Tips for dealing with your impostor syndrome

Hi

“Any day now, they’re going to realise what a mistake they made in hiring me.'' I have lost count of how many times my coaching clients and students have said this to me.  How often do thoughts like this one cross your mind? These thoughts of being a fraud or having our enormous deficiencies exposed and the anxieties, insecurities and dread that follow are all part of a phenomenon known as imposter syndrome.  Imposter syndrome can do real damage: anxiety, an inability to enjoy your successes. 

NLP can be very useful in helping you to challenge these unhelpful thoughts.  Here are some tips:

1. Become aware of the unhelpful voice.  What is it saying?  Whose voice is it? Experiment with changing the tonality of the voice to one that makes you laugh eg Donald duck!

2. Assess the evidence - Make a simple 2-column list on which you record any evidence that you are good at what you do as well as any evidence that you are not good at what you do.  I will wager that the list of evidence of you being good at what you do is by far the longest!  And, don't be shy about the good stuff. 

3. Get out of your head - find someone to talk to who will be honest with you or write down your fears and then notice how they are not real.

4. Practice self-compassion and be kind to yourself.  Learn from anything that doesn't go so well. In NLP we say there is no failure only feedback.  

5. Reframe around growth and remember that you cannot grow or develop without stretching yourself. 

6. Seek trusted feedback from your network.  Knowing you have a source of meaningful feedback can help you to let go of wondering what every one else is thinking of you.

If you'd like to learn more about how to transform your mindset consider our next online NLP practitioner course.  Full details here:

https://www.teamnlp.co.uk/nlp-practitioner-course

Have a great week. 

Lindsey and the team at Team NLP.