Why are you selling yourself short?

By the age of 33 I was Managing Director of an Asset Management Company in Luxembourg, the number 1 financial center of Europe. I attributed that amazing accomplishment to being “in the right place at the right time”. Pure luck!

I mean, what else could it be? All I knew was that I was constantly second-guessing every decision I made. Hardly a Managing Director quality.

I thought:” how did I manage to fool them into thinking I am capable of doing this job?”. That brought me tremendous anxiety and self-doubt: “what will I do when they discover I am not as competent as they think I am?”, “What if I fail and embarrass myself, which let’s face it, is just a matter of time?”.

In public, I tried to keep the appearance of a confident, self-assured corporate woman, hoping no-one would see how unsure and scared I really was.

Have you ever felt like a fraud? Experiencing feeling of inadequacy and self-doubt?

Welcome to the club!

A study conducted by psychologist Gail Matthews shows that 70% of people reported experiencing feeling like a fraud at some point in their life.

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” - Bertrand Russell

You may not even know that these overwhelming feelings of self-doubt and lack of confidence in our own abilities, actually have a name – Imposter Syndrome.

What is imposter Syndrome?

Valerie Young defines imposter syndrome as referring to “people who have a persistent belief in their lack of intelligence, skills or competence. They are convinced that other people’s praise and recognition of their accomplishments is undeserved, chalking up their achievements to chance ….Unable to internalize or feel deserving of their success, they continually doubt their ability to repeat past successes. When they do succeed, they feel relief rather than joy.”

To be clear, the imposter syndrome has nothing to do with you pretending to be someone you are not. Nor do you behave like real frauds, who actually cheat their way to the top.

You feel like an imposter because there is a mismatch between who you see yourself as a being , and who you think you have to be. You think it is just a matter of time before others discover the truth – you are not as smart and competent as they think you are.

Imposter syndrome is not just about what you think you can or cannot do. It is deeper than that, it is driven by who YOU believe you are.

The interesting thing is that Impostor Syndrome is typically associated with high achievers. So, if you feel like a fraud, the chances are that you are more capable than you think.

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have” – Leonardo da Vinci

You want to do your best, but when you feel like an imposter “best” is just another word for “perfection”. You set high expectations for yourself, which, let us face it, at times will be impossible to live up to. So, it is just a matter of time for you to fall short of your expectations and when that happens it confirms your feeling of inadequacy and of not being good enough. It is a self-perpetuating cycle that unfortunately I was well to familiar with.

You believe that you should deliver a perfect performance all the time and should always know what to say. There is no place for mistakes. Because one mistake equals failure, and failure equals incompetence: you cannot deal with that.

If you are like me, your inner voice keeps on telling you: “don’t raise your hand unless you are 100% sure you are right, just wait until you know more”. The problem is that “getting it right” equals “paralysis”.

I felt for so long that I could not be a coach. To be a coach, I need to be an expert and to be an expert, I still have to read more, learn more, do more courses, learn new techniques, have a website, have original ideas,…And so I did everything except to act. If you have been reading my blog, you know that I no longer wait for everything to be perfect and I am taking action to follow my dream. And how liberating that is!

As my husband told me a few times: « you are not performing an open-heart surgery, it is OK to make a mistake or for your deliverable not to be 100% perfect. No one will die as a consequence, not even you! Get some feedback, make some improvements and move on ». Yes, I got myself a smart husband!

Author Jennifer White said: “perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. Perfectionism has nothing to do with having high standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead”. And that is no longer acceptable to me. And it should not be for you either.

You are not alone!

We assume that we are the only person feeling like this and everyone else has their sh*t together. After all, how could “real” smart people possibly struggle with self-doubt and lack of confidence, right? So, we suffer in silence, afraid of speaking up, too ashamed to let anyone in on our secret. The amount of anxiety this brings is excruciating.

I know just how isolated I felt trying to hide my insecurities for fear of being judged. I only wanted to show my confident, strong side, as I thought that was what was expected of me in my position. It was exhausting!

As Clare Josa explains in her book, “Ditching imposter syndrome”: “when we keep it secret and struggle in silence with imposter syndrome, we add shame to the pain”.

As scary as it feels to talk about our self-doubts and show our vulnerabilities, the 1st step into beating imposter syndrome is to actually stop the taboo. You will be amazed to find out just how many people out there are feeling exactly like you.

Everyone is still figuring things out. Just because people do not reveal their struggles to you does not mean they are not facing them. It does not matter how confident they might seem to you, their 3 am self-doubt talk is just like yours! Throughout my professional career I have been often in a state of anxiety afraid of “screwing up”, stressing about being “found guilty” of the crime of impersonating a competent person. And it never stops surprising me how many people came to me telling me how they would like to be confident like me. When I tell them how I used to feel, I normally hear them saying: “really, you also felt like that?”. Yes, I did!

« Don’t compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to the person you were yesterday » - anonymous

Think to the last time you compared yourself to others. Did it leave you feeling motivated and excited or inadequate because you think you fail to measure up to them? I am certain it was the latter. So, STOP comparing yourself to others. When we focus on what we lack, we cannot see what we have that the other person does not have. Yes, there will be times you will feel incompetent. It happens to everyone from time to time. But just because you feel incompetent, does not mean you are.

Determine your success by looking at who you have become over time. Remember your first day at your job and how you did not know as much as you do now? Look at how far you have come.

What is the point of comparing yourself to people who are at the top of their fields? Everyone starts somewhere. These people were once like you. You are where you are today because you have what it takes, and you have worked hard to get there. Believe it! Either you got that promotion or you did not, either you received credit for your accomplishment or you did not, either you made the sale or you did not. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. Do not sell yourself short and do not diminish your accomplishments. Once you do that, you will start switching your belief of who you think you are and can finally focus your energies on continually becoming the best version of yourself.

As Margie Warrell said in her book « You’ve got this! »: « Dear women, stop selling yourself short and talking yourself down ». Yes, enough of that. It is time for you to start believing in yourself. To choose faith over fear. « Faith that you can figure it out as you go. Faith that you are truly talented. Faith that even if you trip and fall, that you’ll still be OK because you’ve got what it takes to pick yourself up and move on ».

What difference could you make in your life if you believed in yourself?