Dissolving Imposter Syndrome - Part 1

Dissolving Your Imposter Syndrome - Part 1

Welcome my loves, to your latest Solo Episode of Finding Your Way Home - the Podcast dedicated to supporting your journey inward, your journey through, into a life so conscious, so connected and alive that it truly enriches you and those around you. It's beautiful to have you with us. 

Today, we're exploring one of the most heavily requested topics we receive: how to navigate and find our way beyond Imposter Syndrome, that wonderfully adult manifestation of the fear of being "less than", rejected or excluded. 

As a Coach who works exclusively with high-achieving, high-functioning clients - from Executives to leading Actors and Directors - I can promise you that this particular tendency doesn't discriminate. Irrespective of your level of success, qualification, network or finance; the fear of being "discovered" in you inadequacy can persist. It isn't until you truly make peace with your own mixture of light and dark that you find yourself no longer vulnerable to the perception you believe that others hold. 

And so, while you journey - sit back and soak it in... An episode dedicated to understanding and making friends with your particular form of impostering, and lighting the pathway to mental and emotional freedom. Stay tuned for Part 2, where I'll guide you through a dedicated practice in coming home, and offer practical tools to dissolve anxiety in the moments it arises.

Remember to hit the subscribe or follow buttons if you've found this episode supportive, and consider sharing it with a friend. That simple act helps us to reach the minds and hearts of those who need us. And for more on Finding Your Way Home, including 1:1 opportunities, exclusive retreats and trainings: 

 - Simply visit @ab_embodiment or www.ab-embodimentcoaching.org

Sending love, wherever you're listening,

A x

Transcript

Anthea: 0:14

welcome to Finding Your Way Home, the secrets to true alignment. I'm your host, Anthea Bell, movement teacher, mind body coach, and lifelong spiritual seeker. This is a podcast about the depth, weight, and profound healing power of connection between mind and body, spirit and soul, and from one human to another. Together with an incredible range of inspiring guests, we'll explore just what connection and alignment mean. How to get there in a world full of the temptation to conform, and how great challenge ultimately can lead to life changing transformation. Get ready for groundbreaking personal stories, conversational deep dives, and a toolkit of strategies to build not just your inner knowing, but your outer world. Let's dive in.

