Ep480 Imposter Syndrome: Where it Comes From & What to Do About it
Apr 15, 2024Episode 480
Julie Holly
Julie Holly discusses three key attitudes for achieving success:
Commitment vs. Interest: Be willing to commit to the long haul, even when things get difficult. Don't confuse initial excitement for true commitment.
Adaptability: Be flexible and willing to adjust your approach as circumstances change. The ability to learn and adapt is crucial for success.
Willingness to Do the Work: Success requires hard work and dedication. There are no shortcuts. Be prepared to put in the effort required to achieve your goals.
Key takeaways
Success requires a balance of commitment, adaptability, and hard work.
Don't give up when things get tough. Stay committed to your goals and be willing to adapt your approach as needed.
Be prepared to put in the hard work required to achieve your goals. Success is not easy, but it is possible with dedication and effort.
Julie Holly discusses three key attitudes for achieving success:
Commitment vs. Interest: Be willing to commit to the long haul, even when things get difficult. Don't confuse initial excitement for true commitment.
Adaptability: Be flexible and willing to adjust your approach as circumstances change. The ability to learn and adapt is crucial for success.
Willingness to Do the Work: Success requires hard work and dedication. There are no shortcuts. Be prepared to put in the effort required to achieve your goals.
Key takeaways
Success requires a balance of commitment, adaptability, and hard work.
Don't give up when things get tough. Stay committed to your goals and be willing to adapt your approach as needed.
Be prepared to put in the hard work required to achieve your goals. Success is not easy, but it is possible with dedication and effort.
Hello Conscious Investor and welcome back. I'm your host, julie Hawley. For over four years, I've paired my background in real estate, investing, education and coaching to create powerful content for you each week. This podcast is where we take a holistic approach to investing, by focusing on three ingredients to a life of personal freedom health, mindset and wealth. We'll talk about everything from passive investing through syndication and how to use your retirement accounts to boost your investing, to mineral balancing and gut brain health, and into topics that cultivate your inner strength and resilience so you can thrive regardless of any of life's current events. And yes, those are all episodes currently available and linked in the show notes below. Join me each Monday for a mindset episode and later in the week for an interview with expert investors and health professionals, so that you can experience your greatest health, strongest mindset and build the wisest wealth.
Speaker 1:
Imposter syndrome what is it and where does it come from? We hear this, this expression, tossed about on a regular basis, and today we are going to dive in and we are going to really wrestle with some different facets of imposter syndrome because, as I reflected, there's this whole area of imposter syndrome that I have not heard anyone explore in depth, and I believe wholeheartedly that this is going to catapult your journey because it's going to tackle imposter syndrome from a completely different angle, at least an angle I have not yet heard of. Before we dive in, I just want to remind you that this podcast is sponsored by Three Keys Investments. Three Keys Investments provides passive investment opportunities that provide housing for humans through investments in multimillion dollar apartment complexes and assisted living facilities. So you can say goodbye to the hassle and headaches of owning rentals and hello to living the life you want with the people you love, all while enjoying real ownership. Interest in real real estate. Conscious investor.
Speaker 1:
It's been a while, um, since we have gone over some reviews, and I feel I'm so sorry that's I need to apologize. I'd love to honor those of you who have taken time to leave a written review on Apple podcasts, and to do so, you just go to the main screen, the main page of the conscious investor podcast, and you scroll all the way down to the bottom and then, in really tiny font, it'll say write a review, and so if you choose to do that, I would be absolutely honored. I just want to give a huge shout out Pace Morby. He left a review and his review says five stars. Wow. I was a guest on this show in February of 2024.
Speaker 1:
So I went through and listened to a handful of episodes and, oh my goodness all caps, exclamation mark what a show. Such a great podcast, so amazing. Thanks so much, pace. I really appreciate the time you took to leave a review. And, by the way, conscious Investor that episode is out and it is definitely one of my all-time favorite podcast episodes because if you know Pace Morby, you know of him. Right now he's really pushing the Gator method, but you know he has such great protocols for acquiring real estate, um, and he can educate on the mechanics of that. But we had such a heartfelt conversation about life and living and it was really rich. So I highly recommend checking out that podcast episode. We'll link it down below in the show notes.
