I'm Over Imposter Syndrome

In this episode of The Reminder Remedy, host and coach Alena Conley does a deep-dive about imposter syndrome. Alena shares her personal experiences with self-doubt and social anxiety. The episode explores the societal pressures that shape our identities and the importance of individual paths. She discusses the manifestation and impact of imposter syndrome and provide actionable steps to overcome feelings of inadequacy. Key strategies include Byron Katie's 'The Work', setting personal boundaries, and crafting a new identity. The episode emphasizes the importance of self-awareness in personal development.

Join Alena for her newest workshop The Year of You.

Full Show notes and Additional Resources Available at www.thereminderremedy.com/podcast

Transcript

Alena Conley: 0:00

Welcome to the Reminder Remedy Podcast. I'm your host, Alina Conley, a personal development expert and coach. This podcast is for leaders, innovators, and culture shifters. We explore personal growth, leadership development, and the journey towards a fulfilling life. With the aim of leading ourselves to effectively lead others through insightful interviews, discussions, and inspiring stories, we unlock the secrets to a better existence and a better world, whether you seek inspiration or practical guidance, I'm here to remind you of your incredible potential because everything you need is everything you got. Let's get into it. welcome back. Welcome back. I am very excited to be in here for yet another episode of the reminder remedy. I am your host Alina Conley. As you can see, this is a full episode. I know a lot of you all were excited to have the show back last time, but I only gave you just a little bit of a snippet. And so it was almost like a teaser. But before we get into today's topic, I wanted to just share what my thoughts are for what we're going to do this season. So we're officially in, in season six. And one of the things that I wanted to. Lean into a little bit more is what it looks like for us to focus really deeply on this space of Developing oneself so that we can thus others. So that's a fancy way of saying we're going to really talk about leadership development. This is something that from a career perspective, I have been moving into more and more when it comes to coaching. So I do a lot of obviously personal development coaching, but really what it turns into is. Now that I'm doing the work for myself, or if I'm coming to you to do the work on myself, ultimately I'm doing that because I want to have a positive impact on the world, my community, on other people. And so the theme for this season is really learning to lead oneself so that we can lead others. And so many of my guests this season to me, I have just watched them not only invest the time in personal development and really doing like that self assessment, but then using that to positively impact their work environments, their homes, their schools. And so we're going to hear a lot from people who are really showing up. And I think that this is important, especially for my audience as we head into our mid thirties and our forties, it's okay, now I've mastered self, how am I now going to hold myself accountable for serving others, which we know is ultimately the goal. All right. Today we're going to lean more into the direction of. Self, right? Because to get to that point where we can impact others, we really do have to do that self development, that personal development. I'm joined in the studio today remotely by my producer, Monica who will be with us pretty much for every episode, especially in our solo episodes. And so if you hear her hop in and out, she is here. She is keeping me on track. One of the things that I've learned about myself is that I have to be held accountable. So thank you, Monica, for joining us. Thank you for having me. So before we keep it going, I have to once again give you a personal invite to a workshop I have coming up this weekend. January 20th, we are going to be going into our very first reminder remedy workshop, which is the year of you. This is a three hour workshop guys. That is going to change. The trajectory of not only your year, but I feel confident in saying your life because it's really going to allow you to have these moments where your perspective just shifts, right? It's like when you read a book or you hear a sermon and you just I can't unsee what I just heard or what I just saw. And it just completely changes. How you look at the world and how you make decisions. And so the workshop is January 20th is from 9 AM to 12 PM. So it's a three hour incubator period where we're coming in and we're really looking at how do we. establish who we want to be this coming year. So in the past I've done things like vision board exercises vision board parties, affirmation parties. Think of this as like the next level to all of these things, because what I've done is I've pulled in all of that, right? So understanding the power of vision boards and why they really do work, understanding the power of affirmations and meditations and why that really works, but then going even deeper to figure out. How do we know and how do we make sure that the vision that you're creating for yourself is truly aligned with who you are? So we spent a lot of time doing this work around identity and values and understanding. Are you making sure that your goals are aligned with your most authentic self, your highest being? And then in doing that, how do you support that person? So we talk a lot about. When we're living in such a distracted world we have so many obligations that, kids to take care of. How do we take these things that we value and these things that we put them on our vision board and make sure that in this season we're setting up guardrails to support ourselves so that we can actually execute. We also have a part of the segment where we go into really creating and crafting our village, our relationships. So we know that, as human, we thrive through human connection. And so similar to how I said, I know I need accountability. I brought Monica into this project with me. You want to take a goal and figure out who do I need to bring into this village to help me see this through? And so we get very strategic about the planning of relationships and future relationships and opportunities to make you become very successful. We look at some of the age old reminder remedy things like energy management. Smart goals. You can expect all of that stuff. And so if you have not already head over to the reminder remedy. com and tap on the year of you workshop and grab your seats. Now I have something very special because our early bird sale has ended. However, if you are listening to this show, this means that you are a podcast listener and we have a special, Podcast listener flash sale happening through the remainder of the week. So all you have to do is put in the code podcast and you will actually receive 50 percent off that workshop. All right, so tell a friend to tell a friend and we hope to see you there. All right. So let's get into it today. Y'all, we are talking about imposter syndrome. Now I thought that