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Lie of the Imposter Complex #10: You Can't Trust the Praise of Others
It's not their fault, really. You've done such a good job pulling the wool over everyone's eyes for so long that they were BOUND to think you were smarter, more competent, or capable than you really are… right?
I laugh at this tweet every time someone sends it to me. It’s funny because it’s true. The Imposter Complex demands that we question the praise of others — but also somehow has us convinced that we are such a good actor that we have everyone fooled!
(By the way, here’s why we like to say Imposter Complex instead of Imposter Syndrome).
So we fall back on lie #6: We best tell everyone about this. Set the record straight. Assure them of the error of their ways. Point out all the flaws in your report, sloppiness of your work, gaps in your logic. Call yourself out for the Imposter that you are.
(And even if you manage to refrain from correcting them, you still don’t quite believe them, either.)
Sometimes we might mistake this for humility. Indeed, humility may be the value that actually underpins this lie if it regularly shows up for you.
Because you were told not to brag.
Not to outshine your siblings or your peers.
Not to rub others’ noses in your accomplishments.
Pride is a sin and all that…
But there’s a difference between not bragging — and not acknowledging your achievements.
Between boasting and accepting a compliment.
Between showing off and showing up in all your brilliance.
And when you take a moment to look inside, I bet you can tell the difference immediately.
How distrusting praise might manifest:
Depending on which of the six behavioural traits of the Imposter Complex you most often experience, you might experience the self-doubt of Lie #10 like this:
If you’re a people-pleaser, we think people are complimenting us just because they LIKE us… not because we are skilled, talented, or excellent at what we do. (This is the double-bind of the Imposter Complex in technicolour.)
If you have leaky boundaries, you may live and die by the words of others — which means that even if 99.9% of people praise you, you might be fixated on the 0.1% who don’t.
If you tend to compare, the praise of others won’t match up to the impossible standards you’ve set by looking at what others have accomplished.
If you’re a perfectionist, you’ll immediately discount others’ praise because they can’t see the flaws that you can see.
If you’re a procrastinator, you may discount the compliment because “they” clearly can’t see all the time and struggle that you went through to get to the endpoint. OR, because you procrastinated and didn’t end up producing your best work, then “they” clearly don’t have high enough standards for you to feel any merit in the acknowledgment. (On this one, I had a ton of help from folks in my FB Group. Join us there for great discussions like this.)
If you tend to diminish, you’ll be intimately familiar with this one. Just because someone else tells you something is good, doesn’t mean it actually is...
I get it. I really do.
But can you also, just for a moment. hold this possibility: that they are really and truly reflecting back what they see? A competent. capable, smart (and funny… did you know that you are funny?) individual with so very much to offer?
I like to start small with this one. The next time someone pays you a compliment — on your hair, your outfit, your shoes, your home, whatever — can you simply say thank you and let it wash over you?
Can you avoid the pull to say “What, this old thing?” or tell them how you need a haircut / got it on sale / haven’t finished painting the deck?
Can you accept their acknowledgment as the gift it was intended to be?
Dare to believe someone when they tell you how remarkable you truly are.
Click here for my free training:
Five ICONIC shifts leaders use to overcome Imposter Complex.
Lie of the Imposter Complex #9: It's Just a Matter of Time Before This All Crumbles
The best and brightest of us can fall prey to this lie of the Imposter Complex.
(By the way, here’s why we like to say Imposter Complex instead of Imposter Syndrome).
Because this one shows up when we're nice and relaxed. Serene. even.
We feel a bout of gratitude for how good life is. The partner, the job, the income, the health, the beautiful house of David Byrne's existential lament, and then we perk up, realizing that we have committed the sin of letting our guard down.
We've jinxed ourselves with our mini-celebration.
Most assuredly, the other shoe is about to drop. We stop breathing. We stop appreciating. And we panic. And lay low.
Exactly where our Imposter Complex likes us to be.
I always remember this story and essay from Bréne Brown when I think of Lie #9.
