Do you ever have the feeling that everyone else has their life figured out — except for you? And you’re the only one who’s totally clueless and lost?
You’re not alone. Most people feel this way, and the phenomenon is called “impostor syndrome.” In this episode, I’ll give you some tips for making friends with impostor syndrome. Since it’s (probably) not going away any time soon, you’ll get some hacks for living with it more comfortably.
What’s Covered in Episode 4: Make Friends with Impostor Syndrome
- Why I choose to live a brave life, even though I experience impostor syndrome
- How to reframe your fear so you can do creative, bold things
- The craziest business I’ve ever heard of (it’s wildly successful)
- How to stop comparing yourself to your peers
- Why the market, and your field, isn’t “saturated”
- The reason it’s selfish to ignore your passions
- The Spotlight Effect (a weird psychological study that will change your life)
- How to become resilient to criticism
- How to listen to what your heart is urging you to do
Relevant Links and Credits
- A post I wrote about impostor syndrome and nutrition
- Follow me on Instagram @hollyfisherhiggins
- Poem: Why Bother? by Sean Thomas Dougherty
- Link to the subconscious sabotage ebook and audio bundle
- Music: “On the Verge” by Joseph McDade
Podcast Transcript – Episode 4: Make Friends with Impostor Syndrome
Welcome to episode four, four episodes deep, time flies, man. If you are listening to this on release day, Tuesday, October 22nd, I’m probably in a plane right now, so look up at the sky and wave at me. I’m flying out to the West coast to train with Marisa Peer in RTT, which stands for Rapid Transformational Therapy. It is a type of hypnosis that I have had amazing results with, and I cannot wait to integrate it into my practice. You can hear a little bit about that in episode one, but I am going to be sharing way more about that in coming episodes, but today we’re talking about impostor syndrome, how to make friends with impostor syndrome. I know that’s a lofty promise, right? But here we go. So impostor syndrome, I did a poll about this on Instagram and I had a couple people say, Oh, that sounds interesting, but I don’t know what that is.
So what is impostor syndrome? Impostor syndrome is that feeling that everybody else has life figured out except for you. Like everybody else was given an instruction manual at birth, but somehow you didn’t get the manual and you’re confused and you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing and soon enough everybody’s going to find out that you’re a fraud and a fake and they’re going to turn you into the police and you’re going to lose your job and your world is going to crumble. Well, it turns out that everybody, almost everybody, I’d say 99% of people deal with this even though we feel like we’re the only ones fumbling through life. That’s the secret that you have to realize is that we all do it. We all feel like this, but nobody talks about it. And you know me, I like to talk about the things that nobody else wants to talk about.
So we’re going there. I deal with impostor syndrome every day and sometimes it is debilitating. The voices in my head get so, so loud. And speaking of this, I have some news. I have decided for my personal sanity that I am going to be discontinuing this podcast. I think this is probably going to be the last episode and the reason is I’ve gotten some amazing feedback, some really great reviews, but one person sent me a really nasty message on Instagram. She basically said that the things that I talk about are damaging and misleading and the fact of the matter is this person has way more credentials than I do, like way more credentials, way more schooling than I have and I couldn’t stop thinking about her words. They absolutely haunted me and I’ve decided maybe she’s right, maybe I shouldn’t be talking about these things. And besides there are, oh, there are so many people who are way better at podcasting than I am.
Like way better. I can tell you guys my favorite podcasts and you should just go listen to those. Really, I don’t have any business doing this and it’s a lot of work to get an episode up every week and I’ve been thinking, you know what if I run out of things to say, you know, then what? You know, I think it’s best if I just nip this thing in the bud. I mean, who the hell did I think I was starting a podcast?
If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m kidding. I’m a terrible liar. I don’t know. Maybe I did okay. But that was all a lie. Actually. It wasn’t all a lie. I did actually get a really nasty message on Instagram from somebody and it did haunt me, but I’m not going anywhere, baby. This podcast is not going anywhere. I am just getting started. We’re just warming up here.
But I want you to know that everything I just said, you know, I’m not canceling the podcast, but those are real thoughts, real thoughts. And I did get that nasty message. But you know what? I have gotten dozens and dozens and dozens of positive messages. So I have to fight the jerk in my brain just like you do. I love this podcast. I love doing this. It lights me up. It excites me. But every day my brain tells me that I’m actually not good enough to do it. And the other thing I want to get across is this. I know this podcast is helping a lot of you because like I said, I’ve gotten lots of messages about how it’s already impacted you and maybe you were listening to that lie that I just told and maybe you fell for it and maybe you thought I wasn’t kidding and maybe you got this sinking feeling in your stomach like, no, I love your podcasts.
