I love Adam Grant‘s tiny, but powerful LinkedIn post below that flips our thoughts on Impostor Syndrome around. “If you doubt yourself, shouldn’t you also doubt your judgment of yourself?” I have labored long and hard to try to still the recordings that play inside my head almost daily from an emotionally abusive parent. They told me, time and again, that I wasn’t worth anything, that I was stupid, that I would never amount to much in life and I should never expect to. Unfortunately for us as children, we have no way of fact-checking what our parents say about us. We believe them – especially if we are told the same thing every day. We believe that our parents are telling us the truth, even if it is an “untruth.” Is it any wonder then, that we feel we might be impostors in our own skin? Might we actually have something good to offer our world? We tell ourselves, “How can I, who am worth-less, have anything good to give to anyone?”
To anyone who has felt this way or lived with the sting of emotional abuse from anyone – please read Adam’s short post below. Now, tell me – how did you feel about your Impostor Syndrome after you read it? Are you still clinging to the old recordings, or has a new thought crossed your mind? Can it be that Impostor Syndrome only keeps the “tapes playing” and becomes a support and an enabling mindset for us not to open ourselves up to the greatness that might lie within us? What about the opportunities that life really wants to bring to us?
Step out of this old mindset and into the wonderful, freeing logic presented below. Know that you are not an Impostor – you are YOU, created magnificently to add your part to the great dance of life. You have a lot to give us and we can’t wait to learn from you! You have always amounted to much!