I used to stand over my two kids while they slept, and just as a profound sense of love and joy washed over me, I'd imagine horrible things happening to them: car crashes, tsunamis. "Do other mothers do this," I'd wonder, "or am I unhinged?" I now know from my research that 95 percent of parents can relate to my constant disaster planning. When we're overwhelmed by love, we feel vulnerable—so we dress-rehearse tragedy.
And that vulnerability — that overwhelm — is where the Imposter Complex takes over, and that dress rehearsing is how it keeps us alone and isolated, doubting our capacity, and out of action.
How this fear of (inevitable) failure might manifest:
Depending on which of the six behavioural traits of the Imposter Complex you most often experience, you might experience the self-doubt of Lie #9 a little differently:
If you’re a people-pleaser, you might start imagining how you’re letting people down, disappointing people, or otherwise NOT people pleasing in your current situation, which will convince you that the good stuff is not sustainable.
If you have leaky boundaries, any suggestion from anyone that you should be doing something more, something less, something different will have you questioning everything.
If you tend to compare, you might be “inspired” to worry by stories of tragedy you see in the news, on social media, through friends and family, etc.
If you’re a perfectionist, you’ll start finding fault with your beautiful life the minute it seems too beautiful.
If you’re a procrastinator, this worry that things are about to fall apart will serve as an iron-clad reason to procrastinate (or continue to procrastinate).
If you tend to diminish, this lie is likely very familiar to you. You’re most likely to discount your success and decide that it’s only temporary.
But I wonder:
How good will you allow this all to be?
(It's up to you. you know.)
This is not to say that bad things never happen. Of course they do. We see proof of it every day. More proof than we need.
Rather, I want you to consider, what if the bad things weren’t inevitable?
What if those things you dread are the outliers?
What if you’re creating suffering for yourself rather than insulating yourself against it?
The data has my back on this. Research has shown that 85% of what we worry about never actually happens.
So the next time the Imposter Complex has you worrying that everything you’ve built, achieved, and cherish is about to crumble beneath you, I want you to ask yourself:
What if the other shoe wasn't about to drop?
Click here for my free training:
Five ICONIC shifts leaders use to overcome Imposter Complex.
Sometimes humans are the worst. (Just like me.)
Hey friends -
Back on May 2nd, my coach Desiree Adaway shared this post on Instagram:
Since May 2nd, I’ve read that quote possibly a hundred times. And these days, I am reading it a hundred more per day as I continue to unpack it.
Because I felt the sting of truth the first time I read it. How many times have I internally pointed the sword of self-righteousness at other white people who aren’t “doing the work”? Oh, the hypocrisy of that. I’ve literally only just begun to unpack my white fragility and whiteness.
And you can only imagine how uncomfortable that is to admit here, in front of my beloved readers. Many of you who are Black and people of colour. And to you, I apologize deeply and sincerely for my complicitness in NOT making my anti-racism an even bigger priority. I promise to you I will do better, learn better, listen better, and take better — more aligned — action. And I will endeavour to show my work as I go (when appropriate and not about centering myself.)
The balance of this letter is addressed to my white readers.
Hiiiiiiii. So this may hurt a little....but it will be NOTHING compared to the pain our Black friends and family endure. AND I want you to know that everything I’m about to say is prefaced with the caveat that this is alllll on me to continue to do as I’m inviting you to do. Imagine a “just like me” as a suffix to my every last invocation. (Dr. Jenn McCabe is a brilliant voice on this matter.)
Allow me to sidebar here for a moment.
Yesterday, my husband and I went for a walk by the beach here in Toronto. There is a family of foxes that has taken residence under the boardwalk and has captured the attention of the city since quarantine began. Much to say on that, but you can imagine that there are some issues: how to social distance when everyone wants a peek at the cuteness? How to not get them too comfortable with humans around? And on and on.
We were a ways away from them when they popped out to play. I paused to take this grainy pic and to send it to my friend. Here was the exchange.
Know what I ALMOST wrote after “That’s the worrisome part. They should be.”? I ALMOST wrote, “Sometimes humans are the worst.” But I just narrowly stopped myself. Because look how close I am to the foxes myself.
Yes. Sometimes humans ARE the worst. Just like me.
