I just love that name. It sounds so ominous and movie-title-ish.
And it kinda’ is ominous. The syndrome describes what sociologists and other researchers in the field of mental health use to refer to someone who doesn’t feel like they’re supposed to be in the position they’re in.
Not just for women in the C-suite, the Imposter Syndrome can hamstring anyone who feels like she (guys, too, but we’ll go with “she”…) doesn’t have the right credentials, experience, personality, or whatever else they feel they need to have in the position they’re in.
As if someone else is going to come along and question why they have that position, role, or career.
The Imposter Syndrome can hold us back from even getting started, though. It’s like the Pre-Imposter Syndrome.
If you’re looking to start a heart-based business, and you have this great idea for what you want to do but you’re worried that people (you know, “THEM”) will question you, then you’ve run smack up against the PIS. (Hey, great acronym!)
We let other people’s opinions tell us we’re a fraud…even when we haven’t spoken a word.
Here are a few other Pre-Imposter Thought Processes (aka, Myths About Starting A Heart-Centered Business):
Your life must be perfect before you can help others:
If you get my blog via email (and I hope that you do), then you saw my email yesterday talking about an amazing woman that I’d spoken with who has great credentials already. She wants to help parents to reconcile and repair the relationships with children who the system has classified as “out of control”.
Huge need for that, right?
But even though she has a whole heap of experience doing just that and loves that work, she says she would feel like a fraud because “if people could see what my life looked like, they wouldn’t trust me to help them.”
My life isn’t perfect. No one’s life is perfect. But it doesn’t have to be in order to help others and to bring forth all of the awesomeness that you were meant to bring to this world.
Okay, Erin, how do I do that?
Help from where you are.
Start from where you are.
Teach from where you are.
Because as a dear mentor said to me:
If you are waiting for your life to be perfect before you start helping others…you will wait your whole life.
Do you have something that you do that people say “Wow, I wish I could do that”? Or something that you know you want to bring to the world? Or something that you know could help others?
Then I know in my heart that someone out there is waiting for you, for those unique skills that only you have and that passion that only you can bring to the table.
You have to be an expert in it:
Contrary to the internet’s blathering, you don’t have to be an expert – you just have to put yourself out there and start doing it. Because even just helping someone a little bit is still…helping.
I always think of these internet marketing chicks out there who are killing it by just writing simple emails. (Okay, I know there is more to it than that – but they don’t have Harvard MBA’s or even marketing degrees. They just love what they’re doing and are working through their own Imposter Madness.)
You have to know what the end game looks like:
Oh, this is one of my favorites, sure to shut us down before we even get started.
People talk a lot about how entrepreneurs need to get comfortable with failure. I think what that really means is we have to get comfortable with the unknown.
Not knowing how our next opportunity will show up.
Not knowing how the business will unfold.
Not knowing how we will need to pivot in order to adjust to the market and our clients.
Could you possibly step into that place of not knowing…and do it anyway?
I’m not here to say that taking a big risk and jumping into the unknown is easy. It’s not – at least for most people I know.
But can you walk into that space where you don’t know the outcome and aren’t second-guess-ing divine wisdom?
When you do, that’s the space where shit really happens.
Where it’s all easy and inspired – not sloggy and hard.
Where we can just sit back and watch the universe do its work.
Where compassion and love really get to come forth, because you don’t need to worry about the outcome.
Where you’re already enough, exactly the way you are.
And how cool is that?
Peeps, if you’re struggling with Pre-Imposter Syndrome, let me know what’s going on in the comments or hit me up with an email or on Facebook.
Sending you love, compassion, and shine-on-ness,
Erin
