How To Overcome Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome is part of life, it is completely normal to experience the feeling that you aren’t capable, that others have an inflated view of your capacity, that there has been a mistake and you shouldn’t be here. Imposter syndrome tends to show up when we are taking on something new but it can strike at any time and most people experience it at some point in life. Here is an exercise to help you leverage imposter syndrome instead of letting hold you back.

List out all the negative thoughts that you are having and then one by one challenge their veracity.

Perhaps you have the thought “I’m not fit enough to be a personal trainer”. You could challenge this thought with the question who says personal trainers have to be super fit?  Is there a rule book that specifies a physical standard? No, of course not.

Going through your list of negative thoughts and challenging them one by one, this exercise will immediately dissolve some of the negative thoughts you are having about yourself, while you may find some truth in other thoughts. Keep questioning your thoughts until you get to the real truth of the underlying belief. Be like a curious toddler who keeps asking why. When you get to the end of this train of thought and you truly believe there is something lacking, it’s time to examine what you can do to change that reality. How can you improve yourself so that you feel confident in this area?

Let’s say you are just starting out and you don’t feel confident charging your personal training clients until you have more experience. You get to decide how many sessions you need to teach for you to believe that you are ‘good enough’. That might be 3 or 30, it is entirely up to you. Pick a number and then find a way to teach those free sessions with the knowledge that once you have completed that goal, you get to start charging.

Leverage imposter syndrome as an indicator of where to focus your development efforts and notice your confidence grow.