Episode 121: Throwback Episode Imposter Syndrome

This week's episode, we're sharing a special throwback episode about imposter syndrome and how you can work through it to get to your goals.

 TRANSCRIPT:

Introduction: 

Hey friend, the time has come to finish your dissertation, graduate and become doctor. Welcome to office hours or Dr. Lacy where we talk about how to finally master this time management thing so you can stay on top of it without losing your mind. Every Wednesday you can find a new episode wherever you listen to podcasts, make sure you hit the subscribe button to make sure you never miss an episode. I'm Dr. Marvette Lacy, your dissertation writing strategist here to be with you along every step of the way. And I would like to thank you for coming to today's office hours. Let's get started on today's episode,

Rounding Off Imposter Syndrome:

Happy Wednesday. everyone! Welcome back to a new episode this week. We are going to be rounding off the imposter syndrome series. And so I'm going to be talking about this last point. Um, uh, we are in the middle of May, right? Yeah, the 20th. And um, in the finish your dissertation group, we've been talking about imposter syndrome all month and the conversations have been so good y'all. They've been so good. Um, people are making so many connections and having so many aha moments and I'm starting to see people just show up differently. I'm starting to see clients show up and take action even when they feel like it doesn't seem like it's the right thing to do. They're unsure if they have the right words. They're unsure if they're writing it the right way. All the rights here. Um, when they're doing it anyway, even though they're uncomfortable, even though they think that their chair is going to think it's the worst thing they've ever read, they're still doing it.

They still have the courage to show up because we've been intentionally talking about how imposter syndrome doesn't mean anything has gone wrong at all. And how we, how we've been talking these past two episodes is that in fact, it means everything is going right and instead of going towards self sabotage, which imposter syndrome can like lead you to do, folks are instead electing to be courageous and moving forward in that. And so I'm just really proud and it inspires me to see them do the same thing. Um, and it inspires me to do this last part of the series. Um, um, I'm also thinking about making it its own separate workshop. If that would be something you would be interested in, definitely let me know on Instagram, but okay. Um, so all of imposter syndrome is really, it comes down to how much you believe, right?

What Do You Think About on a Daily Basis?: 

We've been talking about that and I would say like the fight against this, the fight against imposter syndrome. Um, I mean I'm laughing and it does feel like a huge, a battle every day. It's an everyday practice. It's not something that you get to one point and then it's done. It's something that you will continuously probably deal it throughout, um, your life, especially if you're going to be someone who is going after goal, um, goal after goal and you're going to continue to push yourself to do different things. Imposter syndrome will be along for the ride. Why? Because that means things are going right and it means that you're believing in your body and your mind that you're going to achieve that goal. So you are going to hear some noise. We're going to take a little side notes. You're going to hear some noise because I don't, I think I may have said this before, but I have a puppy. What is he doing? Eating everything. So you may hear him biting bones, like little toy bones and things of that nature. But as I was saying, that imposter syndrome is a everyday practice, right? It's, you have to have some sort of system or process to, to tell imposter syndrome to go have several seats. Like I hear you. Thank you. I'm moving forward anyway, even on a days when you can't see a way out, even on a days when you don't feel like working on your dissertation or you're intentionally not working on your dissertation, even on the days when you don't feel good, what is going to be your way to say, I'm not feeding into you today. I'm moving forward. Right? And the main way that I know how to do this effectively is to, um, is to continuously be aware of what you're thinking and how what you're thinking creates the results in your life, right?

If you've been hanging around me, you know that I'm all about your thoughts, control how you feel, your feelings control how you act and your actions control the results in your life. And so if you're looking around your life and there's things that you're like, Oh, why is it this way? I was just with change. I'm going to invite you to look at how you're thinking. Most of us have been taught to go towards changing what we do, but you can take all of the quote unquote right steps, right and still not have the result that you want. I invite you to say, what am I thinking? And this for a lot of you, this is, this will be new. This will be like flipping on a light switch and being like, Oh, cut it off right now. There's too much. There's too much like heavy stuff in there. There's too many feelings. I don't have time to deal with those feelings. I don't have time to go digging through my past and digging up all these like hurtful memories. I don't have time for that. I'm not asking you to go dig up 20 plus year old memories. I am asking you though to just be a watcher or, or an observer to allow yourself to step back. Cause we are the only species who are able to think about the way we think or think about how or the thoughts we're having, right? So I'm asking you to take a step back and just really look at what do you think about on a regular basis, right?