/sidebar
Back to Johnny Silvercloud’s words. For any of you who feel the sting of truth as you read them, I invite you to read White Supremacy Culture by Tema Okun if you have not already done so.
It will be tempting to feel defensive and say almost immediately, “but I’m not a white supremacist”. (Which is precisely on-point: “defensiveness” IS a behaviour of white supremacy. This stuff is DEEEEEPLY embedded.)
And I get that because, my dear white friend, you likely think, as I had thought, that white supremacists were white-sheet-wearing, tiki lamp-bearing neo-Nazis and we OBVIOUSLY aren’t that (and the one guy who was on my list that had some horrific things to say about AOC and me has since been banned from my list).
But let’s understand that white supremacy is actually a system that keeps white people in power and privilege. A system centuries in the making (and in its upholding.) All of us who are white and who aren’t working to dismantle white supremacy are still part of the problem because whether we created the system or not, we still benefit from it so our very existence keeps it going unless we do something about it. (The 1619 Project and the podcast by the same name are a pretty good place to start to understand how the economics of this work too.)
You started to follow my work because I am an authority on the Imposter Complex. And I want you to know what I know: the intersections with white supremacy culture and the Imposter Complex are stunningly apparent.
Liiiiiiiiiike:
Perfectionism
Sense of urgency
Defensiveness
Quantity over quality
Either/or thinking
Power hoarding
Fear of open conflict
“I'm the only one”
Right to comfort
Familiar, non? (I highlighted these intersections in a Live in my FB group yesterday.)
If you’re sitting with your mouth open like I was the first time I read those characteristics (heyyyyyy “sense of urgency” as in: NOW THAT I CAN FINALLY SEE THE WORLD IS BURNING I HAVE TO FIX IT), I’ll invite you to sit with that for a moment. (Just like me.)
And then take a page out of Desiree’s teachings (you can get a healthy dose of her depth of wisdom in the first-ever episode of Ready Enough w/ Tanya Geisler). Desiree uses the Liberatory Consciousness framework from Barbara J. Love where awareness comes first, then ANALYSIS, then action and accountability/ally-ship.
It’s tempting to jump straight from awareness to action. (Heaven knows I’ve been here.) But we won’t end white supremacy in a week...or a month. Like Desiree reminds me...that’s dominant culture talking. That aforementioned “sense of urgency”.
Follow (and INVEST in hiring or becoming a patron of) the work of social justice teachers who have made this their life’s work by choice or cruel circumstance looooooong before it started to come into your focus. Shelve your ego, dig in deeply and learn so you are not causing any additional harm and let’s get to it. (Just like me.)
I don’t need to tell you how egregious the world is right now, because like I’ve said...it’s been this way for centuries.
I don’t need to tell you about the extraordinarily colour-blind behaviour prolific in the white coaching/self-development space...it’s been this way for decades.
What I do need to commit to you, my readers, ALL of my readers, is that I am deep in the analysis of my own whiteness and white fragility.
And I do indeed intend to show you my work.
It will be imperfect.
But if I wait for all to be perfect, I will never take action. And if I don’t take action, I’ll never be able to be accountable and lean into ally-ship.
And if I wait for all to be perfect, I will, once again, be colluding with white supremacy that wields perfection as a weapon. No, not like a billy club, nor a gun, nor a knee on a windpipe. But a weapon intended to silence the words that need to be said. The conversations that need to be had at our dining room tables, in our beds, in our cars, and over fences.
I am ready enough to say what needs to be said and done.
I reckon you are too.
Big big love and swaths of care for you wherever you are on your path.
PS - I have made the decision to not overwhelm you with an exhaustive list of resources as there are some excellent ones in circulation that you can find beyond those I’ve invited you to start with here. That said, this anti-racism for white people document is one my family is working through. And, if you want to take more consistent action, Black Lives Matter has this extensive list of ways to donate, protest, educate yourself. Just. Like. Me.
Lie of the Imposter Complex #8: You'll Never be Able to Pull That off Again
You did something fabulous. Got noticed. Won an award. Wrote something people cared about. Brought in a MASSIVE contract. The Big Name client said yes to YOU!
But your capacity to do more fabulous somethings has apparently been reached — at least according to your Imposter Complex.