this would be a great episode to lead into our workshop because in the workshop, we're going to talk a lot about identity because I truly feel that doing the work To uncover and unpeel the layers to discover your true identity is the anecdote to imposter syndrome. All right. And so today I want to really lay it out because this is something that is really affecting 70 percent of women in America right now are dealing with imposter syndrome. All right. So first of all, What is it? We've heard this coin term. Thrown around a lot in the last decade, but really this is something that emerged back in the 70s. So in 1970, there was some research conducted by both Pauline Clance and Dr. Suzanne A. Imes. And they initially referred to this as the imposter phenomenon. They did a research paper in 1978. And what was very interesting even about this research paper was that in the midst of them trying to Recognize a syndrome that was impacting so many high performing women who felt like they weren't enough. They couldn't even get their research paper published because people didn't understand the concept. And so they didn't really get true traction on this concept and this thing that was affecting so many professional women until they coined the term. And so they had to give it a name to push it through. What they recognized was that many high achieving women that they were studying were experiencing persistent self doubt and the fear of being exposed as imposters. All right. This has also been known as also known as imposter phenomenon, but it's also been identified as a psychological pattern where individuals doubt their abilities have persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud or feeling undeserving of their accomplishments despite evidence of actual competence. So not just people faking it till they make it, but actually being competent or even having success and still feeling like that they were not worthy of that success. We know that people experiencing imposter syndrome also attribute their success to external factors. I got lucky or I only got the job because of how I looked or who I knew or how I act or where I come from, but never really recognizing that they are enough. And as I'm saying these things, I'm sure that you can think back to a time or every day where you're like feeling like you're an imposter in, in different environments. And so I wanted to talk on this because this is something that ultimately has become, especially in our community as black women, something that is turning into a all imposter syndrome is turning into Causing anxiety, causing depression. We're constantly sucking this comparison trap with social media. And so it's gone from just being okay, I'm putting on at work or, I'm cold switching and having to become these things. So now I'm constantly thinking that I have to do X, Y, and Z to prove my worth. And even when I have success, even when I bring in my first million, I'm still thinking that I'm not enough. And we're seeing this uptick in so many ways, and I think that until we can really explore the things that are subconsciously causing this for us as a culture and society, we're then not going to be able to move on to craft the identity. So let's just start there. And so we talked about some of the characteristics, persistence of doubt, feeling like a fraud. Attributing success to external factors, minimizing achievements, fear of failure, avoiding recognition. So those of us who are like, we know we're good, I don't want to receive an award because then they're gonna, make me feel like I got to bring my a game every time and that's going to give me even more anxiety. We see this happening with a lot of middle to high school age children where they're not giving their best in school because they fear that they're then going to have to live up to the standard or they're going to have to work even harder to prove that they're the smartest. So they just avoid it altogether. Perfectionism is something that for women especially is a huge cause of social anxiety, but also imposter syndrome because we associate perfectionism with if we strive for perfectionism and we can avoid any possibility of us being wrong or someone figuring us out, that it'll get us where we want to be and we'll feel better. But the interesting thing about imposter syndrome is that success has been found to not actually cure it. So it's almost like, why do we even allow it to take over? Because we think, okay if I just get this or if I become that, then I'll finally get to a place where I'm not a fraud. But what the research shows is that most times you'll never reach that place. And we've talked about this on the show when we think about how we are as humans. We have this hedonistic treadmill, which is basically saying there's only going to be a short period of time where we find fulfillment in certain things before we're ready to go to the next level. So it's as you work out, You're on that treadmill. You want to get to 10 minutes. As soon as you get to 10 minutes, you're excited, but now you want to get to 20 minutes and 30 minutes. That's just how we're wired. And so we see that the same thing with imposter syndrome. It doesn't go away once you get to a place where you think that you can now identify as successful because it doesn't bring long term results. And so we find that it's very important for us to share some light on these things that are affecting us so that we can create awareness around it. So then we can find solutions for it. And that's really, what we want to do on today's episode. There's a really cool book. And if you stay to the end of the episode, I'll tell you how you can get a ton of resources to support you if you are dealing with imposter syndrome. But Dr. Valerie Young, she wrote a book about imposter syndrome. And I wanted to bring her five elements that she acknowledges as the different types of imposter syndrome. Just to bring you some more real life examples of how it could be showing up and maybe you don't even know it. Or you don't even realize how much is compounding in your life and thus causing, these mental health challenges or keeping you up late at night or making you anxious when you go into the work environment or you go into social situations. The first one is called the perfectionist. Okay. So we already talked about, how perfectionism can bring imposter syndrome into your life. But as the name indicates, this is someone who feels like they have to get things done just to a level of insane perfection and achieving an outcome or completing a task is actually never enough. So the perfectionist is always hungry for more success, better outcomes, and higher prestige. Perfectionism results in feeling unsatisfied no matter how much hard work they do and ambitious goals they achieve. So an example of someone who would be considered having the perfectionist. Imposter syndrome category is say you're a manager, you're always asking a direct report for updates on the progress of a project. When you get the progress, you feel this need to constantly tell your team members how to improve their process how the project must be done every step of the