Don’t cancel it. What are you doing? And who am I to take that away from you? Who am I to let one crappy comment and the jerky fear-based part of my brain keep me from making a difference in your life? If you think about it, that’s kind of selfish. Oh, I could provide a lot of value and really help people, but I’m scared and I feel like an impostor, so I’m going to go back in my hole. It’s totally selfish and here’s the thing, like I said, 99% of people deal with this. I saw a post on Instagram recently with a quote from Jennifer Lopez, the one and only J-Lo, and she said, even though I had sold 70 million albums, there I was, feeling like I’m no good at this. Listen, if J-Lo deals with this, it is ridiculous to think that you are going to be exempt and I want you to think now of your favorite artists, writers, teachers, performers, the people, the bands, the messengers who have been the most impactful in your life, like stop and think about it.
Who has really made a true difference in your life? Now? What if they had decided to listen to the jerk in their brain? What if they had given into their impostor syndrome? They would have robbed you of those gifts. You wouldn’t be who you are. You wouldn’t have the experiences, the lessons, the joy, all because someone was scared. And I love what Jen Sincero says about this in her book, You Are a Badass, if you’ve read that, you’ll probably remember this analogy, but she gives this hilarious example and it’s something like what if Led Zeppelin had decided that they were no good, the classic rock band Led Zeppelin and they were sitting around and they were like, man, that Mozart guy, he had it figured out, man, that dude is huge and we’re never going to be as huge as him. And he didn’t even have a drummer.
You know, maybe we should get rid of our drummer and add some harps or maybe we should just like quit the band, we’re hopeless. And you know by now that I’m talking to you, right, because you have something, I don’t know exactly what it is, but you have something that you’re not doing. You have a thing. And if you’ve listened to episodes two and three, you know that the thing that you’re not doing could be keeping you sick and stuck and hating your life and contributing to your symptoms. And there is no amount of kale you can eat to fix that. Maybe you want to write or sing or paint or change your career or come out of the closet or move somewhere new or start dating or I don’t know. You tell me right now in your car, just talk out loud to me. What is the thing that you want to do that you’re not doing because you’re scared?
I want to get really serious for a minute and tell you about dog cupcakes. I kid you not. There is this place down the road from me and it is a dog bakery. They sell cookies and cupcakes and donuts for dogs and every weekend there is a line out the frickin door with dachshunds and cha-weenies and corgis and mastiffs and they’re wagging their tails and they’re so happy and they’re drooling everywhere because they’re waiting to get their cupcakes. Welcome to 2019, this is the future, but let’s rewind. Let’s go back. I don’t know when this dog, this dog bakery opened, but like let’s go back to before the dog bakery opened and let’s imagine the owner when this was just an idea in her head and imagine the criticism that she must have received from her friends and her family when she was like, yeah, I’m going to open a dog bakery.
And what people said behind her back, they must have been like, did you hear about Debbie? She wants to open a dog bakery. What do you mean? Yeah, like a bakery for dogs. Oh, that’s a terrible idea. She’s gonna sink her entire life savings into a dog bakery. I, I wish Debbie would get some help. You know, just imagine how that went down. Yeah. I’m going to open a dog bakery, but let me tell you, Debbie is laughing all the way to the bank with her dog bakery because I’m pretty sure she makes bank and maybe Debbie used to work at a bank and maybe she was miserable and this dog bakery is like giving her life now and then imagine those dogs not getting cupcakes. If Debbie was still working at the bank, she would be robbing all of that joy from the world because she chose to believe that the dog bakery was dumb.
I want to know what is your version of the dog bakery? What is your version of the dog bakery and I want to share a poem with you. This is called why bother by Sean Thomas Dougherty. Why bother? Because right now there is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words. Right now, there is someone out there with the wound in the exact shape of your words. I just got goosebumps everywhere PREACH, Mr Sean Thomas, there is someone out there who needs something. They have a missing puzzle piece and you have the exact puzzle piece to help them, but you’re over here in the corner like, I’m scared and I don’t know what I’m doing and I suck and maybe it’s not a wound or a pain point or something this person needs help with. Maybe the puzzle piece that you’re providing is joy because comedians are healers.