(By the way, here’s why I say Imposter Complex instead of Imposter Syndrome).
Suddenly, you believe that your talent, skill, knowledge, creativity, and ability to seal the deal is finite. You’re certain you'll become the one-hit-wonder.
So, why bother?
Even more insidious… many don't try in the first place for FEAR of this: if my book is a huge success, what next? How will I ever replicate that?
I honestly have a headache just thinking about this.
Lie #8 out of the 12 Lies of the Imposter Complex has us thinking that whatever success we’ve experienced, we’ll never be able to replicate it again.
It was a fluke.
We got lucky.
Someone else intervened….
I frequently see this manifest with coaches and entrepreneurs who don’t own the successes they help their clients get. They say, “Sure, that client made a ton of money / turned their life around / started a movement / wrote a bestselling book / won the award… But I can’t promise that for everybody because…”
(Fill in the blank. The reasons don’t actually matter.)
How this fear of success might manifest
Depending on which of the six behavioural traits of the Imposter Complex you most often experience, you might experience the self-doubt of Lie #8 a little differently:
If you’re a people-pleaser, you don’t want to make anybody feel bad, and you definitely don’t want to brag, so you might try to soften your success by immediately following it up with the disclaimer that you won’t be able to repeat it.
If you have leaky boundaries, anyone who questions or even suggests that you might not be able to pull it off again will sound like they’re preaching gospel truth.
If you tend to compare, you’ll immediately discount your success in comparison with somebody else’s entire body of work.
If you’re a perfectionist, well, you might not acknowledge your success in the first place — you’ll just see all the places it wasn’t perfect. And those perceived imperfections will convince you that you’ll never be able to pull it off again.
If you’re a procrastinator, you’re likely to fall into the camp that says, “If I am a success this time, I’ll never be able to follow it up, so why even try....”
If you tend to diminish, you might not even acknowledge your success at all — and if you do, it will only be grudgingly, with the quick caveat that it was a fluke, a lucky break, never to be repeated…
But here’s the truth, Love: Your success was the result of the skills and will you brought to the table (and, sure, MAYBE the stars were aligned as well). And so it shall be again. As long as you keep bringing your skills and will to the table.
The one-hit-wonder gave into the Imposter Complex.
Your skills, talent, insight, knowledge, background, creativity, and grit haven’t changed. Whatever brought you to that success (yes, even “luck”!) still exist.
And you can apply them to your next endeavor to help you see that success again…
And again…
And again.
This is not to say that you will succeed every time, but rather a reminder that if you succeeded once, you can absolutely do it again.
Click here for my free training:
Five ICONIC shifts leaders use to overcome Imposter Complex.
Lie of the Imposter Complex #7: You're Not Ready
Lie #7 of the Imposter Complex is a seductive and tricky beast because it seems rational.
It says you’re not ready… yet.
(Not ready for what? Oh, any old thing…)
Here, the Imposter Complex is finally giving you a little slack. (And we call it Imposter Complex, not imposter syndrome for a very good reason.)
It's acting all logical by pointing to the fact that you MAY be ready ONE day… that day's just not today. Yup. It's giving you slack, all right.
Just enough slack in the rope to tangle yourself into the loop of inspiration -> preparation -> frustration -> procrastination -> inspiration…
It disguises itself as the oh-so-logical argument that you just need a little more — experience, education, time, whatever.
Maybe you'll feel ready when you get that degree. Or put another 10 years under your belt. Or… or… or.
I see this crop up a lot with coaches who feel like they need to get another certification or put in some more hours coaching for free before they’re ready to charge for their services…
With entrepreneurs who feel like they need to buy another course, work with another coach, do another beta test before they launch their big thing…
With writers who need another draft, another writing group, another editor, another opinion before they start shopping their book…
How not being ready enough might manifest for you
Depending on which of the six behavioural traits of the Imposter Complex you most often experience, you might find yourself giving in to the allure of not ready because of different things:
If you’re a people-pleaser, you’re already prone to getting everyone’s opinion about your work (ie: Lie #6) and therefore you’ll take it to heart if even one person suggests you aren’t ready.