way. And, it's funny because many of us now are managers. And you've worked for people like this and you hated it, right? But I don't know if you really took the time to think about why is my manager like this and the underlying reason for people who exhibit imposter syndrome as a perfectionist is because they have this underlying emotion of fear of losing control. So again, going back to this idea of I'm a, they're gonna find out. I don't know what I, what I say. I know where I can't do what I say I can do. Now you're becoming a micromanager because you don't want to be found out. And so you're playing your team with these habits when really it's just all in your head. They're capable. You don't have to actually show up as a micromanager because that's actually not what people look for in management. And then also what we want to model for our team. And this particular person, it may come off as, Oh, I'm very detail oriented, or I like to have things perfectly, but the smartest person in the room knows that it's okay to mess up. It's okay to say, I don't know. It's okay to say, Oh, we overlooked that we'll get back to you. And so that is a red flag. If you are a perfectionist, my question to you would be, what are you afraid of getting wrong? And if someone notices that this perfect thing is not correct, what do you think that they'll find out? And so when we start asking ourselves questions around, why do I feel this deep desire to have full control around all of these things, turn the mirror on yourself and really start thinking about where that comes from. Because as we, start to work through what it looks like to reshape our identity and one that we do feel like we don't have to have these insane behaviors. We have to become very clear on what the source is. All right. And we'll talk a little bit more about the strategies and the cognitive behavioral therapy that you can do on yourself to unlock that. So the other example that she gives of someone in her five different categories is the superwoman or superman, super person, However you identify. All right. So this type thrives in showing off their ability to take on a lot of work in a short period of time. They're willing to work overtime to achieve the validation of their colleagues and managers. They're trying to prove that they are capable of handling anything. So an example of the superwoman would be, an individual contributor who takes her job very seriously. You offer your time and your support constantly to your colleagues. You go out the way to take on work even during holidays or scheduled time off. You are happy to do the work even in your own time. So what we know to be the underlying emotion for the superwoman is fear of free time and taking time away from work for personal fulfillment. Now, I know I'm, I know I'm rubbing some feathers wrong. I'm ruffling them right now because we tend to all Try to take on this superwoman thing Again, why do we do that? Why do we feel that we have to have a persona that's reflected to others? That we do it all? I know that many millennials are starting to get away from this ideal, right? But, I always tease my Gen X colleagues because, they always show up in makeup, fully dressed, everything is like perfect. And I guess that could almost be the perfectionist now that I'm thinking about it. But what I see is that they never say no, they just take it on. I'll do it for the kids. I do it for my husband. I do it for my boss. Oh, you need me to take this last leg of the trip? I'll do it. Meanwhile, me, I'm like, actually, that's. That's the time I have dedicated to taking my children to the trampoline park. So it's going to be a strong no, right? And so I think that there are a lot of generational cultural habits that make us feel like we have to show up a certain way. Which, in turn, is truly imposter syndrome. So I think that When we think about the way that we show up and these things that we subconsciously do to try to prove ourselves can be resulted from the things that we have been told. And I'm going to talk about that. Shortly in when I talk about my journey with it, but this superwoman thing I definitely think comes from, cultural expectations on women to be all things to everyone. And in the moments that we feel like we are incapable of doing those things, we overcompensate by constantly volunteering. But. For those on the receiving end, somebody ends up suffering from you overextending yourself, right? And so that's the second one. The third one, the natural genius. So this type of imposter thrives on being so quick and slick and getting things done. They believe that they got it right. The first time feedback cycles, critique, or rework is. Threatening. If they didn't get it right, they failed. They put minimal effort into their work, yet often succeed. This pattern of minimal effort and good results was likely there throughout their lives. They never have to put in the extra work until they do. So an example of the natural genius would be you're a new accountant who just graduated top of your class always found that classwork came easily. You never had to spend late nights studying for anything. You get into the workplace and then you start to feel overwhelmed with expectations. You're not always able to get your calculations according to your manager's satisfaction. When your manager asks you to spend some time with your colleague to learn the process, you feel uncomfortable and insulted. You don't need anyone to tell you how to do work more than once. And the underlying emotion for this type of imposter is shame of failing. And so this tends to happen. Or we see this show up, especially when people are trying to avoid environments where they get feedback or they never ask for help, or they never say, what do you think of this? Because the moment you give somebody your work and they critique it, then you realize. Oh, they may now think that I'm not who I said I was, or I'm not as smart, right? If everybody saw me as the genius and I, turn in this paperwork, that's incorrect. Now my full identity that I've built my entire life of being the smartest in the family is now coming crashing down. The reframe is always going to be asking, if I feel this emotion, what is that emotion rooted in? All right, let's keep going. The soloist. Like the natural genius, this type is not interested in getting support from others to do their work. However, the soloist resents others altogether. The soloist is not willing to ask for help regardless of the situation. Asking for help can leave them vulnerable and expose what they don't know or can't do. For example, an HR director has to present new organizational changes and reports to her C suite. As the deadline approaches, she abruptly orders her team to gather up information in a specific way the C suite wanted it. This created some chaos for the team. She kept the information to herself until the last minute rather than sharing the requirements with her team because she thought she would handle everything herself. Then she realized time was running out. Okay, so the underlying emotion for the soloist is shame and asking for help. I find that the soloist