Eliminate impostor syndrome

SHARE

How can you eliminate impostor syndrome once and for all? That's a question a mother from this community asked me about and the answer to this will honestly be a game changer in your career and any project you embrace in any walk of life.

A few months ago, I decided to be a Table Topics contestant at Toastmasters. This is an international contest where you are invited in front of a large crowd and given a random topic on which you must instantly give an impactful and structured speech for 2 mins. This is the only time you may realize 2 mins can be really long :D and it's easy for impostor syndrome to get its way into you.

And that is where I applied the framework I am about to share with you. Read till the end to see how I eliminated impostor syndrome and won the 1st place in the contest.

And don’t believe any liar who tells you impostor syndrome comes to them and they eliminate it on the spot. What you do overtime prepares you to eliminate it instead. So Here's what to do:

Hone your technical skills. Are you technically excellent on the job? This is the first stage gate. Perhaps this is already checked for you and you should move on, but being good is not enough; become excellent and your confidence will soar! If you doubt your technical skills in any area, you have to catch up here quickly. Find an experienced colleague to help you, whether a peer, someone who is junior to you or senior to you. It doesn’t matter their rank. What matters is what they know and how you get them to want to teach you.For my speech contest, I found an experienced coach/mentor to work with (a Distinguished Toastmasters as we call them). He had over 30 years of experience as Toastmasters and he taught me THE technique to make an excellent improvised speech.

Practice! This is where a coach is key. You need a good coach who can keep you up to the task and challenge you to keep practicing. Again, skill and as a result, confidence, only improves with practice. If you don't have a professional or a life coach, I urge you to get one. A great coach makes the difference between successful people and those who are not. If you don't have a coach yet, that's ok. Get an accountability partner. This is a fellow friend colleague, etc. who is learning alongside you and you can keep each other accountable to keeping learning. For my speech contest, I had both.

Have a lifeline in times you feel down. Despite everything you do, times when you wonder if you deserve to be here. You feel you are not enough. You feel guilty as a mom. You feel guilty at work because you feel you are not giving as much as you should. A famous author once said "You can't exceed the perception you have of yourself", so it's prime time you improve your perception of yourself at all times and that's what the personal Hype mantra does.I explain how to create one here. So go ahead and create your Personal Hype Mantra today!

The results of applying the framework above are clear. I won the championship! See me below, holding my trophy :) and the BONUS I promised below.

Bonus to the framework above: Are you effective in your work right now? You may have all the skills, practice, etc. but if you don’t get your time management skills in place, you'll not get much done and your impostor syndrome might not go away when you don’t deliver; or you are burnt out. Join our session this week with a group of HR by clicking here.

Alright, how do you feel right now?

I wish you all the confidence you need to win on that next big goal at work or in your personal life.