← The Rachel Hollis Podcast
The Rachel Hollis Podcast
966 | Overcome Imposter Syndrome: 4 Mindset Shifts That Actually Work
00:47:29
Upgrade to the Ad Free Premium Podcast Experience - https://rachelhollis.supercast.com Get your copy of Rachel's Book Here: Audible, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Millon, Bookshop.org, or wherever books are sold! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices In this episode of The Rachel Hollis Podcast, Rach tackles the common experience of imposter syndrome, noting that roughly 70% of people will struggle with feeling like a fraud at some point in their lives. Rather than speaking from personal experience, she shares four principles she believes have helped her avoid it. Throughout the episode, Rachel argues that imposter syndrome stems from outsourcing self-worth to other people’s judgments, and she encourages listeners to shift their focus inward, measure progress against their own growth, and recognize that they are not imposters—they are...
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Shop packages built for your business budget with tailored connectivity solutions. Plus, Spectrum Business even offers 100% US based customer support. 24. 7 Visit spectrum.com business to learn. More restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas 70% of all people at some point in their life will feel like a fraud. That means seven out of 10 people have experienced this thing called imposter syndrome. It's not a niche thing. It's not something that only happens to recent college grads or maybe someone who's on the other side of a divorce or someone who's starting over, someone who just moved to a new city. It's not just for new parents. It's not not just for women versus men. It is something that most people in their life have gone through. Maybe it's something that you've gone through. Maybe it's something you're going through right now. Imposter syndrome is this feeling like you're not actually qualified to be doing this thing that you're doing. Like you somehow snuck into this place, like you got past the velvet rope or you climbed in through the window. Like you have a job that you think, oh God, if they knew who I was, was. If they knew who I actually was. If they knew that I was sometimes scared, if they knew that I was unsure, they would fire me immediately. It's this feeling that someone is gonna show up one day and tell you that they know who you really are and they know that you don't really belong here. And here is what is actually kind of wild. As I was preparing for this episode, I really thought about it. I like to incorporate personal stories whenever I record these for you guys. So I was like, let me think of some times in my life or my career where I have experienced this, and then I'll build an episode around how I got to the other side of imposter syndrome, and I can't come up with any. I've been doing personal development work for over a decade. I have been an entrepreneur for, I think, 22 years. I've coached thousands of women all over the world. I've spoken to hundreds of thousands. I've been on stages. I've built businesses, I've written books. I have started over. But when I really sit with the question, I don't have examples for you, I can't find them. Imposter syndrome is not something that I personally struggle with. And because it's not something that I struggle with, I almost didn't do this episode because I was like, well, maybe I don't have anything to offer them. And then I realized if I was trying to learn something, I would want to learn it from the person who had mastered the skill. And the reason I don't think I deal with imposter syndrome is because whatever it is that I have done over the last 20 years has gotten me to a place where as much as I deal with all sorts of other things, this is not one of them. And so I started to figure out, well, are there things that I do that I believe are why I don't struggle with this? And, yeah, there totally are. I thought that more powerful than me just talking about imposter syndrome for 45 minutes with you is if I tell you exactly, exactly what I do that I believe is the reason this is not something I'm struggling with. So if you personally are feeling this energy in your body right now, you feel like you're a fraud. You feel scared, you feel uncertain, you feel unsure. I think that if you started to move in the direction of any of these habits of mine, it would really help you to start to leave that behind you. So today we're going to talk about imposter syndrome. And I have to tell you right now, it is one of the topics that gets requested the most. People want to know what to do when they feel like they don't belong. They want to know how to get rid of that underlying anxiety that they're going to be found out. They want to know, how do you walk into a room when you don't feel like you deserve to be there? So let me walk you through a handful of reasons that I Believe is why I personally don't struggle with this. Because maybe