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Gemma Spake
What if one phrase could change how you see your entire week? I'm Gemma Spake and if you love the introspection, honesty and just the big sister energy that Chloe brings to Chloe in Wonderland, I think you'll really enjoy my show Mantra. Every Monday I share one simple but powerful phrase to ground you for the week ahead, and then I break it down with real stories and personal insights. So far this season, I've been exploring some really impactful themes like allowing yourself to be celebrated and releasing the need to do it all. One of my absolute favorite episodes is for the Mantra. I let my work speak louder than my doubt. I feel like we all struggle with imposter syndrome, doubting ourselves before others can doubt us. And this episode came at a time when I actually really needed the reminder myself. So in case this is a reminder that you need, well, great news because I have a preview of that very episode for you right now, so stay tuned to check it out and make sure to follow Mantra wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, let's get into it. It's time for this week's Mantra. I let my work speak louder than my doubt. I love this mantra because doubt is a really funny thing. There is not a human alive who lives without it, and if there was, I don't think I'd really want to be around them. And yet the experience is wholly individual and personal. It's also self directed. We have this innate blindness towards other people's self doubt. We think that we must be the only ones. Everyone else is deserving of their success. Everyone else has actually worked hard for it. Everyone else is confident, self assured. We are the imposter. We are the fraud. We are the one who doesn't deserve to be here. I really want to begin this week's mantra by coming out and saying there is not a soul alive, not a single person who you admire, who has not at some stage questioned themselves so intensely they almost didn't act. They almost didn't put out that album you adore or create that thing that everyone uses these days, the book or the podcast that changed your life. The person who created them at some stage would have encountered the very same doubts that you are perhaps encountering right now. Doubt is a fact of human existence, my friends. And yet we let it come down on us so hard that it stops us from doing so many good things. And today I'm here to tell you your doubt is a liar. Straight up. It is lying to you. For what reason? That's what we're going to explore but really the term we're looking for for this kind of self doubt I'm describing is imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome essentially convinces us in this strange sense that everything we've accomplished, achieved, everything we are doing in our lives, all that we are capable of, it's all a lie. We have tricked everyone into believing that we are more than we are when we are actually just failures. Not only are we failures, we're also deceptive because so many people have bought into this narrative that we've sold them. I'm sure you've come across this concept before and you understand that it is what you are experiencing. You may not understand why. So to understand why, I want to explain the origins of this term. So this term was discovered somewhere between the 60s and the 70s by two female researchers. And their initial research project was not about imposter syndrome at all. It was actually somewhat of an employment survey. They wanted to know how really successful women had gotten into their roles or into their careers as professors and lecturers and CEOs and doctors and high flying students, master students. You know, all these incredible women were doing so many cool things, they wanted to know how and why. And so they were interviewing these women. And what they found time and time again is that so many of them were saying, oh, it was a fluke, didn't you know, I don't want to tell anyone. I think it's an accident that I'm even here. I think they gave me the job by accident. I think they let me into this faculty by accident. But you can't tell anyone. But that's definitely what's happened. Or they would say, oh, I'm such a liar. I really think I've deceived people into thinking I know what I'm doing when I don't really know what I'm doing. And these two researchers would then say to this individual, didn't you save a life last week? Don't you have multiple master's degrees? It seems like you do really have it all together. And through these experiences of meeting these women and interviewing them, they realized that there was this delusional mental disease that they were all suffering from. In some way, they all believed that they were an imposter. They all had this in common. And so the term imposter syndrome was born on the backs of these incredibly successful women who didn't believe that they deserved to be where they were, but had internalized that disbelief so much that they genuinely saw themselves as frauds for being in that position. So that's the origins of imposter syndrome. Nowadays, it definitely applies to more than just very, very successful women. It applies to people of all genders, people in all different positions. And also, you don't have to be a crazy amazing success story to still feel like your self doubt is kind of crippling. Imposter syndrome is linked to quite a few things. There's a few other theories and concepts that interact with our imposter syndrome. The first big one is perfectionism. When you feel like an imposter, it's hard to feel like any of the work you do, any of your output, any of your decisions are ever going to be good enough. Because you often hold yourself to an impeccably high standard that, that no one in their right minds can reach. But you are going to prove yourself otherwise. You, my friend, you have to reach it. Of course, this doesn't just create even more self doubt and more anxiety and worry. It also creates procrastination. Procrastination is perfectionism's evil twin sister. A lot of the time people think that we procrastinate because we lack self discipline or we're lazy. Really, I think it comes down to a fear of failure and therefore a fear of even trying or even beginning. Because if we are faced with this crippling idea that anything we do has to be perfect, we also understand that that can't always be the case. Sometimes you can't do everything perfectly. So if you're not convinced that you can get an A on that assignment, or impress your boss, or do the hard thing, why even start if the outcome isn't going to be to your high standard? So where does this way of thinking really come from? I don't think it's going to surprise you that a lot of it comes from our upbringing. Specifically, if you were raised in a high achieving environment, you had parents, you had family, you had siblings who were successful, who expected success from you, and who really valued maybe academic performance, athletic performance, achievement more than anything else, maybe even more than your wellbeing. There is this really fascinating study that looked at imposter syndrome and found that a lot of people who experienced imposter syndrome felt and still feel like the love they would have received from their parents when they were younger was never unconditional. It was conditional on them meeting their standards for achievement or accolades or success. Perhaps they wouldn't be loved as much if they didn't get straight A's, if they weren't the most well behaved best student in the class, if they didn't meet those high standards. These kind of early childhood environments are extremely formative. And the reason they're formative is because they tend to really influence our self concept. So our self concept is our way of seeing ourselves in relation to the world outside us, our friends, our family, our relationships, and also how we judge ourselves internally. Do we think we're a good person? Do we think we're nice? What are we good at? What are we bad at? What are we interested in? What kind of human are we? The formation of our self concept starts really early. And if your early childhood environment, even your middle to late childhood environment, is dominated by the need to be successful and dominated by a sense of doubt that you won't live up to anyone's standards and that your work isn't good and that you aren't a good student or a good person, that's going to really shape how you think about yourself. So that nowadays when you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, whatever age you are, a lot of those beliefs, those internal beliefs that you aren't good enough still linger. And the interesting thing is, is that some part of us wants to believe that we could prove that wrong through even more external achievement, through producing amazing work, through getting more promotions, through being seen as incredible, admired, seen as successful on LinkedIn or whatever it is. I'm here to tell you there is no level of achievement that will ever make you feel less like an imposter if we don't target our innate self doubts and self beliefs. Anytime you actually do the thing and you feel accomplished, it's not going to last long because you are in a constant state of needing to prove yourself against these inner thoughts that just dominate every single moment for you. Society itself has become a very achievement driven environment as of recent. There is a huge emphasis on hustle culture on being successful. There's more visibility over other people's career milestones and successes. So it's becoming even harder to, to not feel like in comparison to others, you're falling behind, you're not doing enough, you're not enough. What that means is that anything we create, anything we do, the person we are, we end up measuring that against some invisible standard of perfection or what is good enough, rather than just measuring it based on how we feel and our own standard. Essentially we have no way of providing ourselves with the external and internal validation needed to feel like we are worthy and that we are good and that we are talented and that we have something to say. I really think that we need to start measuring our value by how we feel and what we contribute rather than what we achieve. And whether you enjoyed making something, whether you enjoy your day to day life, whether you feel happy in your life rather than other people's opinions or how you think you're being viewed externally and by others. Thank you so much for listening. To catch the rest of this episode and so many more, make sure to follow Mantra wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.