Actual, tangible steps to get over Imposter Syndrome

I was telling a good friend about my new coaching/workshop thing I'm trying to get off the ground (ridding yourself of Imposter Syndrome) and they asked me a great question (paraphrased):

This was in response to my offer:

This is the kind of question I would ask too. Great, sounds good, but what will I actually do. How will this happen in 6 weeks?

The answer is straightforward: it will happen because YOU want it to. You just need to realize that fact and off you go.

That said, overcoming Imposter Syndrome isn't a "one and done" type of thing. It's a way of thinking that you eradicate over time, intentionally. It takes effort to change how your brain processes things, and going it alone can be quite the effort.

So, to that end: below is the answer to my friend's question. The tangible steps you can take to alter your thinking. If you're interested in working directly with me on any of this, let me know by hitting reply.

Step 1: Identification

This part sounds simple, but when you're deep in The Suck, it can be hard to take a step back and ponder how you're feeling.

As with most "Step 1s", this is the most important one: knowing when you're feeling like an Imposter. Unless you're really into mindfulness, observing how you're thinking and feeling isn't something that you do on a regular basis.

That's where having a journal comes in. If you and I were working together, this would be the very first thing I would have you do. Apple's Journal app is great for this, as is Day One, Apple Notes, One Note, or Obsidian (my favorite).

Every day, open a journal, and answer this simple question:

Let your thoughts out as honestly as you can without worrying about someone else reading it. When you're done, read it back to yourself.

A centered person would identify the wins and challenges in their day and frame them as such. The imposters out there would focus on the negative parts and blame themselves. The Dunning-Kruger crowd would blame other people for any failures in the day.

Either way: knowing where you're at is half the battle. Now you just need to show up.

Step 2: Recognition

Through journaling you find the situations that set you off. The more you write honestly and openly, the more you see the patterns that your thinking mind simply can't see.

After a week of journaling, add a special note to yourself, telling yourself the patterns you see without judgement. That last bit is hard to do because we really enjoy beating ourselves up when we get a chance, but that's not the point here. What you're trying to do is help a good friend through a hard time (yourself), so being kind and supportive really is the key.

Here's an example:

This is going to be very difficult to write clearly without judgement, yet it's incredibly important. You have to see yourself clearly in order to understand something critical: you're being toxic.

The Toxic Squeeze

Imposter Syndrome builds upon itself. It's an inward pull of group energy, where your outward appearance and reaction naturally pull the sympathy of others. You've been around these people before - the self-doubters and "I really suck" crowd - so you know what it's like.

You want to help them and offer support. You want to do this because listening to someone who has a 6-figure job complain about being worthless is difficult, at best, and if you can somehow cheer them up, your time with them won't be completely one-sided. Essentially, you're kind to them so they stop talking about themselves constantly.

This is what people are seeing in you when you implode and share that you don't feel you belong to the group, or that you don't know enough. When you tell others you wish you were as smart as they are. What they really want is for you to contribute to the group, not suck the life out of it.

Unfortunately, Imposter Syndrome gets worse when you start to see how toxic you're being.

Unless you stop it cold.

Step 3: Deploy The Love Cannon

I'm really into visualization because I find that if I give a thought or emotion shape, I can learn a lot from it. I can also act upon it in some constructive way.

Through journaling and recognition, you can begin to see when Imposter Syndrome is starting to take over your brain in a group setting. As you feel it coming on, start your visualization and go to work. For me, this is a cannon that shoots red hearts at the dark shapes in my mind.

Those red hearts are things that I'm grateful for. Extremely simple things to, such as:

• I have all my fingers and toes.
• The smile on my girlfriend's face when she sees me.
• The smell of coffee in the morning (and that I can smell!).
• The wonderful dinner I had the other night/week/month.
• The last FaceTime call I had with one of my kids.
• The fact that I can type > 100 wpm.

This is the most important part of this process: you're not trying to fight Imposter Syndrome, you're trying to let it go and let the love flow.

Have you ever noticed how one person can change a group dynamic by showing up with a smile or cupcakes? Maybe they take a second to talk about how wonderful the weather is, or share a story about an amazing meal they had the other night.

This is love, flowing out of them and into the group. This is where you want to be, and really the only secret here is to grab hold of the simplest thing and focus on it, letting the feeling well up inside you, replacing the toxic pull of Imposter nonsense.

Step 4: Allowing Yourself To Find Out

If you and I were to work together, we would be going over your journal (what you chose to share, of course) and eventually we would get to a point where gratitude begins working and you feel yourself growing into the person you have always been.