if you understand how I think about this subject, something might shift for you too. So first of all, let's start with what we're actually talking about. Let's create some parameters around this term that has been thrown around so much over the last five to 10 years. And imposter syndrome is one of those phrases that has been thrown around so much over the last decade, it starts to sort of lose its meaning. The term imposter syndrome was first named back in the 70s, so two different psychologists, both women, as it turns out, were studying high achieving women. They were studying high achieving women. So it's back in the 70s, but still, by any external measure, the group that they were looking at had experienced really high levels of success. They were super accomplished, they were credentialed. But incidentally, they kept finding the same theme within these women. And that theme was, no matter how accomplished, no matter how successful, no matter what they had done or how many people could speak to their awesomeness, this group of high achieving women all didn't believe they had earned it. They believed on some level that they were fooling people. They believed that at some point they were going to be found out, they were going to be exposed. They were afraid that at some point someone would look at them and be like, you're not actually this smart. You don't deserve these things. You, you're not this cool, you're not this brave, you're not. It didn't matter how much success they had or how many, you know, facts they had. They had all of these receipts, but it didn't matter. They still had this worry that it wasn't going to be enough and someone was going to figure out that they didn't deserve it. So originally, those two psychologists, they thought that this was a woman's problem, right? And look, we can all use our imagination. We can figure out why it might be so, especially back in the 70s, that highly accomplished women didn't feel like they had the clout that they needed to stay in the place that they had gotten themselves to. But the more data that we have accumulated over the last 50 years, the more we have to back up the idea that this is not just a woman thing, this is an everybody thing. In fact, they have studied at this point, over 40,000 participants in over 100 different studies, confirming that while women do experience imposter syndrome more frequently, men tend to experience it as well, especially when it comes to work. Men experience it most at work. Women, unfortunately, we Experience it everywhere. And the crazy irony of this, if we go all the way back to that original study in the 70s, is that for women in particular, it does not matter how many credentials we accumulate. It doesn't matter how many trophies we get to put on the mantle. It doesn't matter how much money we make or what grades we get or who our friends are or what we have built. If someone struggles with imposter syndrome, it does not matter how much she does. It will never be enough. What is actually going on underneath that feeling obviously has nothing to do with external circumstances. I think this could potentially be the theme of every single episode I do, is that it's never about what's going on on the outside. It's all about what's going on on the inside. Imposter syndrome is what happens when your own sense of self worth or your own legitimacy depends entirely on other people's judgment. Sit with it for a second. The people who struggle with imposter syndrome, I would argue, are the people who are most tied in to someone else. You determining their worth. When you decide that someone else is holding the measuring stick, the question of do I belong here? Will only ever be able to be answered by someone else. When the question is, am I allowed to be in this room? But you have decided that the answer can only come from outsourcing. You are never going to feel like you belong and realizing where this comes from. This. This idea of the external measure, guys, that is the key to everything I'm about to tell you about. So hold that idea in your mind as I walk you through why I don't feel like I struggle with this. And if you look at it through the lens of external measure versus internal self worth, I think you're gonna see why this pattern doesn't show up in me. The first reason why I don't think that I struggle with this. And maybe the most essential, but kind of a funny answer. All right. I have been an entrepreneur since I was 21 years old. I am now 43. Over 20 years of building things from scratch. Businesses, brands, books, events, platforms, websites, an app. I have done everything you can possibly think of over the last 22 years. And since I have been an entrepreneur for that long and since I started so young, I think that that is a huge underlying reason why I don't struggle with this. When you are building with your own resources, you cannot possibly be an imposter. Think about it. Imposter syndrome, at its core is a fear that you don't deserve the position that you're in. It's