"I Don't Feel Like I Deserve My Successes And All The Good That's Happening To Me. What Should I Do?"

Welcome to something called "Imposter Syndrome"

Impostor syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which a person doubts his/her own abilities and achievements and start feeling like a fraud.

It mostly affects high achievers and they begin to question whether they are deserving of all their accolades and praises.

People brought up in families that stressed too much on achievements and success are more prone to this syndrome.

Achievements were overpraised and failures were over-criticised.

Later in life each little setback is to them a failure to please their parents and any success is felt like luck.

Totally by chance and not an outcome of their hard work.

"I feel like an imposter."

"I don’t deserve my success."

"People think I’m a fraud."

Sometimes you might feel like you don’t belong, don’t deserve your success, or are "out of place." You might even be constantly worried others will expose you as a fraud.

If you feel this way, there's also a chance you have a low sense of self worth in yourself. Low self-esteem is when someone lacks confidence about who they are and what they can do.

Self-worth is simply defined as the level of importance you place on yourself.

An example of self worth is you believe that you are a good person who deserves good things or your belief that you are a bad person who deserves bad things.

So depending on your level of self worth, you will rationalise certain things that happen to you in life according to how you value yourself.

So How Is This Different To Self Esteem?

Self-esteem is what we think and feel and believe about ourselves.

Self-worth is recognising "I am greater than all of those things."

It is a deep knowing that you are a man or woman of value, that you are loveable, deserving of your success, necessary to this life.

Okay, But What About Self Confidence?

Self-confidence is not an overall evaluation of yourself, but a feeling of confidence and competence in more specific areas.

For example, you could have a high amount of self-worth but low self-confidence when it comes to things like extreme sports, certain subjects in school, or your ability to speak a new language.

It’s not necessary to have a high sense of self-confidence in every area of your life; there are naturally some things that you will simply not be very good at, and other areas in which you will excel.

The important thing is to have self-confidence in the areas of your life that matter to you and a high sense of self-worth overall.

How To Boost Self-Worth?

One way you can gain a healthy sense of self-worth is through frequent experiences of success.

Successful experiences makes us feel good about ourselves.

Successful experiences also open the door for taking healthy risks and the success that often follows.

It is important to put those small wins on the board, no matter how small it may be.

My Relationship Ruined My Self-Esteem, I Don't know What To Do Now... Help.

One of the most common mistakes I see people with low self-esteem make is to base their self-worth on one aspect of their lives and often, that aspect is a relationship.

The love of another person does not define you, nor does it define your value as a person.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your partner’s love is what makes you worthy of love. If anything ever happens to your partner or to your relationship, you don’t want to be forced to build up your sense of worth from scratch. It can make getting over breakups much harder than they need to be.

When you learn to love yourself, you become better able to love someone else.

People with high self-respect tend to have more satisfying, loving, and stable relationships than those who do not, precisely because they know that they need to first find their worth, esteem, and happiness within themselves.

People who don't, try to find that in others.

Two people who are lit with self-worth and happiness from within make are much brighter than two people who are trying to absorb light from each other.

Do not look for your incompleteness in someone else.

The fact that someone else loves you doesn’t rescue you from the project of loving yourself.

- Sahaj Kohli

Increasing Your Self Acceptance

Think of any struggles, needs for improvement, mistakes, and bad habits you have, and commit to forgiving yourself and accepting yourself without judgment or excuses.

A common issue amongst high achievers (which I am also guilty of) is that we can be wayyyyy too hard on ourselves.

It's great to have a sense of urgency but you don't want to be extremely critical of yourself to the point where it's impacting your life negatively.

Now Back To Feeling Like An Imposter...

5 Types Of Personality Traits To Feel Like Imposters

1. Perfectionists

2. Natural Geniuses 

3. The Expert

4. The individualist

5. People Pleasers

I personally can sometimes fall into number 1 and number 3

The Perfectionist 

The Perfectionist focuses on how something should be done. 

They want 110% from any project or assignment, each and every time. When these standards aren’t met, imposter syndrome kicks into gear.

Signs you are a perfectionist...

• You always hold yourself to the highest standard.
• Even if you deliver a successful presentation, you’ll kick yourself because you forgot one minor detail.
• You never settle for less than gold and anything else is a failure.

I'm guilty of this as I like to overdeliver on anything I put my time and energy into but I have managed to deal with this better as I time went on.

I have nothing struggled with taking action which I am aware most perfectionists are struggling with.

Heres my tips for being a perfectionist who struggles with taking action.

You're better of delivering work which is an 8/10 rather than not delivering ANY work which only had the potential to be an 11/10.

In other words, it’s better to hand in something that’s good rather than strive for the best. Perfectionists want to spend more time preparing, so you’ve got to break that cycle with action.

