It's Friday, and time for another Friday Night Thought Tale Hour with the Hendersons. Picture this: Your stomach is tied up in knots. Another crisis has arrived, and everyone is looking to you to have the answers, to be the leader. You can’t blame them either because you think you should have all the answers. But you just don’t. Though you look calm on the outside, inside, you’re a tangle of nerves and anxiety, terrified someone will expose you as the fraud you feel you are. In the past, you’ve been able to pull a rabbit out of a hat to save the day, but those were just flukes. It wasn’t because of anything special you did; things just happened to fall in place at the right time. Truth be told, you doubt you could pull off such a trick again. Your shoulders are so tired from carrying the weight of everyone’s expectations that you’re sure everything will come crashing down at any moment. The thought of an impending doomsday gives you so much anxiety that it keeps you up at night.
Feeling like an imposter is something many of us know all too well.
When we’re faced with a challenge or a new opportunity opens up, our minds quickly fill up with anxious thoughts instead of rising to the task. I remember being so filled with fear and anxiety that I would dread going to work on Monday, from the Thursday before. This, of course, completely ruined my weekend and kept me in a cycle of fear, self-doubt, and worry. If you’ve ever felt like your emotions were permanently stuck on negative and wished you could get off this cycle of anxiety, keep reading. I’ve got some tips for you.
Welcome to the Club.
You often feel alone with negative emotions, as if no one understands what you’re going through or why. This further makes you feel ashamed, on top of already feeling isolated and like a complete failure. According to a study conducted by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Gail Matthews, about 70 percent of the population experiences feeling like an imposter (aka Impostor Syndrome) at one point in their life.
That means right now, nearly everyone around you feels like they don’t know what they’re doing like they don’t deserve their accomplishments, and they’re terrified that they’ll be exposed as frauds.
Doubting yourself is normal. Everyone battles the little voice in their head, telling them, “you’re not good enough.”
In fact, what’s odd is not feeling insecure.
Everyone has areas of their life where they feel insecure. It’s a natural part of the human experience.
Which, as it turns out, might be a good thing as only about 1 percent of us has no fears or insecurities at all. The clinical term for people like that is “psychopath.”
A healthy dose (the small amount that doesn’t stop you from living and enjoying life) of self-doubt actually helps you regulate yourself and your interactions with other people. Self-doubt helps us adjust our behavior in line with social norms.
Have you ever noticed that you feel a tad bit off-kilter or insecure when you’re faced with a new situation, place, event, or people? It’s your body’s defense mechanism working to keep you out of danger in unfamiliar circumstances. This is a trait found in every organism that helps them stay safe and alive.
Self-doubt can even work to propel us to look inward and motivate us to do the necessary work to improve and change.
But what do you do if the self-doubt, fears, and anxiety you feel are more than doctors recommend? How do you stop from overdosing on these emotions?
It's ok to wallow in your feelings.
The first step is acknowledging your feelings.
Burying your emotions and hoping you’ll just snap out of it isn’t going to work. Never, in the history of ever, has ignoring emotions helped anyone. In fact, the exact opposite seems to be true.
Yet, out of shame or ignorance, we continue to downplay and overlook our feelings. Since that’s not working, why not try something different? Why don’t you give yourself permission to feel your emotions?
What’s the worst that could happen?
Drill down to the root cause. Is it something someone said? Is it an unrealistic expectation you have of yourself? Is it an actual fear of something tangible? Is it a fear of something intangible? Perhaps the fear isn’t even yours, but something projected onto you by a well-meaning “friend.”
Check your pride at the door.
This next step requires a bit of humility. After drilling down to the root cause of your negative feelings, try to figure out how you contribute to feeling this way and what you can do to change the situation.
It’s easy to blame all our problems on someone or something else. While it lets us off the hook, it also puts us in the victim's mind space, where things happen to us, and we’re powerless to do anything about it.
The truth is, sometimes, the fault lies with us.
Now don’t get me wrong. It’s not in every scenario that you cause your own self-doubt. Some people take joy out of ripping the self-confidence of others to shreds.
However, I’ve found that more often than not, if I can do (or not do) something just a little differently, the circumstances surrounding my negative emotions will improve.
Stop broadcasting your inadequacies.
Everyone is worried about their own problems and inadequacies. They’re probably not even aware of what you see as your glaring shortcomings. And if they don’t see them, why tell them about them?
What is the purpose of sharing your shortcomings? What do you hope to gain by doing so? Are you trying to undermine yourself?
If you’re looking for reassurance or support, then, by all means, share. But if you’re only pointing out your inadequacies because you assume they’re obvious to other people, think again.
Last but certainly not least: Just be yourself.
You’re not perfect, you don’t know everything, and you don’t have all the answers. But let me let you in on a little secret, no one expects you to, either.
We all battle our self-doubt and fear. We all have our shortcomings. Cut yourself some slack. You’re not the worst (insert whatever fits) to walk the face of the earth.
The only thing you can do is keep trying to improve and better yourself.
Just like you’re not the worst (insert whatever fits) to walk the face of the earth, struggling to be the best (insert whatever fits) can be just as damaging to your psyche. It’s a goal one can never reach. And if by some stroke of magic, you manage to attain that impossibly high bar, staying there for any length of time is unlikely.
“Cut yourself some slack.
You’re doing better than you think.”
~Unknown
So tonight, Chris and I will be drinking something I call "Slack Time." I hope you will join me in giving myself some room admit I am sometimes worried about looking like a big old dork in my grad school classes and sounding like a putz in my blogs. That's not meant as broadcast, by the way, just a good old fashioned dose of reality. Cheers.
Joy's Slack Time Cocktail**
0.75 oz Grand Marnier® orange liqueur
0.75 oz Stolichnaya® vanilla vodka
0.25 oz peach schnapps
0.25 oz triple sec
0.25 oz amaretto almond liqueur
top with orange juice
Mix alcohol ingredients, ice, and OJ in a bar tin, strain, enjoy!
**Always drink responsibly.
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