the idea that someone handed this to you or you didn't earn it. And I think that that fear is loudest when you are operating inside someone else's structure. Someone else hired you. Someone else is paying for it. Someone else's name is on the door. But because I have built the business, because it is my name, because it is my money, because it is my bet, there is no one to fool. Like, I am not auditioning for a role that someone else wrote. If you are an entrepreneur, you invent the role and you make it up as you go. And it doesn't mean that you're not crappy at first, and it doesn't mean that you don't fail sometimes, because, gosh, of course I do. But even when it's crappy, even when it's failing, it is something that you built. And so you can't feel like a fake because you had to, you know, what it took to get here. Everything is just this big work in progress. And I was having coffee with Kez this morning, and I was like, hey, I'm doing this episode. It's about Imposter Syndrome. And I told him this idea, like, I'm an entrepreneur. And so I think that that's a huge underlying factor. And he thought about it for a minute and he's like, yeah, honestly, you know, he's been a Tour manager for 20 plus years, and tour managers are their own boss. Like, yes, you might tour with the same artist for a year or even two years if you're doing, like a big world tour. But even still, you are your own management company. You essentially, like, hire yourself out. You work with different people. You could take time off, you could be in the game. Like, you could do whatever you want, but it's really just you. And so as much as he doesn't think of himself as an entrepreneur, he was like, yeah, I agree with that. He's like, when I would go into situations, I knew that I had done all of the work for however many years to be on the tour that I was on. Like, I had earned my right to be there. And so I guess I. I never really felt like I didn't deserve to be there. And he was saying, like, I. He's like, I've been in rooms with some of the biggest artists, some of the biggest producers, the biggest managers or agents. He's like, but I never really felt like I didn't deserve to be in that room because I wasn't trying to be the agent. I wasn't trying to be the manager. I wasn't trying to be the artist. I knew what I had done for my role to earn my seat at the table. And that's not something that anyone else could take away from me. So I never felt scared to be at that table, even if I wasn't the smartest person in the room. And he's like, and by the way, I was rarely the smartest person in the room, but I was the smartest person in my particular area. I realize that not everyone listening to this is an entrepreneur. And I don't think that becoming an entrepreneur is for everyone or the answer to imposter syndrome. But, but I want you to think about the places in your life where you are building something where maybe you feel like you don't deserve it or you haven't earned it. And the phrase that I wrote down in my notes this morning was, I have always built with my own Legos. You know, like, imagine a little kid like, sitting on a carpet and like, everyone sort of has their different Lego pieces. Like, I wasn't taking anyone else's Lego pieces. I was just working with what I had. And if you think about that, for you, this idea of like, your Legos, like, what do you have? What are your ideas, your effort, your creativity, your values in those places with those things, you can't be an imposter. You're just someone who's building, who's figuring it out, who's trying to make the tower grow a little taller, right? The moment that you take someone else's Legos, or the moment that you try and build a tower that looks like hers, or it's like all of a sudden, then it's not an internal thing anymore. It's not you and your own pieces and your own creativity. All of a sudden you're trying to borrow from someone else. And the second that you start borrowing, you start comparing. And the second you start comparing, you take all of your own power away. You literally give it to the person you're comparing yourself to. So the question I want you to ask yourself is, are you measuring against your own skills, your own creativity, your own pieces, your own resources in this area you struggle with? Or is it possible that you're borrowing from someone else, that you're borrowing their opinions, their ideas, their creativity, that you're measuring yourself against them? And so you're always gonna feel like you're lacking a bit.
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Two iconic soap operas collide in a high stakes showdown. Beyond the Gates and Young and the Restless come together for a must see CBS crossover event, the drama reaches new heights as powerful families long held secrets and unexpected alliances collide. Packed with love and betrayal, this crossover event changes everything. Don't miss the beyond the Gates and Young and the Restless crossover event all this week on CBS and streaming on Paramount.
