Impostor syndrome can be so challenging to deal with. It can wreak an incredible amount of havoc across every single area of your life.
That’s especially true if you’re trying to start your business.
Every single online business and every online business owner I know has been riddled with impostor syndrome at some point in time.
In this blog post, I’m going to show you how to actually take practical steps to get over your impostor syndrome once and for all.
How to Know You Have Impostor Syndrome
Impostor syndrome is something that is so painful to deal with.
When you’re starting your blog, chances are you may have this feeling of unease or inadequacy. Or you don’t feel worthy that you should actually be teaching what you’re teaching or writing what you’re writing. And the list goes on and on.
The reality of your situation is you’re actually encountering impostor syndrome. You’re experiencing this deep-seated fear that you’re going to be found out. Someone’s going to unveil the curtain and expose to the world that:
- You’re a fraud.
- You actually don’t know what you’re talking about.
- You’re not the expert.
- You’re not the best at this particular subject.
- You’re not the best writer.
- You’re not the best at [fill in the blank].
Here is the actual truth behind that.
Nobody cares.
Yes, you read that right. Nobody cares.
People are only tuned in to themselves, to what’s going on in their bubble, the world they live in, the circle around their head, and their own thoughts and feelings.
They’re not worried about you.
This happened to me the first time I started to write on my blog.
I felt inadequate like I didn’t have much experience with an online business.
Ye,t I thrust myself into a position where I wanted to talk about this. I wanted to learn, experiment, test, or at least get my foot in the door of trying to build an online business.
Now the reality of that situation is I didn’t know a lot. And today, I’m still learning. Actually, I believe the best way to learn is to teach.
But framing yourself as an impostor only holds you back. Calling ourselves an impostor is just a recipe for disaster.
3 Tips on How to Overcome Impostor Syndrome
Once you have this feeling of being an impostor, here’s what you can actually do about it.
1. Embracing where you are in the journey
I learned this from a mentor of mine, and it completely changed the way I look at impostor syndrome.
You don’t have to be the best in the market. You just have to be better than one person below you.
You do not have to be the best blogger, the best at SEO, or the best writer. You just have to be a tiny little better than someone else, the competition, or a site you found. Or even just a little better at writing than you were yesterday.
This one-up mentality of just getting a little better than you were the day, the week, or the month before may not seem as practical as you think.
But when you really adopt that way of thinking, of living, and of being, it then becomes a reality.
When you understand that you can’t teach everyone in the world who has, for example, the biggest online business, or the best camera, or the best whatever, that’s already an improvement.
But you can teach someone. You can write about something or make videos about something where you’ve gone through an experience. And you certainly know more than someone who’s just getting started.
There is always an audience that you can serve with integrity and honesty and give them real genuine value.
2. Knowing where the feeling of being an impostor comes from
When you feel like an impostor, you need to understand and get a clear vision of where it’s coming from.
- Is it from a personal experience?
- A business experience?
- Is it from a belief you’ve built in yourself?
- Is it from something else that’s not serving you?
To uncover this and get to the bottom of it, you need to discover where it came from in the first place.
If you can’t understand the root cause, how can you fix it? Well, you can’t.
The most practical way to do that is to actually just sit with it. Own that feeling of being an impostor and realize that:
- It’s not you.
- It’s just a belief that you’ve created in your head.
Here’s a favorite quote of mine from Abraham Hicks:
A belief is just a thought you keep thinking.
Abraham Hicks
It’s just a story that you’ve told yourself that you’re not good enough, not worthy of teaching this topic because you haven’t been doing it for x number of years.
Well, who put that rule? Who decided that was a fact? You did. You did it in your own head, your own narrative.
And it’s really powerful to discover and unearth all that stuff and just sit with it, so you have an actual starting point to get you through it.
3. Take massive action
This is not the same as what most people call a massive action plan.
For me, this massive action plan is getting one percent better each and every day. Don’t go a day without improving that one thing you feel like you’re an impostor in.
This is not about making the perfect 30-day calendar or some new year’s resolution.
It’s about building the proper habits, changing your beliefs, and getting a little better each and every day.
Big wins don’t happen in one day. Big wins happen in the minutes, hours, and days that build up a month. They don’ happen overnight.
And the way to stack up these minutes, hours, and days is by having this one percent mentality: to do something each day to get a little better at this one thing, be it writing, keyword research, or being on camera.
If it’s about blogging, you can be a little better at introducing yourself to strangers.
It’s something as simple as that.
These little one percent improvements start to break down these patterns you have in your brain. They start to just rip apart all these habits and ways of thinking about the stories you tell yourself.
If you can’t break through these stories and make little one percent improvements with an action plan, you’re going to have an uphill battle to overcome the feeling of impostor syndrome.
Conclusion
By following these three simple tips I went over, you’ll find yourself saying goodbye to limiting beliefs and your impostor persona. You’ll also enter a cycle of never-ending self-motivation that’ll keep you on the right track.
It just takes consistent focus to actually get results.
However, the honest truth is that impostor syndrome will never disappear completely. You just have different levels of it because the more you learn, the more things you have to deal with.
The higher you go, the higher you can fall. Things that hold you back change and evolve over time.
That’s why great leaders always keep a learning mentality.
So these were my tips for approaching and overcoming impostor syndrome and any story or belief you have with any area of your life, especially in your business.
What is the biggest thing you have an impostor syndrome feeling with? Let me know in the comments.
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