and the natural genius tend to sometimes run hand in hand because When you have to work with other people, then your thoughts are put into a space of potentially being trumped or constructed, or, hey, I like this, but let's do it this way. And you, for whatever reason, feel very insecure about what you can contribute to a group. I think that I have experienced this in environments where maybe I'm not the expert in the room. I'll avoid throwing my question out there or my thoughts because I'm thinking, Oh, there's no way that this is a smart question. Or, I want people to just accept my idea out the gate. I don't really care what you think because I think all of my ideas are great. I see this a lot with Aries and Taurus, but we're not going to get into zodiac signs right now. So thinking about again, are these habits? And I love the way she forms these because when we think about imposter syndrome, sometimes it's just put into this general term, but now a lot of, people in the field are starting to break it down and really uncover ways that. Maybe we didn't realize Oh yeah, that is something that I do as a way to cover up, me feeling like I, I can't be found out or that I'm not enough, et cetera. So hopefully this is helping you to pinpoint some of the things that you're doing. So then lastly, she has the expert. I definitely see myself in this one, but we'll talk about it. So the expert of someone is, I must have all their credentials before I can even think of applying to this job. This type of imposter feels the compulsive need to have all the knowledge and experience before even attempting the job. They may be critical of others around them who work to learn or take aspirational roles while not recognizing their certainty and having all the answers isn't expected. In a fast changing environment, no one is an expert in what to do next. So an example would be a scientist working on a new drug discovery feels compelled to fully understand the results before sharing them with the team. The experiment nears the end of its funding and timeline. The scientist has not yet shared the progress update. Then team members are uncertain and become restless. Worse, two team members have relevant insights that could have built on the scientist's results if they'd had a chance to work through them. With even more pressure on the scientist now because he is the expert in this process. So the underlying emotion is fear of inadequacy. And so for me, when I think about this particular way of imposter syndrome showing up, how I identify is going back to almost how culturally we were trained around, or at least I know I came from a household that valued education. So I think I'm, Third or fourth generation HBCU. And knowing more, being the expert, getting the degree, that was just like a thing. And so for me, if there's anything in my life that I do not have a degree in. In order for me to feel competent initially and talking about it, I have this default to Oh let me go back to school. Let me go read a book. Let me go join a course. And so this is a definite way that imposter syndrome shows up because think about all the opportunities that could have been missed because you really do already have. XYZ skillset, but you felt like, oh, but I need a master's in it to apply for this job or to put myself out there to be a speaker or, to show up in that capacity. And so I'm sure that many of you all could relate to that. So if I had to think about myself. Let me go back through the list. So we got the expert, the soloist, the natural genius, the superwoman, the perfectionist. I don't consider myself to be a perfectionist, really. I think when it comes to certain things, like if I'm putting out a new marketing campaign, I can tend to be very hard on myself because people consider me to be a creative person. So I guess this is almost like the natural. The natural genius. So I don't necessarily think that genius, I would consider myself to be a genius, but I don't know that other people consider me to be a genius, right? But other people do consider me to be creative. And so I tend to put more pressure on myself in creative endeavors because I feel like the expectations are high, right? So if someone's okay, I need you to help me build this campaign or help me come up with marketing for this. I tend to take longer delivering, what I think is good. And it was probably good two weeks ago, but I'm just harder on myself because of external expectations. I don't think I fit the super woman category. Because honestly, I don't, I'm the person that gets overwhelmed easily. So I don't try to prove myself by taking on a lot of stuff. I guess what I'll say is that there are environments where. Yeah, I guess I could I'm trying to take on all of these personas because the superwoman for me shows up in parenting. Not necessarily in work because I'm like, no, I'm good on taking on more projects, but I'll, I'm definitely the person like, Oh, I'll be the room mom or oh, I'll bring cupcakes knowing good and I don't got time for that. But for me, it's about cultural acceptance, right? Or letting people know that my child has a mom that is willing to show up for them, right? And so while the truest version of me is okay, I really don't, need to be at every party. I may be at every party just because I don't want, someone thinking, oh, she's never there. She's the working mom that's never there, right? And so again, going back to why are you doing these things? So Monica what would you say is out of these five, is anything showing up for you? I think I told you this, but all of them. I am like one through five. I am definitely a perfectionist to my core. I know we're not talking about zodiacs, but I'm a Virgo, so that is like my thing. I obsess over the smallest detail. The only thing. I really don't ask people for help because it is a trust thing, but I just rather do it myself. I literally just would rather do it. All by myself, I think when you were going through everything, I did feel, incredibly self conscious about it. Like I was saying to myself Oh my God, I'm in all of these, especially when you spoke to the part of, when you're a leader. And I know how I have felt when those things have been done to me. It seems like you aren't valued. So it made me think about not only in work, but in life, how I may be undervaluing the people in my life. So that, that was just a little hard hearing you read through that. I'm not ready to change though, but I can acknowledge it, you said you're not willing to change. Slowly, I think the one thing that I have started to change. It's saying no I'm not taking on as many things because I understand what that does when you don't come through for someone because I know what it feels like when someone hasn't come through for me or hasn't shown up for me. So I am making an effort not to take on very many things, but being a perfectionist, I can't even begin to try to tackle that what's not like right now, and I think, and I also think in that, part of it is, we have to give ourselves the grace. If you identify with five things, then maybe start with one. So I've started with my one and that's where I