Speaker 1:
Also wanted to give a shout out to Sale, who left a five-star review and she says I love the fact that Julie takes on investing with a sense of purpose. She is authentic and optimistic to the core. Thanks, julie. Hey, sale, thanks so much for taking time to leave that review and it was great even having a chance to speak with you on a phone call. So please remember, conscious Investor, I love speaking with you directly. That's why I create this podcast episode, and so you can head on down to the show notes at any given time and you can schedule times where we can talk about your investing goals or we can explore the possibility. And what does coaching look like and how would that work for you in helping you create the life that you want to lead?
Speaker 1:
All right, that was a long intro. I'm so grateful, though, for all of the reviews, and I don't know what happened. We had um, we had two almost 270, um ratings and reviews, and then they just vaporized. So I don't know what happens. I don't. You know, it's a vanity, vanity, vanity, um metrics and and so, but it's also not. When you leave those written reviews, it really truly touches my heart. You know I read every single one. So, um, just super shout out. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:
Let's go ahead and dive into imposter syndrome. You so much. Let's go ahead and dive into imposter syndrome. Now, this concept is really important to me because it's something that was really tossed around a lot early in my investing and people say, oh, you know this and limiting beliefs were probably the top two phrases people threw around and I really discovered Let me back up the track. So, imposter syndrome, what is it?
Speaker 1:
Imposter syndrome is generally when we don't believe that we fit into a situation. So it might be. Maybe you enter a room. So from the investing standpoint, we'll tackle this from a few different vantage points, because it permeates all of life, right? So maybe you go to a barbecue at a friend's house, you drive up, you pull in, um, maybe you see cars that are nicer or not as nice as your car and you're like I don't know about this, um, but let's just say you're walking into a setting where you just feel like I don't belong here.
Speaker 1:
Now, oftentimes we want to say imposter syndrome is usually when we feel like we're low man on the totem pole. So that's why I want to do this other correlation here, where imposter syndrome could actually be. Maybe, um, it's just simply I don't feel like I belong. Could be because I don't feel like I'm smart enough or have a net worth enough, or I'm not accomplished enough. Or it could be like I don't belong because I think in a different way. I'm not operating from scarcity, I don't operate from a complaining posture, I approach the world in a different way, so I feel like an imposter here because I can't even speak this dialect, because I'm not going to join you in complaining about X, y and Z, so we can have that sense of not belonging here.
Speaker 1:
We could have that sense and I touched on it of oh my gosh, I am so far out of my league Recently. I've had that recently my gollies, I feel. Like the last several years I've just been in rooms time and time again where I just feel like I'm completely out of my league, like, oh my gosh, I am the dumbest person in the room right here. I hope they don't discover that. And that's actually my next example is like a lot of times we'll think like, oh my gosh, I really I hope they don't discover that I am not as smart as them, or I hope they don't discover my net worth isn't as great as their net worth, you know, or maybe they're thinking things of me, and so this is actually one of the very first things, and this actually pairs really well with a concept called FOPO.
Speaker 1:
So FOPO, fear of people's opinions. I recently heard this expression from Michael Gervais, and he has a book called the First Rule of Mastery, and it has a subtitle that has to do with overcoming other people's opinions and it really tackles this concept. But when we're concerned about oh my gosh, I hope they don't realize X, y, z about me, well, why not? And okay, because we're actually concerned about their opinion about us. And I want to remind you, conscious, investor, that someone else's opinion of you is actually none of your business. That's just their opinion. That is one person's opinion in this whole world of billions of people. One person's opinion, or maybe it's mastermind group of a hundred people. Okay, a hundred people's opinion in an entire world of billions of people. And you're going to allow that to sink your ship. Come on Now.
Speaker 1:
I admit I have wrestled with this myself and I didn't have the expression FOPO to lean on, but I would remind myself several years ago um, golly, probably more like 15, 20 years ago. Other people's opinions are not going to derail my life. It is your life. God created you and hardwired you for greatness. God created you to do something intentional in the world. And remember, that doesn't mean that you have to go be on a yacht and on billboards and TV and social media. It just means that you're important, regardless of your net worth, regardless of your education. You are hardwired, designed for something awesome. So what do we do instead? Right, we one. We are going to say I recognize that I have FOPO. I don't need to subordinate who I am created to be to other people's opinions. I don't need their permission to be the very best version of myself.
