Imposter syndrome

What is it and how can we stop ourselves from falling into the trap.

Hands up if you’ve ever found yourself doubting your abilities, telling yourself you’re not as good as your peers or colleagues, feeling as though you’re a fraud or convincing yourself you’ve only gotten to a particular successful position through luck and not your hard work or talent?

Well my friends you may have imposter syndrome. Yes, it’s a real thing and yes, lots of us are plagued by it and it’s not a gender specific trait either. In fact, according to a study in the Journal of Behavioural Science, a whopping 70% have experienced imposter syndrome at some point in their lives!

That’s a large percentage of the population, which leads us to believe that there’s more self-doubt going in inside out minds than we like to admit.

But how can we tackle imposter syndrome and boost our self confidence in a healthy way? Here’s some top tips to help and as it turns out, your mojo&co guided journal is going to be your best tool to help you banish imposter syndrome for good.

Get it Off Your Chest

First and foremost, it’s a good idea to get these feelings off your chest. Either verbally talk about how you’re feeling with someone you trust, or if that isn’t possible, write them down, either in your mojo&co guided journal or in another notebook. Once you identify how you’re feeling, you’ll instantly start to feel lighter and realise that in fact, having these feelings is perfectly normal and many people have them.

Validate Success

Often there’s a false narrative that success shouldn’t be celebrated, as though it’s rooted in an inflamed sense of ego. However, there is absolutely nothing wrong with celebrating your hard-won success, such as a promotion for example. Instead of thinking, ‘I only got this position by luck,’ think about the qualities you possess which you used to advance your career. Write them down, validate them and know its not boasting to say you achieved a goal on your talent, hard work and own merit.

For some, this shift in thinking can take some getting used to, but once you begin to look at yourself and your abilities in a more positive way, you should find the imposter syndrome creeping in much less. If left unchecked, then imposter syndrome can become self-fulfilling, and it can sabotage your efforts to advance.

We All Wing It Sometimes

Sometimes when we find ourselves in a new job or promotion, imposter syndrome can kick in and you can have a sense of ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, I just winged it to get here.’

Firstly, you should admit that we all wing it to some extent, even those who outwardly appear to know what they are doing at all times. They wing it too, it’s actually part of our skills repertoire to be able to go into the unknown and learn as we go. But once you recognise that you didn’t just get to where you are by winging it alone, in fact it’s most likely a combination of some ‘talking up’ and a lot of proven hard work and ability, then you’ll start to redress the balance and shut down the imposter syndrome.

Learn To Re-Label Failure

Failure happens. We all fail, lots of times throughout our lives. It is in fact how we learn. However, for some it can become part of the imposter syndrome narrative and can in turn stop us from reaching our potential or even trying in the first place.

Use your mojo&co journal to try and reflect on your setbacks on a regular basis. Small things that maybe didn’t work out as you’d planned at the end of the week.  Once you start reframing how you look at small failures, you’ll start to change the way you see potentially bigger issues that don’t go to plan in your life. Its important to acknowledge these setbacks, learn from them & then “chuck them in the bin”. Then instead of holding you back or inciting fear, you’ll see it as a learning opportunity.

If you’d like to know more about our collection of beautiful, guided journals and letter writing sets, then why not head over to our online store www.mojoandco.ie or feel free to contact us info@mojoandco.ie.