1:08

Beautiful creatures. Good morning. I'm doing something slightly unusual as I make my early morning dawn walk at 6:30 AM on the 20th of December. I'm leaving you a little podcast love note, and so you're gonna get the hum of the birds in the background, the rustle of other people's feet and my own, maybe a little bit of the background music noise of North London at this. I was about to say ungodly hour, but actually for me, this is the godly hour. This is the moment in time where things get to be. Peaceful and intimate and private, and you are intimately privately sharing this little moment with all of the other souls who wake at this time, if not significantly earlier than this. But I woke at this morning really inspired to talk to you guys about imposter syndrome. We're reflecting a lot in the last couple of months about. How we feel when we enter spaces that feel challenging, expansive, new, what comes up for us and imposter syndrome is one of those now very common phrases that is used sort of as a blanket to describe any moment where as you walk into a space where you picture yourself walking into a space, a particular relationship, meeting your partner's family, uh, going home for Christmas, going into a major audition, major pitch meeting. It is the experience where as you walk in, you see yourself or you picture yourself as other, and it's an otherness that usually involves also a lesser ness, that on some level you have decided that in order to qualify as one of these people that naturally inhabits these rooms. That you have to have achieved a certain level of notoriety, success, professional acclaim, popularity, beauty, et cetera. And of course we live in a culture which to an extent does actually seem to operate according to many of those metrics. So we are, as we move around the world, especially in a city or if you are scrolling on social media or if you are watching the news, It is deeply pedestal to be more of anything more wealthy, more intelligent, more beautiful, more charismatic, more captivating. Um, there's this heightening and accentuation of any seemingly positive, good quality. And that can leave people thinking that the aim in life and the way that we make relationships and the way that we forge partnerships and the way that we capitalize on business opportunities is to strive to be that. And so what happens when we go into these spaces is really, understandably, we believe that it's a certain formula of, of whatever it is, particular trait or particular, um, acumen that we need to have in order to truly fit into this space. Now I work with coaches and executives and entrepreneurs, but actually significantly, I work with actors, musicians, producers, people that are really often not just in the limelight, not just visible, not just scrutinized. They're people who constantly, if they come to work with me, are looking to expand. The reach of their careers. They're looking to grow their capacity to take lead roles in a new drama or on stage. They're people that are wanting to be seen in a more expanded way than perhaps previously have been. They're people who push themselves to grow. And especially if and when they find themselves auditioning for a role or even being given a role, whether then among a certain perceived caliber of colleague or star, again, imposter syndrome comes up and I give you that example because it doesn't actually matter how. Well known you are, how talented you are, how many awards you have to your name, how many certifications you have. If you're a coach or a practitioner, There is no end to the possibility of imposter syndrome because fundamentally what's happening is the body of me, the being of me, the vulnerable one inside of me is as I go into a space seeing, feeling that I might not quite meet the mark. And what does that translate as well? It takes all of us back to a very young place. That could be young as in single digits. This could be aspects of your early childhood experience, feeling rejected, feeling separate, feeling disconnected, feeling like you're not a part of. It's very, very common when you work with people who have some sort of addiction background that that feeling of I'm unique and different and other has been with them since the earliest of times, and it's one of the most critical things to support them. In shifting both because it's not factually true, it's based on this sort of slight fancy orientation where we are looking for a certain level of feeling as though we belong in order to feel safe in the world. So it's not factually true, but beyond the fact that it's not factory true, it's also hugely detrimental to somebody's capacity to live in fullness, in presence, in self-confidence, et cetera. So. You may be of that kind where from the earliest of times you felt different. Um, what also of course happens is that when we get into those joyful teenagers, a huge number of people acquire a huge number of memories and experiences that convince them that they are fundamentally different from and rejected by their peers. And of course, kids are kids. And all of us have had those times where we've been at the brunt of the. Slightly accidental, slightly casual cruelty of another child. So what you might notice is if you think about your most recent equivalent of imposter syndrome, what was the comparison or the judgment you were making of yourself? What was it that you felt that you did not have that these people did have that made you feel separate? That's the first thing. Because these moments are the most fantastic way of identifying what are the stories that I still speak about myself or believe about myself, that, uh, fundamentally really get in the way of me standing in the full confidence of who I truly am rather than what tends to happen, which is that we try to present as a different, better version of ourselves to convince the other person that we are that.. And so when you identify whatever it is, the thing that you think you are not enough of, I'd like you to take a really gentle moment with yourself and just acknowledge, honor, recognize. Okay. That's my current stuff. That's my current content. That's the thing that right now I need to find a capacity to either dissolve through or forgive myself for or both. What you'll find is that the deeper that you go into trying to, or being willing to forgive yourself for the things that you consider to be lacking. You'll discover that those lack beliefs are tied to all sorts of other beliefs about what is needed for love, what is needed for success, what is needed for inclusion within your family. So it's a really, really good way of pulling out one thread and the whole ball of string begins to unravel the other thing that is happening, aside from the specific reason that you consider yourself not to be a part of this group. Not to be welcome and bear in mind that on some level, because this is neurobiological, this is literally your body sensing, sensing the difference of the space and sensing the perhaps intimacy that this existing group have, and then currently your newness and your novelty to it on one level that is true. So we could just decide. It doesn't have to be a problem that right now I'm the newbie right now, this is an unfamiliar space right now. I don't know whether we are the right fit or whether we'll gel or whether I'll be enfolded into this opportunity. Could it be okay that we are