Impostor Syndrome

The feeling of freezing before starting because a list of reasons you created in your head on why you shouldn’t. Or the feeling when someone brings up an opportunity and your head floods with hundreds of reasons why it really wouldn't work.

Have you felt like this before?

I lived my life like this for years.

This feeling is called the Impostor syndrome and it's defined in the dictionary as:

“the persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills.”

The impostor syndrome is the silent killer of dreams and aspirations and it's a lie we tell ourselves every time we think about making that next move.

We stop ourselves before we try something new because we're afraid we'll look dumb or what others might say. We lose opportunities because we don't want to seem too greedy by asking. We don’t introduce ourselves to new people because we automatically think they would be bothered by talking to us.

In running especially, we push far too hard time and time again. We feel we are already behind our competitors, that we need to do more, and that rest means we're falling even further behind. We run through an injury because we think we can’t afford a day off. More is always the answer because if we don’t do more, how can we “catch up”?

I wouldn’t take a break and forced myself to run through injury because I felt from the start that I didn’t belong.

I’ve sold myself short over and over again by having it in my head that I was not worthy of a spot or scenario before a conversation, a job offer, or a partnership even before the situation appeared.

It was something I had to cut out of my life. I had to force myself to change my mentality because it was built into my subconscious and existed within my head years before I even knew who I was.  It’s something that I think most of us deal with on a daily basis - that feeling of not being good enough.

When I used to be presented with a new situation that I was not comfortable in I would come up with reasons why I shouldn't belong and stop myself.

Now when I'm presented with a new situation I force myself to take the harder path. Instead of thinking of why I can't, I think why not?

When you have time to yourself to think clearly, I would challenge you to ask yourself; what are you still hoping to accomplish? If there is something you still want to do that you’ve been holding onto for a long time, why hasn’t it been achieved yet?

Is it time? family? timing? Ask yourself: If you're not where you want to be want to be, why is that? We are capable of so many amazing things but only if we believe in ourselves first.

If we let our insecurities rule our decision making we will miss opportunities that we should take. Confidence (not cockiness) within ourselves attracts other positive things and people in our lives. It may not feel natural but our own insecurities can sometimes be beat with a “fake it until you make it” attitude.

I still have feelings of not being good enough every single day. But catching myself before automatically saying I can’t or shouldn’t feels that much more empowering.

We get to where we are because of our own hard workout and effort. We deserve whatever might be ahead of us and we at least deserve to ask the question of if there is more.

Our dreams don't happen because we tell ourselves the reasons we can't. We accomplish the things we're proud of because we tell ourselves the reasons we can.