It sounds great, but it can be disorienting. The toxic pull of Imposter Syndrome can be gratifying in a really crappy way. Simply put: attention from others is what we crave, even if it comes from our own drama. A toddler pretending to be hurt or otherwise faking tears is the exact same process as what you're doing in a group setting when you implode.

It's hard to admit this, but it's critical: there's a part of you that likes being an Imposter.

As you work gratitude into your day, you start to see this more clearly because that toxic need doesn't fill you up anymore, and it feels weird when it's not there. It's being replaced by something far more powerful, and almost a bit scary: inspiration, curiosity, and love.

If you grab hold of these feelings and let them flow through you, it's entirely likely you will feel a strong sense of fear. What happens if you find out what you're truly capable of? Your Imposter self would frame this as "well I guess I'll find out that I really am worthless and I don't want that".

This is why working with someone else on this is important. If you said this to me in a one-on-one session, I would reflect back to you that you're here, with me, which means you already know that's not true.

You're curious, and you want to find out just how far you can push yourself and your natural craving for knowledge. The trick is to let go of doubt, jump in, and learn.

Maybe it's computer science problems or how to lead a team. Maybe you want to speak at a conference or start a podcast to elevate your presence in the community. The goal is to give yourself permission to try and take the first step.

And to fail, which you will.

Step 5: Reframing Your Efforts

As an imposter, failure is to be avoided at all costs. In fact, it's likely you find yourself covering your tracks, making up excuses, and possibly even fabricating things so you don't get found out.

Through journaling, recognition, gratitude, and curiosity, you're now ready to handle failure and see it for what it truly is: opportunity.

Every founder understands the notion of a "pivot", which is when your customers tell you through their actions that your product is a little bit off. Is that a failure? Of course not! It's the best gift a founder could receive: customers telling you what it takes for them to give you money.

Maybe you hate the sound of your own voice (like I did) so doing a podcast or speaking on stage is something you always thought impossible. One gaff, stutter, or forgotten point will send you into a spiral and make you want to run off the stage.

Or you could reframe the situation:

Here I'm using honesty, humor, and courage to deal with an embarrassing situation. This has happened to me, and by far the best way to deal with it is head on. It takes courage, of course, but the alternative is to mumble to yourself and declare "I'm a horrible speaker sorry you had to see this talk". I sat in an audience when a speaker said those exact words and it actually made me angry.

Failure is the natural result of effort. Embracing and learning from it is one of the best gifts you can give yourself!

Step 6: Sharing

One of my most favorite quotes is from Derek Sivers, who shared this thought on the Tim Ferriss podcast (paraphrased):

As you grow and let your curiosity and courage take over, you begin to broaden your mind and accept things you might never have considered before. You might learn to like JavaScript or SQL, or who knows, maybe even F#.

If you and I were to work together, this is where we would set up a blog, newsletter, Instagram, YouTube channel, or TikTok - some place where you get to share the amazing things you're learning on your journey.

The point is to keep your focus moving outward from your heart, sharing the natural flow of good feeling building inside you and believing that not only do you belong here, but you're capable of giving back and building up the group.

This is where I would urge you to visualize a scenario where the group was discussing something you didn't know. In fact, you and I will run through a scenario just like this one as one of your assignments.

The assignment might be something like this:

Ideally, you would go home that night and read up on Google Spanner, learn how it works, and how Eric Brewer (the guy who wrote about CAP theorem in the first place at UC Berkeley and now works at Google) came out and said that Spanner is essentially CAP because it runs within Google's VPN and has 5-nines uptime and even if it does go down, Google's ops team is on it immediately as it's not on some remote data center - it's within Google's own VPN. Perhaps we could call it "CaP" with a lower-case A?

The goal here is the flow of learning and sharing, as a natural followup to curiosity and courage. Those things can only happen by letting go of your doubts, learning about yourself through journaling, and being grateful for all that life has given you.

And possibly having someone push you along in the process 👋🏻.

Feel Good, Inc.

This is in your control, completely. Going through life feeling like you don't belong is a choice, so why not have some fun? This decision alone will lead you to where you want to be in your career, and ideally, in your personal life.

As I've mentioned a few times, if you're interested in working with me on this, you can read more here.

Thanks for reading! Oh - and once again I wrote every single word of this email by hand. AI is fine, but not for this newsletter, which will always come from inside me.

Rob