How to Get Yourself Out of The Imposter Syndrome Cycle | Imposter Syndrome

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Today's episode is going to be a really great tool for you to use in order for you to get calm and get grounded, especially when you're in that inner imposter cycle. And that cycle can look a little bit like negative thoughts, which translate into feelings of unworthiness, which then contribute to your limiting beliefs and then turn into self-sabotage...and then it cycles back to those negative thoughts. 

 

So let's look through a cycle of imposter syndrome. Let’s say you're starting to have negative thoughts because you're looking at somebody else's story and you're thinking, “Wow, this coach does the same thing as me and she's already hitting 10K months.”

 

Then you start feeling those feelings of unworthiness: “Why haven't I hit 10 K months? Why aren't I good enough to be able to be a coach in this field and hit 10K months?” 

 

Then you go to limiting beliefs: “Well, because I don't have X, Y and Z, I am not able to do what she does.”

 

You almost make yourself feel better about it, but it actually comes out by way of a limiting belief: “Because I'm not good enough, and because I'm not smart enough, I won't be able to get to that level anyways.” 

 

And then comes self-sabotage, which means perhaps you don't show up on stories that day, because you're feeling really shitty about yourself, or maybe you had a really great idea for a program and now you're not working on it because you think "why bother". What that self-sabotage then carries into is more negative thoughts about yourself, about your business and the cycle perpetuates. 

 

I have an Instagram post about this.  It is a post about the imposter syndrome cycle. Go check it out! @yourcoachjill. If you are not careful, this cycle can repeat over and over and over again, and it's usually subconscious. 

 

So we all know that I'm a neural linguistic programming practitioner and a hypnosis practitioner as well. These tools are used to target the subconscious mind. And what we don't realize is this: the subconscious mind is responsible for 99.96% of our actions and our thoughts and our behaviors and our conscious mind is really only responsible for 1% of our thoughts and actions and behaviors. 

 

So all of these ingrained beliefs and stories that we believe about ourselves, we may not even realize that we do, are affecting everything that we do. So my reasoning for doing this episode is because I really want it to help you when you are in the middle of a struggle with imposter syndrome, or you have a ton of stuff coming up such as comparisonitis: assuming that everybody thinks you're a fraud, dealing with procrastination and perfectionism. I'm going to help you anchor in a state of, “I think I'm going to choose confidence and calm”

 

I'm going to ask you to anchor in those two states into your knuckles. If you've never done anchoring before, it can be any knuckle you want, but if you have done anchoring before, then you have to choose two knuckles that you have never anchored on before.

 

When you're really feeling this negativity; when you're feeling like your thoughts are going a hundred miles a minute, you're starting to feel really shitty about yourself. I want you to ground yourself. Grounding can mean a ton of different things, but for this specific exercise, I want you to just stop and engage your five senses. What can you see, hear, touch, feel, and taste? And I want you to think about these things. 

 

Obviously you're going to taste whatever was last in your mouth. So right now, so I can taste the smoothie that I just had... gross. I can feel my robe that is really fluffy and pink, which I'm sure you've seen if you watch my Instagram stories cause I'm in it for the majority of my life. I can see my ring light. So glad I got that for Christmas. I can hear the sound of my old ass HP computer trying not to die while it's recording this. And what can I touch? I can touch the cold surface of the desk and that feels really good. 

 

This is just a way for you to stop and engage those senses because when we're really in our head, our brain can only focus on so much at once. So giving it reasons to stop and notice what's going on, helps you get out of that immediate negative feedback cycle. 

 

Once you're grounded, I want you to ask yourself: what is your inner imposter trying to say to you right now? For Example, I would ask myself, “What is Rhonda trying to say to me right now?” And again, we are separating her voice from yours. You may be thinking to yourself, “I'm a failure. I don't know how to do this. Why is she better than me?” But instead of saying that it's you saying that, I say, “Rhonda is saying to me that she thinks I'm going to fail and that she's afraid that we're going to fail. And that other girls doing so much better in her niche.” And then I want you to think about this. Are these thoughts true? Or are they just your inner imposters opinion? 

 

What would your higher self say? Have a conversation as if you are introducing the angel and the devil. Think about Rhonda and your higher self. I think I talked about this in another episode, but I call my higher self Rachel. So what would Rhonda say to me right now in terms of all the negative shit, but then how would Rachel respond to her? She may say, “Well, Rhonda, everybody is afraid of failing, but that doesn't mean that we're not going to try. And that person is doing a great job and is established in her niche and you will get there. You just have to keep going.” These are all things that, again, I'm not asking you to have a weirdo conversation in your head, but this is a really good way for you to separate yourself from what's happening internally. 

