IMPOSTER SYNDROME:

Are you struggling with imposter syndrome? 

🔥 Sensing a little self-doubt and self-sabotage creeping in? 

🔥 Are you starting to undermine yourself? 

🔥 Doubting your validity or place in the work or business world? 

🔥 Are you stuck in a pattern of procrastination to where your work output has stalled?

🔥 Feeling reactive more often than proactive?

Well, congrats!! You have Imposter Syndrome! But fear not – you sure as hell are NOT alone.

This week on Insights: Scaling lessons from the street, Mindset Mentor Megan O'Neill talks with fellow hosts Susan Diaz, founder and CEO of cp.digital, Andrea Henry, Henry Business Law, Shelagh Cummins, shelaghcummins.com, and Wendy Brookhouse from Blackstar Wealth about how almost every single woman struggles with imposter syndrome, and walks us through how we can empower ourselves to push through it and thrive as successful entrepreneurs. 👏👏👏

Here’s just a taste of some of the incredible, well, INSIGHTS you will glean from this episode!! 

 

“Whether you're in the corporate world, whether you are an entrepreneur, it doesn't matter also how much education now, I just think about one woman I worked with, and she had every single Ivy League, you know, sort of letters behind her name, her experience. And yet she was continuing to seek education as a way to validate yourself. Not that I mean, we're always I think we always want to learn, we always want to go on, but when does that become an excuse?”

 

“I think for a lot of us, it's scary to position yourself as an authority. Because once you are very visible and once you establish yourself as a leader, you open yourself up to criticism, you open yourself up to people not liking you, and criticizing you. And I think in our head, it's been important (for) women to survive by being amenable and pleasant and ‘blend in’able’. And so, to step out as a leader, and to open yourself up to that criticism, even though intellectually you understand it can really hurt you, deep within it feels very scary.”

 

“The first thing I always ask people to do is look at their beliefs. I mean, they fuel how you see the world. And I think that a lot of the beliefs that we are still running on, is exactly what Andrew was talking about, often childhood beliefs that we inherited, mostly from our mothers in our society that we need to catch ourselves on. So, what is it that makes you feel that you have to be qualified? I know that when they've done studies, that men do not have the same imposter syndrome. I remember hearing about the study…where they created jobs, like for a blue-chip company like IBM or something along those lines….and not one of [the women] applied for the job. But men who did not have the qualifications applied for the job! And when they said to the women, ‘well, why didn't you apply for this job?’ They said, Well, I just wasn't qualified, didn't have enough experience. And when they asked the men who weren't qualified, why did you apply for this job? The men said, well, because I could learn it on my feet. And I just don't think we give ourselves enough permission to learn it on our feet and/or to not know it all.”

 

“So, I'm a very black and white person. I'm very transactional. Everything is a process of structure. But I have this whole woo woo side that I've sort of been tapping into in the last five years. And for me, visualization for me has been a game changer. And so, you know, visualizing the worst-case scenario like we were talking about before, and understanding how to mitigate it, and then understanding how to fix it, if it does happen - has been huge. But I've also been heavily coached at every step of the way. And even now, as I'm making more pivots and leveraging and scaling myself, I'm still being coached so that I'm not doing it all on my own.” 

 

That’s just a snapshot of the kind of honest, mean-streets, “We’ve gotten our hands dirty and we’re not afraid of truth telling!” talk you’ll hear on this week’s episode of Insight!