As a business owner, you have to deal with many challenges and problems on a daily basis. The anxiety and stress on a regular basis can make everything look absolutely impossible at times. While you have to deal with all of these things, there is another major issue that many businesses deal with, ‘imposter syndrome. In this article, I talk about three quick and smart ways through which you can effectively deal with the Imposter Syndrome. But before we jump on that, we need to understand it clearly.
What is Imposter Syndrome?
In simple terms, it can be defined as excessive self-doubt that is resulting from consistently under-rating your skills and competence. When suffering from this syndrome, the business owners often doubt their active involvement or contribution toward overall business success. Instead, they would feel that their success is merely a stroke of wild luck or other factors at play.
Now, you may be wondering ‘Hey Brian! Every single person doubts their abilities, so what’s wrong with that?!’. I hear you! It’s not uncommon to have some degree of self-doubt. However, when this self-doubt jeopardizes your productivity and makes you freeze mid-way or affect your role as an entrepreneur that’s bad. This is because this type of self-doubt is going to sabotage all your efforts toward gaining business success. The worst thing about imposter syndrome is that anyone can be affected by this no matter how successful you already are. But if you are struggling with this, I have three tips that can help you out.
Be Proud of Your Success
As entrepreneurs, we tend to shy away from talking about our success stories because we are most of the time quite afraid of being criticized. This fear somehow shrinks our confidence in our achievements and we tend to hide away in the shadows.
Society teaches us not to talk about our successes because it’s labeled as ‘bragging’ and people may take us to be snobbish at times. But the reality is just the opposite. To combat this feeling and societal conditioning, exposure therapy is a useful strategy. According to this therapeutic model, the more you face your fears the better you’ll be able to embrace reality.
Take Note of Your Achievements
When you are struggling with the imposter syndrome, it is common to turn away from your achievements and abilities. You might recall judging yourself with statements like “it was nothing”, “I just got a bit lucky” or ” I could have presented it better than this”. One useful strategy that you can use is to make a list of your accomplishments and compare it with your peers. The areas in which you experience some envy or inferiority could be the ones where you need to learn and grow. While the areas where you are really doing great would be reinforced by putting them on paper and viewing every now and then.
Share What You Learn
It is said that knowledge only grows when you share it and I have found it to be always true. The more you get in the habit of sharing your experiences and skills with people around you, the better rewards you’ll reap. People will not only respect and appreciate you more but you will be considered an authority in your niche.
To conclude our long debate, I want to emphasize that as an entrepreneur you run a high risk of suffering from imposter syndrome. If you want to learn more about imposter syndrome and how to deal with it, head over to my podcast episode here or check more information here. But you need to remember that you can deal with it effectively instead of suffering in silence. You have to look within yourself, be a bit introspective and talk about your small and big wins.