 

First I want you to ground yourself, stop and engage the five senses, see, hear, touch, feel. And, and then once you're grounded, ask yourself, “What is my inner imposter saying to me right now?” give her a name, if that helps. And then you ask yourself, are these thoughts true? Or are they just your inner imposters opinion? 99.9% of the time they are your inner imposters opinion. And then how would your higher self respond? And this is a really quick, easy way for you to just be with your thoughts for a second. It is showing us how we feel right now in the current and present moment, but then moves us through to what is happening right now in our head, then ends with the realization that you are going to come out on top- on the other side and show yourself compassion. 

 

I used to be so mean to myself. I used to believe all the thoughts I told myself, and I now have recurring compassionate thoughts towards myself on a daily basis. And I notice that this is such a difference from how I felt last year. It starts with compassion and I wouldn't necessarily call it self love because I feel like that's kind of overused, but being compassionate towards yourself means acknowledging that you've come so far and thinking to yourself: you're doing good. And even if you fail, that's okay, you'll pick yourself up and you'll be fine. That's what I wanted to accomplish with this little grounding exercise. 

 

And then let's talk about anchoring.  Anchoring is allowing yourself to feel a certain state at any given time. So a state can be interchangeable with emotion too. If you hear me talking about state or emotion, they're essentially the same thing Anchoring is something that I learned in my neuro linguistic programming training. I've had NLP sessions before in which I anchored in confidence and abundance and love. So whenever I tap on my right hand, first knuckle, I can really feel this energy surge through my body. I feel confident. I feel amazing. I want to instill this in you. So I am going to ask you a series of questions that are super short and I want you to think about a time in which you had a huge surge of emotion. 

 

We're going to use calm and we're going to use confident. We will start with confidence. And then the second one we're going to feel is calmness. To start, think of a very specific time in which you felt totally confident. If you have a really hard time thinking about what confidence would feel like or thinking about a time in which you felt confident then just think about what that confidence would actually feel like. I'm going to ask you to really feel the feelings. And when you are at the peak of that emotion, I want you to hold down on a knuckle of your choice for between five to 10 seconds. So are you ready? We are going to anchor in confidence right now, and I want you to take a big deep breath. 

 

Can you remember a time when you felt totally and completely confident? 

 

When you think about that time, float down into your body and see what you saw, hear what you heard and feel the feelings of feeling totally and completely confident. You're going back to that time now, and you're feeling so confident and abundant, and now you're holding on to that anchor at the peak of your emotion, you're feeling so confident and amazing, and that energy is surging through your body, into your knuckle. And when you're ready, you can open your eyes and let go of knuckle. And that's how it is. The brain doesn't know the difference between you feeling that emotion last week to you feeling that emotion right now, if you're doing all the neural work then you will feel really fucking confident right now. Anchoring is for high levels of emotion. So sometimes when kids are embarrassed they get hugged by their mom. It's because perhaps when they used to feel really high states of emotion, like sadness or anger, they would get that physical outcome. And they would anchor into feeling that hug and feeling that surge of emotion. Similar to when you smell a smell or hear song and it brings you back to that moment. It's because at that time you were feeling a surge of really high emotion and it's taking you back to that time and giving you all the same feelings.

 

So now we're going to anchor and calmness, so you can take another deep breath, close your eyes. Can you remember a time when you felt totally and completely calm? As you go back to that time float down into your body and see what you saw, hear what you heard and really feel the feelings of feeling totally and completely calm. You feel so grounded. And so at ease. And once you're at that peak of the emotion, you can hold down on that second knuckle. So calm and relaxed. And when you're ready, you can let go of the anchor and open your eyes. How was that anchoring? Was it cool? 

 

I actually do this in my NLP breakthrough sessions. And if you have not gotten one of those sessions, you have to. These breakthrough sessions are amazing. They are life changing. All of my reviews from these sessions have been, this was life changing. And if you need to see those reviews, please send me a DM on Instagram at @yourcoachjill. And I will be happy to share that with you because I want to help you bust through any stories or limiting beliefs that are holding you back. And I know that they are, cause you're listening to this episode. 

 

And if this helped you please screenshot the episode and share it with me on Instagram, on your Instagram story and tag me at @yourcoachjill. Feel free to message me and see how we can work together and how we can improve your life using NLP and hypnosis. I really hope that this grounding episode has helped you through whatever imposter syndrome cycle you are experiencing. It's helped me immensely. It's really helped my clients. And that's why I wanted to give you this little taste of how you can improve your mindset on a daily basis. 

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