Also, I don't like to come across as I'm limiting other people growth/potential but it's equally as important to be realistic with yourself and your deadlines.

Make sure you narrow down your goals and get shit done in order of priority and importance.

2. Natural Genius

There are some people who think that if they don't have the natural talent or ability for "IT" (whatever "IT" may be) that they can't do it.

It’s often people who are hard workers, high achievers, and perfectionists who are most likely to feel like frauds. Natural geniuses have a tendency to look at the pros in their field and wonder: "But Why am I not there yet?"

They don’t realise there’s a mid-stage process called learning that takes beginners to the pro level, so when they are faced with obstacles and setbacks, they usually question their own competency.

Traits Of People Who Believe You Need To Be A Natural Genius:

• They believe people are born talented or skilled.

• They get frustrated easily and may quickly switch from one hobby to another. one week they want to be a web developer and the following week they want to be a fisherman...

• They see everyone around them as achieving success while they are the only ones failing.

Yes, in a very RARE and minuscule selection of things, having a natural ability will give you a huge advantage...but it will only be an advantage.

Some people are naturally born very athletic but get outshined by the none athletic individual who had put in hours upon hours upon hours of repetition.

"Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard"

        - Tim Notke, a high school basketball coach.

What does being talented at something REALLY mean?

Having talent means you can be more focused on something, more so than other people. You are less likely to get distracted. You think about this thing constantly, even when you’re not actually doing it. 

And when most other people get tired and frustrated, people with talent have that passion and focus to push it through.

people with “talent” enjoy doing it. They found joy in tasks others find tiresome and frustrating.

That’s why truly talented people often make their work seem effortless. Not because they don’t put in the work, but because the work seems such a joy for them, and it almost looks as if it doesn’t take effort.

Talent means nothing if you don’t put in the work.

3. The Expert

These are people who strive for more knowledge, more experience, and more awards.

Even if they have success and fame in their field of expertise, they think they don’t have enough.

Experts strive to be perfect because they want to please others. They feel like an impostor because there’s always someone better out there.

If you’re an expert imposter, you might relate to the following:

• You tend to prepare yourself fully by diving into podcasts, books, courses, trainings, etc. before attempting a big project or presentation.

• You avoid applying for jobs because you don’t meet all the qualifications.

• Even if you’ve been teaching or working in your job for years, you still feel like you’re not enough.

You have to recognise there's never an end to knowledge. So instead of always accumulating more knowledge/skills, try to accumulate them only when needed.

This means focusing 100% on accumulating one skill instead of dividing your attention to learn everything.

I remember when i first started combat training, I wanted to do them ALL. I ended up getting drained, tired, lacking motivation to train and even with a few slight injuries because of how much I was overtraining.

So now I mainly focus on GYM and wrestling....every now and then I'll do some Muay Thai.

Narrow your focus.

4. The Individualist

Individualist believes they can do everything themselves and prefers to do things without asking for help. 

They believe asking others for help or assistance is a sign of weakness after all, shouldn’t they know what they’re doing?

This doesn’t mean you all of a sudden start expecting handouts and people to come and save you (especially as a man). What it does mean, is to not be afraid to seek help or assistance if you need help.

When I was with the Royal Marines, they made it very clear upon us to work together even though we were ALL capable of doing the tasks on our own. and the people who were more heavily focused on not working as a team were not picked during the selection process.

You cannot win a war on your own....That's why chuck Norris is a fictional character.

In a business sense, I'd recommend hiring assistance only when it gets to a point where it's impossible to to do everything all on your own OR if there are other tasks which would make more sense for the business if you spent most of your time on.

5. People Pleasers 

People pleasers have a hard time saying no and often work harder than their peers. A people pleaser often juggles many tasks at once, even to the point of over-exhaustion.

People pleasers say yes to everything… and everyone.

It’s time for you to find your voice, set your boundaries and stop being a people pleaser. This is about being able to take control of your own life.

The actual definition of a people pleaser:

A people pleaser is someone who tries hard to make others happy. They will often go out of their way to please someone, even if it means taking their own valuable time or resources away from them. People pleasers often act out of insecurity and a lack of self-esteem.

people pleasers want everyone around them to be happy… and they will do whatever it takes to keep them that way.

I shall make a much more in depth post about this in the future.

Finally...

Remember your past accomplishments and know that it was your own abilities that go you there and not mere luck.

Never brush off your achievements. Even if they are small ones. 

Journal them or share it with people close to you. Celebrate with them. When the panic hits later in time they will remind of your past achievements.

Take your failures lightly. 

Failure is a sweet reminder that you are not stagnant and are actually doing something. The only purpose of failure is to signal you that you need to make some changes: not that you are a complete fuckup.

- Till Next Time