If you have leaky boundaries, you may get swept along with the crowd. If you see friends and colleagues getting another certification, buying another course, working with a new coach, you may feel compelled to do the same.
If you tend to compare, you’ll find plenty of examples of people who were more ready to prove your hypothesis that you’re not ready.
If you’re a perfectionist, well. You’ll never be ready because things will never be absolutely perfect.
If you’re a procrastinator, telling yourself that you’re not ready is a GREAT excuse not to actually do the thing. It feels like you’re still working toward your goal… Even when the goal is as far away as ever.
If you tend to diminish, this is probably also familiar territory for you, because you only ever see your shortcomings, not how far you’ve come.
Two things:
As you sit down to write the book, launch the product, step up to the mic, think about how everything you have ever made, delivered, sold, created, drafted, crafted, survived, healed, and done is coming together. Right here and now. For this very purpose. For this very moment.
And?
No one was ever fully ready. For anything.
Do it. You're ready enough.
(HEYYYY!! Someone should do a podcast called Ready Enough. Oh wait...I did!)
Click here for my free training:
Five ICONIC shifts leaders use to overcome Imposter Complex.
Lie of the Imposter Complex #6: You Must Tell EVERYONE About This
I’ve noticed a trend.
If you compliment someone on a dress they’re wearing, it’s pretty common that they’ll tell you that they got it on a HUGE sale…
But why do we need to know that the dress was on sale? The other person was (almost certainly) not complimenting the price tag.
I think it’s a small symptom of Lie #6 of the Imposter Complex (and we call it a complex, not imposter syndrome around these parts).
Lie #6 says that we must tell EVERYONE about this — this usually being something you feel like you have to come clean about so that everyone else knows that you know that you’re the Imposter.
Like… the price of your dress.
Sure, it’s fabulous and couture and looks like it was made for me — but I got it on sale.
OK, I got the award — but there weren’t many others competing.
Yes, I got a standing ovation — but I completely messed up the middle section of the speech.
How to recognize Lie #6
Hands up if you've ever actually said the words, "I don't belong here" at a gathering.
Do you remember the look on everyone's face? I know, it's hard to remember because you blocked it from your mind, so certain are you that you were met with nods of disgust. But allow me to jog your memory: it was a curious blend of bemusement, incredulity, and perplexion.
Know why? Because they were too busy thinking that THEY didn't belong here to even consider YOU not belonging here.
And let’s layer in this additional truth: Sometimes the greater culture conspires to make us feel that we don’t belong — especially if you’ve ever had the experience of being the only person who looks like you in the room. As my friend Staci Jordan Shelton says: “We share a common space but not a common experience."
And...guess what? You still belong.
How Lie No. 6 might manifest for you
Depending on which of the six behavioural traits of the Imposter Complex you most often experience, you might find yourself blurting things out with Lie #6 because of different things:
If you’re a people-pleaser, you definitely want to put everyone at ease — which means you might go on a self-deprecating tirade to ensure that everyone knows how ordinary and impostery you actually are.
If you have leaky boundaries, you may find yourself getting sucked into other people’s put-down festivals; if they’re talking about how much of an imposter they are, you may feel the need to join in.
If you tend to compare, you’ll be the first to offer up your deficiencies, especially as compared to anybody else.
If you’re a perfectionist, you’ll be the first to notice those perceived imperfections, and may feel compelled to point them out to everybody else, too.
If you’re a procrastinator, you might tell everyone your reasons for procrastination (which seem very important and valid at the time…).
If you tend to diminish, well, this Lie will be super familiar to you, I bet, because you spend a great deal of time telling yourself — and maybe everyone else — where you fall short.
Before you call yourself out for being an Imposter (you’re not), pause and ask what is sitting underneath that impulse.
Pause and ask yourself: “why am I talking?”
Are you looking to connect? Are you seeking validation? Something else?
When you know, you will know what to do next.
That said, knowing when to name it or not requires nuance and discernment, to be sure. I have found utility in Brené Brown’s classic words: Don’t shrink. Don’t puff up. Stand your sacred ground.
Click here for my free training:
Five ICONIC shifts leaders use to overcome Imposter Complex.