Artists are healers. People who scoop ice cream and make dog cupcakes and post hilarious memes on the internet are bringing joy to the world and that is healing. But I know what you’re thinking, Holly. Everybody’s already doing it. Everybody is already doing my version of dog cupcakes and the market is saturated and there’s too much competition and I don’t know enough and only my mom is going to read my blog. You got to start somewhere. Debbie probably started off in her kitchen testing recipes for her poodle. You have to be willing to take the very first step. I love this analogy. Imagine somebody in 1970 saying, Oh, you know, I’d, I’d love to write a TV show, but TV man, TV’s just getting too saturated. You know, we have all these game shows and I really think we’ve reached our potential with this medium. But if you think back to 1970 TV was just getting started.
I mean now if you take that same perspective, social media as just getting started, if you tell yourself that the market is saturated, if you tell yourself there’s no room for you, if you tell yourself everybody’s already doing that thing that I want to do, again, the reticular activating system in your brain is going to look for proof of that. And you’re also creating proof of that around you because I guarantee you that you are in some kind of bubble. You think that everybody’s doing what you want to be doing and there’s no room for you. And the reason that you think that is because you follow all these people. If you want to write an album, I guarantee you that you’re following a bunch of other musicians on social media. Um, I know a lot of other NTPs or aspiring NTPs, people who want to do work similar to me.
You know, they, they pop in my DMS all the time and they say, ah, it’s just too saturated. There’s no room for me. And I know exactly how that feels because just a few short years ago, I was telling myself the same exact thing. I have no idea how I’m ever gonna work with clients or get my message across to anybody. But here’s the thing, your little curated feed on social media, the things that you consume, that is not representative of a sample size of the overall population, which is the pool that you will be serving. You know, if I were to come to your town and take a sample size of a hundred people and put you guys in the town hall, I guarantee that you would know more about your thing or you would be more passionate about your hobby than any other of the 99 people in the room.
You have to start giving yourself credit for what you know and you have to stop steeping yourself like a little sad tea bag in this sea of people who are at your level because that is not representative of the overall population. I’m reminded of this all the time and you know I fall into this bubble trap too when it comes to sharing things because I live in this nutrition and personal development and wellness bubble and in my brain I think that everybody knows what blood sugar balance is. I was reminded of this the other week, I just casually mentioned about something about blood sugar balance and anxiety on Instagram and then I got like all these DMS from people saying, how do I balance my blood sugar? What is blood sugar? How do, what does this have to do with my anxiety? And it just reminded me like, Oh man, I live in this microcosm, this bubble.
I have to step back and think about who I’m serving, not who my peers are, but who am I serving? And if you need to unfollow or stop paying attention to the people who are also doing the thing that you want to do, do it to protect your sanity and your brain and your creative drive. Because again, that’s just not representative of reality. I do that all the time. If I start getting up in my head of like, Oh, I’ll never be as good as this person or that person, I’ll tune out. I’ll tune out and I’ll tune back into myself. So on the one hand, as we’ve just talked about, there’s this fear of being insignificant and irrelevant and what’s the point? And it doesn’t matter and nobody’s going to find me or nobody’s going to ever see my art and it’s just going to be me and my mom in the kitchen so I shouldn’t even do it anyway.
But then on the other side, there’s the opposite fear. And that fear is, Oh crap, if I do my thing, I have to be seen. And that opens me up for criticism from my friends and my family and evil strangers on the internet. But I have some good news for you. People don’t care and people don’t pay attention as much as you think. And I know that doesn’t sound good cause you’re like, well I want people to pay attention to my thing and I want to be relevant. But it’s good to a certain extent that people don’t care. And there’s a term it was coined by Cornell University social psychologists, and it’s called the spotlight effect. Listen to this, it will change your life. So the spotlight effect refers to our inherent tendency to assume that other people are criticizing us as harshly as we criticize ourselves.