am today. I think that's good advice. And I think that even if the, like the first step may not even necessarily be tackling one, but it's just even becoming aware. And my big thing right now is like in order for us to lead others and lead change, we have to lead ourselves, but we can't lead ourselves if we have no awareness of self. And so that's why I defining these things in practical ways because It can become very clear to someone who really saw, okay, maybe I don't have imposter syndrome. It's no, you actually do, but you don't realize that what you're doing is a version of you feeling some version of self doubt, right? Like you're overly compensating. You're working on, on during the holidays, not because you want to, but because there's something in you that feels if you don't show up, then you're, then somebody else can tell you, that you're not good enough. So now you're doubting if you're worthy of even taking it, taking off a closet, so I think that, it's important just have that awareness of you think you're proving yourself, but really, it's all because of some level of doubt, which is imposter syndrome. And I don't know that people are denying it because again, 70 percent of us have it. But I think that sometimes people don't even realize how much of it. is showing up in their life, right? They might, oh, I deal with it, 10%. It's no, you're a strong 90. Most of us are because the cultural standards are so high that we don't even realize how it's been, impacted. I think it's also showing up more with social media. I know you touched on that, but I think that's something to consider just how much everything is so demanding, for us. Yep, demanding and distracting. Everything is distracting us from understanding ourselves, right? Like it's so much so where you're like, you're looking at other people so much that you realize, I don't even actually believe that. I don't even know what I believe because I'm just taking in content all day. And I think that's why it's so important to conquer it. And we'll get into this in the last segment as we transition. But I think it's so valuable to conquer it because we're getting to a place where I say a place on the age for those of us who are, approaching 40 and up where we can no longer just be fed. Thoughts or beliefs or cultural standards, you have to decide, like, where do I fall in this? What are my actual thoughts on this matter? What are my actual values, right? Okay. I'm gonna go into, my, kind of some of the things that as I'm doing the work. over the last couple of years to understand myself and my journey with imposter syndrome or self doubt. Like, where did it stem? Because we can't really do the work to tackle it if we're not getting down to the source and the cause. Because when we can pinpoint it, it helps us to redirect our emotions and our thoughts. The biggest thing is like thoughts are not actually truth. And when we can separate it like thoughts are not true. What is actually true, then I can move through it. So I know for me, imposter syndrome showed up a lot in the corporate space. So much so that I just had to leave because I was like, this is unhealthy. Like it's now starting to show up in my physical health in the form of. Acid reflux and, GI issues. Like I just, I can't do it. When I first did some of my early internships, I found myself just trying to assimilate, whether it's, and this is just what we do for jobs anyway, right? Whether it's what I'm wearing, how I'm dressing. Got to get my Tory Burch flats. I'm not even really a ballerina flat kind of girl. I need a little heel, but everybody else has on a ballerina flat. So I gotta, fit in and you don't have to present a certain way. And I can't, where my hair a certain way, or I can't wear my nails a certain limb. So now I'm only getting designs on my toes, like whatever it was. So assimilate, I did all of these things. To become a part of a corporate culture. And, when you're doing these things to assimilate the feedback that you want is okay, cool. You're in now, right? Like you've done all the things to appear to fake it till you make it to be in this, in our community, our cult, our culture. But if you don't get that positive feedback, then it could really be detrimental to long term belief itself. So for me, what happened was, I had this great summer. And now it came time for me to do my final presentation. I had to do a final presentation to the intern coordinators, and then I had to do a final presentation to like my manager's manager. Manager's manager gave me great feedback. Okay, cool. Now, intern coordinator. White girl, black girl, two, one white girl, one black girl. And basically, the black girl tells me offline that the white girl pretty much said, Do you think that Alina would be a good fit because of her thick accent? And so in this moment, the black program coordinator had to defend me. But she offline shared this feedback with me and I was happy that she shared it because Like I just like to know you know again i'm thinking okay i'm in there You know my manager's manager loved me, but this was like a quick reality check of like girl You're not in there. They think that you know, your accent is too strong. I'm glad that she shared it. However Sometimes I wish that I had not gotten that feedback because it impacted my journey in my career till this day I'm not gonna even bullshit y'all. Till this day, I'm always constantly in my mind oh, am I talking too fast, right? Cause that's my mom that's the cultural upbringing. My mom always says that I talk really fast. The other day, her friend was like, Oh, your book list that you put out on the She called it the book of faces. Shout out to her. She called Facebook the book of faces. She said, I saw your book list on the book of faces. It was incredible. And my mom was like, did you tell her to slow down a little bit? And so again, it's you get all of these pieces of feedback and it makes you, conscious of things. I'm not going to say that it made me doubt it. Like her saying that didn't make me doubt that my book list was good. But the next time I'm recording a video, even now I can feel myself starting to slow down because I can hear my mom saying like she talks fast, but in corporate settings, especially when I'm around people that don't look like me, sound like me or where I'm from, I'm constantly. checking myself around, my Southern accent. And so that's deeply affected me feeling like I can hold conversations in certain settings. Now, when it's a setting where everyone is. You know talking like me they use their hands like me. I do feel like a little bit more comfortable But that was something that established it and we're gonna talk about what i've done to move through it But it is something that still is like I probably need to do like a true meditation to get it out of my subconscious Because it's still there. Something else was like I'm not ashamed to say now that like when I started my career in banking, I was really just like doing it for the money. Cause I was like, I'm trying to have a whole mansion by the time I'm 30. So whatever is paying the most, sign me up for that. And by the time I got