It's like estimated that we have about 60 to 80,000 thoughts a day and the majority of those thoughts are negative. But the shocker, the one that really gets me is that we are only conscious of 5% of those thoughts. 5% of those thoughts, right? Out of 60 80,000 thoughts, we're only conscious of 5% that blows my mind, right? So if, if like if we, if you're with me and you're like, yeah, if my thoughts create the results I have in my life and I'm only aware of 5% of them, what the eff am I thinking about then, right? Some of those thoughts are serving you, right? Cause you wouldn't be where you are if they weren't, if they were not helpful. Right. But a lot of those thoughts are the reason why you're spinning out in imposter syndrome or the reason why you're like, I'm doing all these, I'm doing all these things for people and nobody seems to care about me in the same way I care about them. Or maybe it's like so-and-so get all the help. I don't get help. People don't even ask me how I'm doing. Or people are always asking me to do things for them. Or um, these are just things I've heard. I've heard from clients, I've said myself, I heard from other folks, right? And a lot of times what I hear from clients is that I don't, they will say some version of they don't understand why their chair, their advisor, their committee believes in them so much or believes that their dissertation is going to be so great because they feel like a fraud. Right?

Understanding How Imposter Syndrome Shows Up: 

Going back to the imposter syndrome and it's because these are thoughts that are going to unchecked in your brain all the time and they make you feel inadequate. They make you feel like desperate to figure this thing out. It makes you feel like resentful to all the people who keep asking you to do stuff, but they don't really ask you how you're doing.And when you, when we get into this, this shame and guilt is wrapped in there too. So like when we're feeling shameful, guilty, resentful, inadequate, right? When we filling all those things, we're not about to show up and be like, I got it 100% best. Right? No. You show up like you go through the motions, you probably give the people whatever they want, right? You probably show up to write, but you don't, you're not in it. You're not connected. And you might even get to the end of this process, but will you feel proud? Will you be able to fully have joy that you did those things that you got the results or will it be another thing that you like? Yeah, I got through it, but it ain't, it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I'm going to go to the next thing and see if that's helpful. Right. And this process, and I'm explaining, I called it last week when I was talking to the finish your dissertation group. I called it emotionally achieving and I'm going to do a podcast episode on that because it, when it came to my head, I was like this, this is it. Like similar to emotionally eating, I think about emotionally achieving, but I am just going to put that little teaser there. I'm going to be recording that next and we're going to talk about it.

Becoming More Aware of Your Thoughts:

Cause I, yes, I think I'm on to something, but I wanna I wanna finish off this series. I told you that I would give you very tangible ways to. Bless you, Bubba. Um, I'm gonna give you very tangible ways to see now he just showing off. I think he has allergies and he going to be real sad when he finds out that you gotta take benedryl. Um, but I wanted to give you very tangible ways of how you can start to become more aware of your thoughts and then how you can start to think about like redirect those thoughts. Right? So the first thing, um, what I have clients do is to journal or brain dump out their thoughts every day, right? I mean literally your thoughts, however your thoughts are when you wake up of like, I don't want to be here. Oh, I have that meeting at two o'clock. Oh, I wonder if I can make taco salad, whatever the thought is, you just write those out. So every morning I have a little notebook and I just list out my thoughts until I fill out a whole page. I'm not judging those thoughts. I'm not trying to go back and change them. I'm not saying, Oh, I shouldn't think that. Nope, I'm just whatever comes out. I'm writing. This sounds very simple to do. It takes courage to do this. Cause remember it's kind of like going to that old closet in the backyard house or apartment that you don't let nobody see and you're opening the door and you're letting the world see it. But it's just you seeing it but you feel like the world is seeing it when you open the door. Yeah. I'm inviting you to open the door and start to pull out things one by one. Not all at the same time, but just one by one so you could just even see what's there and then you can make a decision about what to do with it. Do you donate it? Do you give it away? Do you put it back in the closet? This step, step one of brain dump in your thoughts is just opening the door and taking one thing out. Right.