And I really like how Martha Beck puts this. She says, many of us operate as if Simon Cowell is doing a play by play of our work, our wardrobe and our snack choices. But the research, again, this was done at Cornell University and it’s been carried out in other places too. The research suggests otherwise, and the most famous study about the spotlight effect involved a really cheesy tee shirt with a picture of Barry Manilow printed on the front. And if you don’t know who Barry Manilow is, he was like this singer performer in the 70s and he wore ridiculous cheesy outfits and he sang that song Copacabana at the Copa Copacabana… I don’t know. I probably just totally botched that. Anyway, these Cornell University undergraduate students, they were asked to wear this embarrassing shirt with Barry Manilow on the front, and then they were asked to guess how many of their classmates would notice and remember this terrible Barry Manilow shirt.
And most participants in this study were certain that 50% of their classmates would remember, but in actuality fewer than 25% of the classmates could recall the shirt. So this Barry Manilow study, I love that I can say the Barry Manilow study, and many other studies like this suggest that people are paying about 50% less attention to our actions and appearances than we think they are. Whew. This is a relief, right? So remember the spotlight effect, because the truth is we’re all actually, it’s just human nature. We’re all pretty self centered and self-conscious. But the secret is most of us are too busy worrying about ourselves. And most of us are too busy trying not to look dumb, to worry about how dumb you might be looking. And this is why I’m so goofy and why I sing Copacabana on my path, my Pat, my pad casts. Oh my God, I just said podcast, I need to move back to Michigan. Because you’re not even gonna remember this next week you’re not, maybe you are going to remember it because I’m talking about it so much now, but like this is why I am the way I am is because nobody remembers. What would you be brave enough to do if you realized and you accepted the fact that people really weren’t paying that much attention to your metaphorical Barry Manilow tee shirt. And what if you could be certain that the people who were paying attention, who were really tuned into you, what if you could be certain that you have the exact puzzle piece that they need? And I want to interject here really quick because you don’t even have to have a puzzle piece for other people. A lot of people I have noticed are called to serve in some way. They feel like they have something they can help other people with in some capacity, but not everything needs to be about serving.
If you feel called to do something, it doesn’t have to be about other people. It can just be about you. Maybe you just wanna take a pole dancing class for you. You really want to spin around that pole, but guess what? If that makes you happy, if that lights you up, you are inadvertently serving those around you because you’re changing your energy. You are changing how you show up in the world. So really if you go after the thing that you want to go after, no matter what it is, everybody benefits. There are a lot of spiritual teachings that say it is impossible for you to want something that you aren’t capable of. So if that desire has landed in your heart, if that dream has landed in your brain, if there is something that you can’t stop thinking about, it was put there for a reason and if it is in your brain, you actually have the power to achieve it.
If you desire it, there is a reason you desire it and resisting a calling, resisting an urge resisting all of this stuff is like trying to hold a beach ball underwater. You hold that beach ball underwater for too long and eventually you’re going to get tired and that beach ball is going to pop up and you know how it’s going to pop up as symptoms, as fatigue, as depression, as anxiety, as physical health complaints. It is exhausting trying to hold a beach ball underwater. Wouldn’t it feel good if you could just let your beach ball pop up on its own and just do the thing that you want to do? Even if it starts with that itty bitty baby step. Let your beach balls out. People, I have people say to me a lot, you know, I don’t know what I want to do. I, I just feel lost.
I just feel confused and actually I don’t buy that. Don’t try to tell me that cause I won’t believe you. Most of us actually know exactly what we want. We just don’t believe it’s possible for us. Or we can see the road ahead and it’s too daunting. And so we try to pretend like we don’t want it. Most people would rather pretend like it’s impossible than try and take the risk and fail. I know I have felt like this a lot in my life when I’ve been called toward really big things, my brain tells me it’s better to just pretend that I don’t want that thing, than to go after that thing and make a fool of myself or like to have to face the disappointment if it doesn’t work out. My brain always tells me if I try it and I’m disappointed and it doesn’t work out.
That will be even more depressing than not trying at all, but I can tell you from a lot of experience, it is always way more depressing to just sit in your living room and not try because even when things have not gone the way that I thought they would or I didn’t succeed in the way that I thought I would, I’ve always learned a lesson or I’ve been pointed down a different rabbit hole that I wouldn’t have gotten to if I hadn’t just put one foot in front of the other and there’s nothing that I’ve ever gone after that I’ve genuinely wanted, that I’ve seriously regretted pursuing. I just don’t think our souls guide us in the wrong direction. But we let these fear-based parts of our brain take over. We prioritize belonging and acceptance and fitting in and not rocking the boat and keeping everybody happy.