Speaker 1:
This also reveals something else, and that is a deeper belief that we hold about ourselves. This is where it's really going to sting a little bit, conscious Investor, because the reality is that we're mirroring that and so, even if other people don't have a particular opinion about us, we're projecting that. Unless they overtly say opinion about us, we're projecting that. Unless they overtly say, hey, you suck. Unless they overtly say like, wow, you need to go back to school and learn a few things or you need to go get some more investments and increase your net worth. Unless people are overtly telling you something, unless they're sharing their opinion of you and what their expectations are, then we're simply projecting our beliefs upon them. Now, the easiest way to contextualize this is in our relationships.
Speaker 1:
I'm sure, conscious investor, I'm not the only one who has projected something in a significant relationship, so oftentimes it will come about that, uh, you know, I might misinterpret something that super rad Steve does and, depending on what my thinking is and my posture, I might assume that he meant something in a frustrating way. Okay, case in point, and this is so trivial here's here's a good example of this and it's embarrassing. So I'm going to let you know that right now. This is absolutely embarrassing. Um, however, I will let you know that super rad Steve is super rad and he knew that.
Speaker 1:
Um, I was going to make some vanilla syrup for lattes, and what he didn't know was that I was excited about just kind of having a little side hobby of figuring out the best recipe and going down the rabbit hole, right. But he makes a lot of simple syrups for his cocktails and he made a simple syrup for me, syrups for his cocktails, and he made a simple syrup for me. And instead of having a posture of gratitude and wow, that was so thoughtful of you, you're so amazing Um, shamefully and I admit this right now, shamefully, it kind of was like well, thanks, but I was really looking forward to making that myself, right. So I'm projecting like all sorts of things onto him and and I I said some things that I definitely would like to retract, you know, like, wow, didn't you think about X, y? Didn't you think that I would want to do that? Didn't you think this didn't eat?
Speaker 1:
And so we make so many assumptions about what other people are thinking, and then we make assumptions about what they're thinking about us. We make all these assumptions and our brain is filling in the blank in so many different ways and we just simply have to stop. And when we engage imposter syndrome, we're actually engaging a deeper belief within ourselves. So we have to actually say what do I believe about myself, what do I believe about this person? What do I believe about the world around me? So when we're talking about ourselves, we can say well, what do I actually believe about me? Here's some questions that we could ask. What is my track record? Do I have a track record in this that I can fall back on? Do I have past evidence that supports this negative belief about myself? So let's put this into context.
Speaker 1:
Maybe you believe that you know you're an undisciplined person and yet you show up and go to the gym. You know, on the days that you say you're going to go to the gym, you make your bed, you do your reading, you do your journaling, so you demonstrate the trait of I am actually a disciplined person, but maybe there are just some other areas. Instead of applying this as a blanket statement to your entire life, maybe it's time to just back up the truck and say, okay, actually, instead of believing I am an undisciplined person, maybe I can understand. I'm disciplined in many ways, and here's the evidence of that. I would like to improve my discipline in these one or two other areas.
Speaker 1:
So a lot of times, it's one or two other one or two areas that derail our entire thinking about ourselves and we start to think like we just throw it all out at once, like, oh, wow, you, wow, I suck, this is terrible. And it's like, well, actually, you have a lot of stuff together. It's just you want to apply that same skillset to another part of your life. We also want to look about our character, our attributes and our abilities. We have so much more that we're made of and we're equipped with, but because we're so fixated on a belief that is singular, it's like the princess and the pea there's just one little thing that's just rubbing us the wrong way, and so we just give up on all of it.
Speaker 1:
So I want to encourage you, as you are wrestling with FOPO, to really dive into your deeper beliefs about yourself. And then I want you to consider Conscious, investor, actually writing down, documenting what is my track record? What is the evidence that would prove my competence in this? What is the evidence about my character? What are the attributes that make me me? I think when you do that, you're going to see something that is vibrant, that is going to support you when you want to push back on that imposter syndrome feeling. In fact, this is largely why I'm able to do everything that I'm able to do, because I'll look back at the body of evidence and say, well, yeah, maybe I'm not at a hundred percent, but maybe I'm 85, 90% and 80%, 80, 20 rule. I think that's you're doing pretty darn well, right, but if we can look back on that and say, yeah, I've, I've got what it takes, I've got the right stuff and that's going to empower us to take that next step.