in that space of newness and not knowing How do we make it okay? Fundamentally by going back to the belief that I'm always okay. That one person, one opportunity, one relationship is not the definer of whether I am safe or held or have a bright, beautiful future in the world. It just isn't. But of course when we get scared, we get into very limited thinking. Amygdala active. Hormones moving through your body and corresponding thought patterns that would convince you that this is a black or white, all or nothing situation, which it never is. So if you could just walk into that space and sort of enjoy the difference, transition that quality of anxiety into excitement, into a kind of salty pragmatism that says, yes, absolutely, this is a new opportunity, and we could all see where it goes. What would happen in that moment, especially if you used the word we, is that you would remind yourself that actually these people that you're making other and placing on some sort of inclusive pedestal. Ultimately, if you were to catch them at 6:00 AM in the morning as you're catching me, they would be exactly the same as you. I. With their own insecurities, their own moments where they pedestal lies. Another person, their own moments where they feel out of place. And in fact, if you find yourself in a dynamic where someone really is quite significantly projecting a quality that you are different, you are separate. What you immediately know about that person is that the likelihood is that they are doing that at you with you. Because on some level, that is how they have been made to feel in their family of origin in the hierarchy within their business. And there's something very relieving about noticing that somebody else's behavior actually reveals to you their own human vulnerability immediately. That would allow you to feel more equal and less in their hands. And so that's Then the next point, what is often happening, especially in relation to what I just said, is that on some level, when we go into a space where imposter syndrome comes up, before the imposter syndrome has come up. What we've done is we've put a lot of power into the hands of that person or that opportunity, whether that is a conscious place in the power where we feel that our financial safety and wherewithal is resting on them saying yes. Whether that is that we've placed our emotional wellbeing in their hands. If they accept me, then I accept myself. But on some level, we have made them the power holder and you'll know the people that you encounter where when you are with them, they just don't do that. They don't make you the power holder. They keep a quality of their own spine, And they don't do that in a way that is judgemental or challenging. They do it very simply in a way that says, I have healthy self-esteem and I'm excited about this potential partnership together, or this romance, but you don't get me. You get so much of my love and my care and my connection and my commitment. But fundamentally, you don't get the insides of me that are meant for me and me alone. And ultimately in the process of coming into greater integration and greater wholeness. That's what we're looking for, that the depth of your self relationship is equal to, if not greater than the depth of your relationships with other people. And that might sound like a challenging concept. We live. Um. In this sort of slight fantasy that the romantic partner is everything, and Esther Perel has done a lot of really incredible work on this. But the reality is that that mirage on some level is designed to give us the almost dopamine feeling that we finally gained maximum emotional sensation and climax, and that when we meet that person suddenly. The world becomes an easy, beautiful place and we are safe forever. And I love that idea in the deep, deep, gorgeous, romantic, but it's also not fact. And if it comes along, if any of us should be so lucky to be in partnership that is that rich and beautiful, you can bet that one of the key core conditions of that. Is that your own wholeness be intact. So I want to finish with one final point about this imposter syndrome in business. And I'm probably gonna do a part two where I run you through some of the techniques that I teach my clients that really help them to resolve this particular tendency. But for now, the last thing that I wanna end on is that you could make this whole thing really simple and you could remind yourself that on some level, all that imposter syndrome ever is, is our desire to be loved. That's all. All it really ever is, is our desire to be loved. We can wrap it up in all sorts of ways. We can say that it's about our academic credentials. Or our bank balance or getting to a certain level in our career, or finally getting that, flat stomach that all women think will make them successful with men. Uh, by the way, it's a complete fallacy. We could think that it's about all of those things, but it's not fundamentally, it's about, do you like me? Do you think I'm acceptable? Can I be a part of this thing? Can I be welcomed in? And again, if we go back to the self relationship piece, that's the piece of work that people are not, not learning how to do with themselves. They are not welcoming themselves in. And so of course then other people doing that for them, with them becomes crushingly important and we forget that. You know, day by day we're just dealing with other beautiful human beings with all of their own stuff, and they may not have the patience or the attention, or even the willingness to offer us that. So the next time that you find yourself in a space where on some level you're making the other people more important, bigger, and the condition to your acceptability, I just want you to notice and very gently to say to yourself, my darling, welcome. Welcome home and to connect into your heart and to feel into that place inside of you where you recognize or are on the path to recognizing that you are so much more than enough, that you are deeply loved in your bones. Whether your family reflect that, whether your partnerships reflect that, whether your friendships reflect that, it doesn't really matter. The knowing is you are a child of this miraculous universe and you are love. And you are valuable, and the likelihood is that that value is both innate and off. You haven't even gotten started on how much of that you can express in the world. And I see that every day. You know, I see people growing and expanding and pushing through their perceived limits every single day and the thing that gets them there. Is no longer curtailing and limiting their lives to try to make themselves feel accepted by others, but truly, truly listening in for the instinct of what is meant to move through me and how can I, and when can I pour that outward into the world. So that is your voice note special for today. I hope you find it useful. Please drop us a note with any questions that you have about this topic, and I will come back for part two and we'll dive deeper into your core ways of navigating this little surge of adrenaline, nervousness and perception I sent you. Love my friends. never met because you listening to this is like a heartbeat that I get to connect to and I will be forever grateful. Night team.

Anthea: 18:33

Gorgeous listeners. I hope. You enjoy today's. today's. episode. To find. More about our. Featured guests. Have a look in the show. Notes.