in it and like I did like internship programs, I did like SEO, which is like a whole nother, like it's almost like in rows, but for college students getting internships. So when you're an SEO, The assumption is already that you're just you're the natural genius, right? Like you're the best of the best when it comes to diverse candidates. And a part of SEO, like the whole program, is to assimilate you to these white ass environments. And this is no shade to SEO if you're listening, because I thought the program was phenomenal. Because they give you access to tools that you just would normally not get access to. But in doing so, what it's inherently doing is saying me as myself is not good enough. And so I took on this persona that was taught to me in these programs and the persona was like fast, sharp numbers, girl. And the truest form of me is like slow. I'm a processing, thoughtful, spontaneous, like words, girl, like completely opposite of who I had to be in that role. And so I spent the first half of my career essentially. Oh, shoot. I hope they don't find out that I'm actually like a creator and not like a numbers person. Because then I might lose my job, right? And so I started becoming defensive because there were times where they would say, oh, Alina, can you work on this marketing project? Or, oh, Alina, can you put together this event for these students where they're, we're developing them because you're so good at that. Or can be I think like my manager's manager asked me to write an article for him. Cause it's you just really capture my story. All the things that I now know are my gifts, but because I didn't want to get caught, I'm like, no, I can't do that. No, I'm not a writer. I'm not this. I'm a numbers girl. Just try not to be found out. I think going back to even some of the inherent cultural norms or values that are put onto us especially for Black individuals, I think as early as I can remember, I was taught to like, you got to work twice as hard. You got to show up, twice as early. You got to be this, you got to talk this way. You got to look that way. Not to say that these things didn't get an entire generation into the corporate workforce, but I think now, 50 years into it, it does have a detrimental effect on what we believe in ourselves and what we, inherently believe when it comes to self worth, which is contributing to self doubt, right? So out the gate, you're telling me I got to work harder than my colleague to prove that I'm worth something instead of telling me. As you are, you're enough. And so now we're seeing more messaging around you are enough. What you have is valuable, but our upbringing, which typically stays with us on a subconscious level, tells us otherwise. Even when I think about the School of Business and Industry at FAM as soon as you come in, we have what we call the big board, which is is a board of gold plaques and corporate logos. And I remember on my freshman tour, it was pretty much just this is where you want to end up. This is who you want to work for. This is the goal. And so inherently from the day I'm going into the business school, I'm not thinking, oh, there's something in me that I can contribute to the world as an entrepreneur is if I want to. Get to the goal. I got to assimilate in a way that makes me become what they want. I think that you know since I have graduated from FAM, 15 years ago things have changed especially now that we're getting into a generation me and you Monica talk about Gen Z all the time where they're just like The fuck it generation, like I'm not doing that. I'm showing up in this way. I'm getting jobs that way. I'm selling stuff on the internet and making millions. I'm starting a YouTube channel and it's because they're trying to get away from the politics of having to be something that they're not. And so I think that, that's something that we're starting to see, being undone. A lot. The other thing that I think comes back to my imposter syndrome as I'm doing the work to get to this place of like radical self acceptance and understanding where some of my social anxieties have come from, is I realized that growing up with pretty chronic eczema really affected my confidence. And so when we think about self doubt, being in love, being able to show up without being caught, it goes back to, childhood. What did the world tell me about myself based on the way that they reacted to me, and Growing up, those of you all who knew me as a child, you probably remember me having open wounds all over my body, like my Children experiencing now and sometimes it like breaks my heart because I can remember like feeling that way. And I still have pretty bad eczema. But what it did for me was a couple of things. It made me You know, want to wear a certain type of clothes in certain environments so that people don't see it. It made me lie. Like I remember one summer I got like really splashy on my face discoloration and I got back and this one guy was like Oh, like what happened to your face? And I was like in fifth or sixth grade So at this point like social acceptance is a thing and I was like, oh like I was in a fire this summer Like whole ass lie, girl, whole ass lie. And he believed me cause that's how bad, my eczema was. I got to tell one more, anecdote about eczema and how, part of it became a part of my identity. We were at the mall, it was like me and two of my homegirls. And there was a guy that we ran into who went to camp with us growing up. And he was like, Oh, I remember y'all from this camp. You play basketball, you did this. And you were like the girl with the birthmark behind your knees. And yeah, I was the one who had the eczema like on the back of my legs. But in that moment I was like a little bit older, like I was in high school. And so I actually found it pretty hilarious. And that's why I always tell the story. But I just think that even these small moments of the awareness of something is different, right? I always gotta have a certain cream. I can't wash my clothes in certain things. I can't eat certain foods. It's just something that made me different than society, right? And when you think about children that have eczema or differences physical differences that may not seem huge

46:12

Depending on the severity of it, it brings up this point of belonging and shame. When there's not belonging, you experience shame. That's feeling like you're not good enough. And early on, when you see there's something different about you, When it comes to comparing yourself to normal standards, you start to develop this identity crisis where I feel normal, but everything that's being reflected back to me says otherwise. So Monica actually brought up another good point that got lost in our recording, but she talked about how when I, when we were earlier talking about disease and how they're possibly dealing with less imposter syndrome. It could just be because they care less, right? So they're this generation that's rebuilding cultural standards, taking on less student loans because why do I have to, go to school if it's not for me? And so I wanted to think deeply about, how this new generation can teach us some things.

