didn’t make any difference. It still feels bad.)
The words conjure the image of a fake moustache and glasses, which I adore. I dislike a clinical-sounding term for something that we all seem to have.
I prefer to think instead of these pernicious ideas as “limiting beliefs.” This term helps me remember two important things:
Feelings of inadequacy or insufficiency are almost always limiting, and never seem to help us. Rarely has it turned out that the moral of the story was “Welp, look at that. It turns out I really wasn’t good enough!” The part of our brain that thinks limiting thoughts probably evolved alongside the part that helps us avoid unnecessary risks and stay alive. This part doesn’t care much about how we feel, I guess, as long as we survive.
Limiting beliefs are not facts and facts are the miracle cure for impostor syndrome. Limiting beliefs can be attacked and defeated with facts, evidence, and proof from the outside world that you really are amazing, that you’re good enough, and that you can do just about anything if you try.
My “Inside/Outside Voices” Framework
Clients describe their limiting beliefs very often in one of our first meetings. I’ll sometimes prompt them by asking this question:
What’s the single biggest thing that is holding you back from becoming who you really want to be?
As they describe their fears and anxieties, I ask them to categorize them according to whether the ideas came to them from the outside world, or if they’re scenarios or worries they’ve invented that don’t have a solid foundation in fact.
I’ve developed a very simple way of thinking and talking about these limiting beliefs, and trying to get them sorted out. I started calling this my “impostor framework” which I intended as a joke about coaches and their silly frameworks with rudimentary Venn diagrams.
So, uh, here’s mine! I give you permission to take this “framework” seriously if that helps.
On the left we have identified ideas about ourselves that are easily corroborated in the real world, which you and I inhabit most of the time. On the right are the scraggly nagging bullshit impostor voices, which despite coming from within our own cursed brain we seem unable to completely silence.
Outside Voices
The outside world delivers evidence that tells us how people perceive us, what they know about us, and how they measure our abilities. This evidence comes in many different forms, and it doesn’t all deserve the same credibility.
Evidence
Our moms, our loved ones, and others who are supposed to be nice to us will tell us how talented we are, that we’re amazing, and they’re certain to be successful. They’re probably not wrong, but it’s wise to seek corroboration from less-biased sources.
Our co-workers tell us when they appreciate us, when what we’re doing is great, and when we can do better. Our managers, well, sometimes they’re helpful and sometimes not.
Their praise for our good work certainly counts. Ideally they’re a trusted source for helping us understand how we’re doing in our career. Sometimes they say shit like “I really need you to get more visibility with management and influence with your peers,” whatever the fuck that means. We’ll forgive them, because they’re wrangling with impostor voices of their own.
All of these are evidence, which you can use to corroborate or disconfirm what the impostor voice inside tells you about yourself. I spend time with clients looking for and gathering good evidence that helps them bolster their confidence, quiet the impostor voices, and set their intention for where they want to go in their careers.
Facts
Ideas about you that come from other people are not necessarily facts (sorry, mom!) The facts are out there if we look for them, and we should.
The best facts, and the most useful ones for combatting your limiting beliefs, are the ones that commemorate the things that we have actually done. Here’s a handy rule:
You can do everything you have done.
At some point, you interviewed for a job and got hired. That means you can do that, even if all of the impostor voices in your head are telling you that you can’t or won’t.
You have gotten hired, you’ve started projects, and you’ve finished them. Perhaps we’ve earned a promotion, hired an amazing person, gotten some professional recognition, won an award, or earned the trust and respect of a leader. The great thing about facts like these is that they keep on being true even when you’re losing your marbles.
Facts exist in objective reality. If you need help remembering them, check your LinkedIn profile. That’s one place that most of us, these days, have taken to writing them down.
Inside Voices
Limiting, risk-averse, potential-minimizing inside voices come from the part of our brain that’s evolved over the millenia to keep us safe.
Sadly, that safety comes for many of us along with a pervasive, low-level anxiety that robs us of confidence and the conviction we need to take risks, make changes, and believe in ourselves.
There’s one very important thing to remember about those voices: They are terrible at describing objective reality.
Often when I ask clients to describe their limiting beliefs, they express some embarrassment because they know they’ll sound a little bit ridiculous. Talking about your limiting beliefs is effective in reducing their power over you. Writing about them is also effective, and is a little less likely to concern the other people with you when you start confessing your self-limitation to your latte at Starbucks.
One more tip: Your inner undermining monologue cannot alter the historical record of what you have achieved. Even when I go to bed at night quaking with self-doubt, I wake up in the morning to find my LinkedIn profile still says that I did the things I’ve done.
Coping with Your Impostor
That’s a brisk tour of how I work with clients and their impostor voices, especially those who feel “stuck” in their career. It’s an artless and superficial over-simplification of work that I do with clients, which may still be artless and superficial, but which takes a bit longer.
For me, limiting beliefs are a chronic condition, but their presence ebbs and flows. The condition is permanent, but the hold it has on me is transient.
The things that I’ve accomplished, the relationships I’ve built, and the trust I’ve built with those who believe in me — all of that is permanent. It cannot be erased, it can only be temporarily forgotten.
That’s the “framework”: Recognize the impostor voices, try to quiet them down, and overwhelm them with supportive, empowering evidence from the outside world.
Whether you become a client or not, I invite you to share in the comments about your own limiting beliefs, and the facts you can use to keep them in perspective.