Imposter Syndrome is a hot topic at the moment, but how prepared are we when those little voices inside start telling us we’re not good enough or, even worse, that we’re going to get exposed as a fraud?
Suzanne Mercier from Purpose To Profit has dealt with imposter syndrome herself and helps others to overcome it while finding their professional purpose
“We are often the worst critic that we could possibly have,” she explains, ”and other people would never see us that way… if we treated other people the way that we treat ourselves, we wouldn’t have very many friends.”
Hugh Kearns is a lecturer and researcher in the area of high performance at Flinders University, and has identified what he refers to as the imposter cycle.
“We all talk about getting there. ‘When I get there, I won’t feel like that.’ But that’s not quite the way it works. Once you get there… just like … playing computer games, it’s like you move up to the next level. And so the next level is (an) even harder challenge and so forth.“
Regular playmates for the imposter syndrome are procrastination and perfectionism, both of which can feed into a cycle of self sabotage, but how do we break that cycle?
Suzanne and Hugh share their thoughts and experiences around imposter syndrome in episode 9 of Reframe Of Mind with Louise Poole and Andy Le Roy. Stream it now on Apple Podcasts, or your favourite podcast app.
Full episodes, transcripts and more are available at reframeofmind.com.au.