Reviewing Your Thoughts: 

And when you get everything out, step two is reviewing. What's there? What thoughts come up when you're reading over what you have written, how does it make you feel when you are reading it? What do you feel yourself? What urges do you have that you want to do? Do you want to close it? Do you want to go eat some cookies or you know, I just want to do an episode, but somebody just wants to cry. Right. So what do you, Oh, okay, I've keeping this in. Yeah, because I want you to know the real life, the real life. I'm a pause though. Okay. Well, you know, we can't get through the rest of the episode. He tried me. He tried me. Okay. So yeah, so you got to pull everything out of the closet. You're going to review it, right? And again, we're reviewing it from a observer position, not from a, we're not trying to judge anything. And then I want to, um, I want you to pick one thing and just really think about when I like this one thought. So just say like, maybe you have the thought of like, I'll never be able to do this.

What feelings come up? A lot of times when you ask someone how they feel, they give you a bunch of thoughts or sentences, but I want you to think about one word about how you feel that describes how you feel. And if that's too difficult, then try to describe how does it feel in your body. So when you think I won't be able to do this, what does that feel like? Do your shoulders get tight? Do you clench your jaw or your teeth? Right? Do your stomach have butterflies in it? Right. Do you feel like you're just constricted? That's generally how folks say they feel and they say that. And when you feel like that, what do you have the urge to do now what you think you should do, but what do you have that urge to do? Right. Usually it's some sort of thing to help you feel better. Sometimes for some people is to watch TV for some people is to call a friend. For some people is to go out for a run. Right. It's very rarely that you're like, I feel like this. I think I should go write. No. But when you feel like, but when those things are happening, they're happening all day and so when you go to write your work on your dissertation or something for class, that's what's happening over and over. But you're probably not conscious of it because your brain. Remember, we only have, we're only conscious of 5% of our thoughts. And if it's something that you've have done repeatedly, your brain has put it in the unconscious conscious part. And so you're doing these things unconsciously and you're repeating it every day. And so that is most likely what's happening when you go to write and you're, you feel like, I can't write, I have writer's block, right?

Creating New Thoughts:

The step three then becomes about creating new thoughts. And this is where I ask people to reconnect to their why and reconnect to the version of themselves that have already, like who's completed the goal. So think about yourself who has finished the dissertation. You've graduated, you're a year removed from graduation, you're a doctor, everybody knows your doctor. It's good. How would that person make decisions in this current moment? I always asked myself like, what would... So I'm on the road to make six figures in my business. And so I always ask myself, what was six figure version of Marvette do? How would she think about this? How would she feel in this moment? What would she tell me to do in this moment? Right? What would she want me to do right now? And usually when I ask myself those questions, I have a very clear answer of how to move forward. And I do that and I keep doing that. And when I tell you this has made the biggest difference in my life and my business and relationships, it has. And even if you don't take anything else, you don't do the whole thought work of like being aware of your thought. But if you just ask yourself, what would the future version of myself do in this moment, that one thing would just blow your mind. And I'm encouraging you and inviting you to do this for the next 30 days and see what happens. And as in the words of Rachel Hollis, prepare your hearts for your mind to be blown and for your results to significantly change. If you consistently make this a practice to ask yourself, what would my future self do? I'm telling you it's a game changer and that is how you move past imposter syndrome, right? Because imposter syndrome says you're not qualified enough to do it, but your future self says, not only am I qualified, I did it already. And here, let me give you the advice of how to get to where I am. Right? It sounds, it's like a little trippy, but I promise you it works. So let me know if you try this out. I'm gonna go and check on sir and I hope y'all are having a good week. I will talk with you next week. Bye for now. Thank you for joining in for today's office hours. Make sure you come on Instagram and tag me at Marvette. Lacy, let me know what your thoughts were on today's episode. Until next time, do something to show yourself some love. I'll talk to you next week. Bye for now.