Alena Conley: 47:17

I think that it really is all part of evolution. And I think that when we start to get a little deeper on it makes you ask the question of was it all just part of the plan? If God, says like all things are for, the greater good, it then makes you wonder if All the suffering was so that we can get to a point where we realize this thing. And so every generation gets closer to that, but where things fall is like our parents essentially to even get us access. Had to do this first step, which was assimilate, right? It's okay, our parents were there, right? During the time of desegregation of schools, they were, getting stuff thrown at them in the buses and, get there to essentially prove Oh, just because of how I look doesn't mean I'm not smart. So you had that first layer and then you saw it in the school system. Then you saw it, in the work environment. So it's okay, I have to assimilate just to get in the door to then show y'all, oh black women can send a man to the moon and be the smartest at NASA, right? But then, the next part of it was then the after effect, right? Cause it was like, okay. We had to assimilate to get in there, only to then find out that being in there was almost just as bad as not being there because of the stress level of shit that gets put on you while you're there through the micro inequities, the blatant bias, and so then it begs the question of was the lesson really there shouldn't be this place where, again, we're trying to achieve this assimilation of whiteness but by me getting in here, we now realize that I am who I am, I'm not going to be able to change. So now you all have to accept me as much as I have to accept myself. And so the next journey of it then is. Okay, this environment isn't working. And so we saw this big jump from corporate, with our generation, with the Mark Zuckerberg of the world. Shout out to the 85 babies. Us out here changing the world. That's where you saw a lot of us quit our corporate jobs, start companies because we couldn't deal with the politics. Or the side of essentially people saying you got to be one way and that goes across races, right? And so I think that you do start to see this transition from it just being like everybody has to just be one thing. But that's still the big fight, right? It's like some people do feel like we should just all be one thing or act a certain way. But generations. After us, I started to say no. And I think it goes back to the people that you got people who were raised on hip hop parenting Gen Z, right? So of course, if I'm like raised in that generation, the way that I parent is different than someone who was raised, the generation before. So it's almost like the parenting styles is what then affects the choices of the children. Again, evolution. So it makes you wonder, is it all going to get to a point where we finally learn the lesson of just be you, like you are enough. But yeah, I think that's good. And so then I think that the kind of the last thing which speaks to what we talking about is this constant questioning of self around, do I know enough to be who I want to be? So I want to be this person. But maybe I've made these formal choices, whether it's the type of degree that I got, the schools that I went to, the cities that I live in, that the world says, Oh, in order for you to be successful at this, you should have went to Harvard. In order for you to be successful at this, you should have a degree in psychology. In order for you to be successful at this, you got to come from money, like whatever it is, right? It's okay, now I got to find, I got to follow that path to then get the stamp of approval. So that's something that I've dealt with. In the last year, especially going into this coaching space is I don't come from like a psychology background, and so for me, it's okay, do I know what I know? Enough to do what I do and get paid for and I want to transition to, thinking about where do we go from here and the best way that I can do that is share what I've done to work on imposter syndrome. All right. So what, where do we go from here? Leading ourselves to lead others. How do we get there, Alina? This topic has already been heavy. Thank you for letting me know that I have imposter syndrome. Where do I go from here? What work can I do? So now we're getting into our coaching session where I just really think about or work through with you guys what I've done for myself. through my own coaching, what I do with my clients, and what you can do to get to the other side. What are some of the things that have put me all, put it all in context for me? Now, I'm going to share this with you. I'm being super transparent, and I know that if, some of you, that listen to my show, and you come from a more scientific background. A lot of my positive psychology people, y'all know, we like to look at the data. But something that has really helped me move through this period of any type of self doubt is human design. I have somebody on the show that introduced human design to you guys on the podcast. But I've actually been doing a lot of work in the space through Jenna Zoe's website and her community. The idea of human design or one of the things, one of the reasons that human design has helped me is because it goes back to this, everything is as it should be. Everything was already designed to be this way. And so it's helped me become accepting of. Had I not had certain challenges or had, extreme self doubt, then I would not have become, a self help junkie or a personal development guru, which then turned me into this expert on all things personal development. And then it's now my career. And so we think about a lot of the things that dictated. early ages and we sometimes can pin them as negative, right? Or even when I do some of this root work, it's okay, these are the things that made me feel the way I felt about myself. But then you think about, was it all part of the plan? If the plan was for me to show up and give you guys reminders about life, right? So again, it's kind of me. Taking a step back and realizing like this was actually all part of the plan. We all came here With the predetermined course we have certain choices that's gonna lead us up at the same place anyway, so don't trip. The other thing is like radical self acceptance. So I did a self acceptance workshop maybe two years ago Self acceptance is super hard. It's not something that just happens with a snap of the fingers. And so it's being able to really lean into different coaching activities and different meditations and just getting slow enough to really ask yourself how you feel about the decisions that you make and the things that you do to understand whether you're ready to accept yourself or not. And I think it's understanding that everyone has their own journey. And in doing that, it's like they're on their journey. I'm on my journey. Why should I be tripping about what they think about me? Because they're probably not even checking for me. Like most times we know that people think that, Oh, if I get a nice house, get a nice car, other people will look at me in a steam, but research shows nobody's looking at your house. They on Pinterest looking at the house that they want for themselves. And so this notion of thinking that everybody's judging you is. Actually a fallacy because all they're doing is spending 99. 