And what is everybody gonna think? We prioritize this over our callings. And that’s not something to beat yourself up over. I don’t want you to listen to this and think, Oh man, I’m such a loser for not listening to my heart’s desires. That is not what I want you to take away from this. This is just something to recognize and work with. And by the way, um, I have an ebook and an audio download on my site. It’s essentially a bonus version of the podcast: seven ways your subconscious is sabotaging your health and happiness. And this is like a really deep dive on this topic. So if any of this is resonating with you and you haven’t downloaded that yet, head over to mindspeakpodcast.com/sabotage. It’s linked up in the show notes, and get that. It’s essentially a bonus episode on all of the sneaky subconscious ways your brain talks you out of doing the things that you really want to do.
So I decided to call this episode making friends with impostor syndrome because as far as I know, this is something you have to dance with. This is something I don’t think it goes away completely. I think yes, you can increase your self esteem and your confidence and your resiliency, but I don’t know if this phenomenon ever truly goes away. Like I said earlier, J-Lo deals with this. If J-Lo hasn’t hacked it, I don’t know. I was gonna call this episode slay imposter syndrome or defeat imposter syndrome, but I haven’t slayed it. I haven’t defeated it. But if I do, I guarantee you, I promise you I will be the first to teach you how. But even just knowing that you’re not the only person that deals with this, most people deal with this. It can be a huge relief.
Your coaching takeaways for this episode, I want you to start receiving praise. And what I mean by that is I want you to get better at taking compliments and accepting them and letting them in and feeling them and appreciating them and knowing that they are true. Because all of us tend to magnify criticism. We can get a hundred compliments and just over the top praise and we can brush them off. Aww, thanks. Oh, this old thing, I’ve got it at the thrift store. Oh, I didn’t really try. Just, you know, we can deflect, stop deflecting, learn how to say thank you. That’s all you have to do. It’s really uncomfortable at first, but you just say thank you and you stop and you notice and you sink into the praise. And when you do this, it builds up your ability to stay in that emotion and believe good things about yourself and it, it also makes you more resilient to criticism.
Because like I was talking about earlier, we can hear all of these wonderful things and receive all of this praise and then one person says one terrible thing or one catty or underhanded thing and it all comes crashing down and we forget about all of the wonderful things that everybody else said. And this is just your brain trying to keep you safe. But eventually if you receive praise enough, you can eventually train yourself to magnify the praise and to let go of the criticism and the underhanded remarks. I keep a folder on my phone and I keep a little label, a little folder in my email called praise. And anytime somebody sends me a compliment or a nice email, I flag it as praise and it goes into that folder. And I do this to help me fight the jerk in my brain because on days when the jerk gets really, really, really loud, I go into these folders and I see the nice things that people have said and I talk my jerk brain off the ledge and I say, not today, Satan.
So start receiving praise. The other thing I want you to do is get honest about what you want. This will probably hurt. This will probably be uncomfortable. You will probably say, I don’t know what I want, but I really believe that you do know what you want and if you push past that initial hesitation and you let yourself actually dream of what you do want, then you can start taking the tiniest step, doing the tiniest things you can to start moving in that direction. And even if it’s like a timeline thing where you know because of your circumstances you feel like it would be impossible for you to do this thing. So what’s the point? You know, like I said a couple of episodes ago, if you can’t make the macro shift, how do you make the micro shift? What is just one little thing that you can do to feel closer to that energy?
When I wanted to become an NTP, even though I had no idea how I was going to do it, no idea how I was going to change careers, I was in massive debt and it all just seemed impossible. I let myself attend the informational call for the program. I said, I’m just going to call in. I’m going to get some information about this. I’m going to see what the next step would be even though I totally think it is impossible right now. So whatever that looks like for you, get honest about what it is and see if you can take that very first baby step.
Thanks for tuning in today. If you are loving the podcast, please, please, please leave me a rating and or a review in Apple Podcasts if you can. All you have to do in Apple Podcasts is just go and click the little stars. That’s literally all you have to do to leave a rating is just go click the stars. If you have a couple of minutes and you can take some time to leave a review with a few of your words, that would be so awesome, but if not, just go click on those little stars for me, it would make my day. Come find me on Instagram @hollyfisherhiggins, where I have been known to actually dance to Barry Manilow. And until next time, go believe in you. I do.