Speaker 1:
The other element I was suggesting was we have to look at, because I said, we have to look at our belief about ourselves, but we also oh, wow, no-transcript. So sometimes we think that we need to be part of a particular group, a particular organization and we believe that if we are part of this group, then we will be successful, and what we are doing is we're hinging our success on things that are outside of our control. Remember, it's important that we say what is it within my control? Stoicism is very huge. The stoic practice is very huge on this. Where we have to be looking at, I can only do what is within my control and so I'm going to operate in that zone.
Speaker 1:
So when we're looking at our beliefs about the world around us, we have to decouple our concept to say do I have to have this in order to be successful or is this a support that would be a blessing in my life? But it's really important that we are not hinging our success on other people. Now I am going to put an asterisk. There is that great things happen in life when we are in alignment and working and collaborating with others. It's just a matter of finding the right others to do that together with. So we need to be looking at um. Is this true? Is this true, if I joined this organization, if I'm part of this particular ecosystem, that I'm going to be more successful? Is this true about the world around me in general, and what data is actually supporting what I believe and, ultimately, should I edit this story? Well, I'm going to be honest, conscious investor.
Speaker 1:
I've done a lot of editing over the years and there have been different times where I have had a deep belief that I need to be part of a particular system, a particular group, an organization or something. And then, when I start to get around some of the people in the group, I realize I'm using it as a crutch, which reveals something about myself. It reveals a deeper belief about me. That belief that I re-found was I'm not good enough to do it on my own. I need to shoulder this with others. And for a few years it became a crutch where it's like, oh well, the only way I'm going to be successful is if I have this crutch, the support of others who I believe, who I've imposed an opinion and valuation on them that they're better than me, that they're more equipped than me and I subordinated who I was created to be to others. Over the last few years, I've been learning and discovering this and having to rein it all in and it's absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 1:
But when we understand that, when we can evaluate the world around us and the people around us and say is this part of what is going to make me me? We can then really approach the imposter syndrome from the inside out instead of having that pressure coming in on us all the time. It creates a lightness and a fullness to life, and I have full confidence, conscious Investor, that it will absolutely support you. So a quick recap right, imposter syndrome is something that we toss around all the time. It usually just means that we have a deeper belief about ourselves that we are inferior, belief about ourselves that we are inferior, that we're not competent and capable of being in a particular setting. We will oftentimes apply our valuations and judgments to the people and world around us and ultimately, we end up subordinating the best parts of us and we miss out. And so instead, what we do is we tackle it with truth and we say, hey, what is my, what is my deeper belief about myself, what is my track record, what are my attributes, what is the character traits that are backing, backing me up? And then we also want to look at the world around us and ask similar questions what data supports this belief I have about this group, this organization, this world, and do I need to edit this story? So remember when we edit the story. It just means we understand what the deeper truth is, and if that truth is not matching with the story we're telling, we can just put a strike through, edit that story and continue on.
Speaker 1:
Conscious investor. I appreciate you. Thanks for taking time to listen to this mindset episode and you know it really would mean the world to me if you took a moment to scroll on down wherever you're listening, to leave a rating and review. Let me know that you were here and if this is something that resonated with you, please take a moment and share it with those around you. As always, adventure belongs on the trail and not in our investing, not in our personal lives. So if you are looking to take your first or next step in investing, please scroll down to the show notes.
Speaker 1:
Schedule a time for you and I to talk. I promise you it is. People tell me on a regular basis oh, you're the same as on the podcast. Yes, it is so much easier to just be you, so you will get me. You're interested in coaching? I am going to be releasing some group coaching concepts, so I will be releasing a book and coaching um group coming up. So stay tuned. Follow me on Instagram at the conscious investor podcast, so that you can be up to date with all of that. Until next time, cheers to your health, mindset and wealth. Are you enjoying this episode? Do the world a favor and help trip the algorithm by leaving a review so that this content reaches many others.