9 percent of their day judging themselves. And so when I realized that I'm spending too much time worried about assimilating or being this version or that version, it's actually, no, that's like a complete waste of energy. I should spend more of my time focusing on. Who I want to become versus what other people, what I think other people think I should become. Because guess what? They really don't care. All right. The other thing is when we think about self awareness. I got a formal social anxiety diagnosis last year that changed the game for me. So you hear a lot of people talk about, Oh, when I got my dyslexia diagnosis or my ADHD diagnosis, like everything opened up for me. That was the same thing for me. I'm going to tell y'all this is how I look at these things when it comes to mental diagnosis, medication, all of these treatments, people say, Oh I don't know. I'm just going to pray about it. We live in a fallen world is how I look at it, right? We live in a fallen world. And so sometimes there are measures. that you have to take to support the world that you live in, right? And it doesn't have to be either or. So again, when we go back to establishing values and beliefs and understanding your own identity, it's becoming very clear on what do I believe. Do I believe that working with a psychiatrist can support me? Yes or no? Or do I believe that I just need to go to the church for this? Yes or no? Once you establish what your path to wholeness will look like, it becomes easier for you to understand the type of treatments that you want. And so for me, being able to work with a psychiatrist to understand the difference between social anxiety and how that has actually come from a snowball effect of just imposter syndrome for the last 20 years of my life. Essentially being taught from an early age to become something that I'm not. What they've done to my psyche, now I have to undo the work with a professional. And so being very clear and getting support on that and different layers of support is something that's helped me as well. So then when we think about coaching in My coaching practice and something that will even do a small piece of it in the reminder remedy workshop this weekend is I have people do the work of crafting their new identity. So it's like, all I'm showing up today. I've accepted that I have this amount of imposter syndrome in my life. It's literally crippling me. Now I want to reestablish myself. What does that look like? And number one is understanding what are the stories that you're telling yourself. And writing those things down. Being very conscious and aware, very present. When I do this, what am I telling myself? Based on these actions, what does it say that I believe? And then I do an exercise called the work by Byron Katie. And I don't know that I've ever mentioned her on the podcast, but I was introduced to her work through my positive psychology training, but it's actually just called the work and her name is Byron Katie. And she has a series of four questions. And these four questions are what you ask yourself when you start to have some level of self doubt. When you're starting to question if you're good enough. So the first is it true? That's it. Is it true? Is what I'm saying, what I'm thinking, is it true? Then once you get the answer to that, you ask yourself, can you absolutely know it's true? So a lot of times we establish these things that we think are true and then we realize we don't even have all of the facts to know that they're true. So it's Oh, He didn't respond to my text message. Is that true? I don't know because he might not even have the phone, maybe he didn't see my text message. So can I absolutely know it to be true? No, I can't. I actually can't know in this moment to be true. The third question is, how do you react when you believe that thought, right? So when I believe that he is not answering my text, how does it make me react? Radical self awareness. When this happens, how do I react? So this goes back even to emotional intelligence, knowing your triggers. Because when you know your triggers, you can know how to self regulate. And then the fourth question is, who would you be without that thought? Using the same example. And I didn't have this thought of, Oh, he's not answering my texts. How would that alter the way that I'm interacting in the world in this moment? How would I go about my day? And that just creates hyper awareness around thoughts. And when we can get hyper aware around what our thoughts are versus what reality is, that's truly the first step to getting rid of a lot of self doubt. Okay? Oh, they don't like me. Is that true? Maybe. Yeah, it seems like it's true. They don't talk to me. Okay. Is that, can you know that to be true? No, I actually don't know cause I haven't ever really asked them, do they like me? I actually don't know. They could really love me and they're just super introverted as well. So you just go down this path every single time. So then the other thing that we do to support this is crafting your new story. Crafting your new identity. this starts out, as always, with visualization. So it's, who do I want to be? What do I want my life to look like? How do I want to show up in my environment? With visualization, it's allowing us to drop down into our body because our body truly doesn't know the difference between, a vision and reality. And so the more that we can do the visualizations, then our neurons start to catch up with it, our energy paths start to catch up with it, and then we really become who we visualize ourselves to be, right? And so we really talk deeply about visualization and how those powerful tools work. Then I do an exercise called Sankofa. So we know Sankofa is a West African Adinkra symbol. It's a bird that tends to look back to the past to move forward. So this exercise is really about what are some of the inherent values that I actually have that I'm not leaning onto enough, right? There is going to be a lot in your culture, in your family, in, your relationships that can tell you I'm the bomb. Like I, I can do this because I stand on shoulders that have done it before, and so being able to do the work to go and talk to your grandparents, go and talk to your mom and them and really understand like the legacy that you already have in your DNA. It's a very powerful exercise. And I'll tell y'all about my own journey with that on another episode. Actually I think I did that on the episode where I interviewed the lady from StoryFowl. For her ai tool before we even had ai y'all heard about ai on here first, but I digress So go look at that to hear my powerful senkofa tool and then we get down to values and interest So again, it's going back and figuring out the real you because sometimes it gets diluted like who is the real me? And who was the assimilator alina? Who was the person that I thought I had to be? Do I really like reading the wall street journal or should I then have? Should I have been reading the New Yorker the entire time? And so really understanding like what are the type of people that you value? What are the environments that you value? What interests you? What are some hobbies that you really feel drawn towards? And so getting really deep with that helps you to create a sense of identity. When you do this when you do this type of work, it then allows you to have a better sense of your boundaries which this allows you to create better opportunities for yourself by prioritizing more important things. It's almost like you go through this funnel of okay, based on what I value, this is what I should choose. Based on what I choose, this is where I'm setting the boundary, right? And so it gives you this framework for living your life. In a very fulfilled way. Hopefully by now I have made the case around why it's important to recognize if you are dealing with imposter syndrome Based on all of the things that we've shared about what it is the different ways it could be showing up Even if it's not as obvious And then the reasons why it's important for you to deal with it. Because ultimately it's causing you stress, it's causing anxiety, it's causing you depression, and it's also not allowing you to live an aligned life, which we know can result in just very bad long term results. And so we want to be able to increase that life satisfaction by increasing self awareness, having your tools, getting your coach, doing your work to move through it. Because that's going to be the way that you lead yourself, which then allows you to go out and impact other people in a positive way. Alright, so if you have not already, go ahead and register for the Year of You Workshop. We look forward to starting the first phase of this work with you. And I want to thank Monica for joining me today on her very first on screen production. And we will see you all on the inside. Thank you Thank you for tuning in to yet another episode of the Reminder Remedy. If you haven't already, be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Reminder Remedy, as well as my personal page at Aleena Conley and check out our latest workshops and resources at the Reminder Remedy.