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Lysol is known for proven disinfection and today it also delivers a clean that smells great, including lavender scent. Lysol Disinfection Wipes All Purpose Cleaner spray and Power Toilet Bowl Cleaner clean and kill 99% of viruses and bacteria. The all purpose cleaner can be used on hard non porous surfaces in the kitchen and the bathroom. Disinfecting wipes help clean everyday surfaces like remotes, tablets and smartphones. And the Power Toilet bowl cleaner disinfects both the toilet brush and the bowl for two in one disinfection. Don't just clean Lysol Clean. The second reason I don't feel like I struggle with imposter syndrome is I am not afraid to fail. I'm not. My favorite visual of this is a toddler learning to walk. Okay, if you think about it, if you're a parent, you have a child who's ever learned to walk. You know that that baby is going to fall so many times on the way to learning to walk. It knocks into the coffee table. It falls on its butt. It sometimes falls on its face. It falls to its knees every single time the baby falls. If it gets hurt, it cries for a second. But every single time the baby falls, she gets back up. Never ever, ever does a baby fall down while it's trying to learn to walk and decide that she no longer is going to walk. It does not happen. She never decides that falling means she's supposed to stay down. The baby always gets back up. The baby always gets back up because her desire to walk is so strong that she understands that falling is part of the process at some point in life. We go through all of these different situations in childhood where we are failing in pursuit of what we are going to become. And at some point along the way, I don't know why, but we fall and we decide that falling means something about us. We fail right at some point along the way and we use that failure as evidence that this dream is not supposed to be ours. And that is exactly where imposter syndrome takes root. If you fail, you interpret the failure as proof that you are a fraud. And now we're terrified to try something because we don't want further proof that we actually do suck. My superpower in this experience is that I am not afraid to fail. And not only that, I'm not afraid to fail publicly. And I say that knowing that some of you have watched me fail very publicly more than once. You know this about me, and maybe you look at my life or you look at my career and you're like, oh, my God, I would never want to be embarrassed like that. I would never want to build a business and have it crumble. I would never want a marriage to fail. I would never want this to happen. I would never want public ridicule. I would never, okay, you don't have to have it. But if you also look at the level of success that I have experienced for the last decade and you think it'd be nice to have some of that success, I am telling you with all the love in my heart, it is impossible to experience my level of success without my level of failure. And so we're clear, I don't fail because I like it. I don't fail because I want to. I still battle against a very deep seated need for other people to like me. I still have to battle back against being a people pleaser. And when you are a people pleaser and you are publicly failing, it feels a lot like dying. And I know I'm a dramatic person, I know I'm your dramatic friend, but I'm not saying that in a dramatic way. It is some of the hardest seasons I have ever walked through to walk through failure. But the more that you put yourself out there, the more you are going to experience slips and falls. And the only real failure is if you are not learning from those mistakes. And oh my gosh, the information that I have, the skills that I have, the bravery, the courage that I have developed because I have gotten to the other side of the failure is incredible. And it can never be taken away from me. I have done it so many times now that I'm less daunted by the fear of it. So many people are never going to build the thing. They're never going to try for the thing. They're never going to build a business or write a book or do a podcast or put themselves out there or create the content because they are afraid of the opinions of other people. Period. So many people are going to get old and go on to heaven and wish that they had put themselves out there more. They are going to wish that they had tried. They are going to get to the end of their life and they're not going to believe that they let the opinions of strangers on the Internet keep them from pursuing their dream. And I don't know, y'. All. I don't know if I will achieve every dream in my heart. But I will be damned if I am too afraid to try because of what someone thinks of me for trying. I have failed many times. And every single time, I've gotten back up and I've gone again. And here is what you need to understand. People who have imposter syndrome are often the people who are most terrified of failure because they believe failure will confirm what they already suspect. They don't think they belong. They don't think that they're enough. They are terrified of failure because failure might confirm that they are a fraud. The antidote to this fear is to fail on purpose. And I don't mean that you make yourself fail. I mean that you put yourself in situations where you might fail because you're out over your skis, because you're doing something new, because you've never been in this place before. And you are failing in the pursuit of becoming better. Along the way, you get stronger. Along the way, you put yourself in situations where you might not succeed, but you practice standing back up. And the crazy thing is, along the way, you will put yourselves in situations where you're positive you're going to fail and you don't. You will put yourself in situations where you're sure you're going to get rejected. It's just this, like, thing that you're doing to prove to yourself that you can try, but you don't get rejected. You get the job, you get the audition, you get the date. You actually do the thing that you didn't think you can do, and it gives you courage. A toddler is not braver than you. The difference between that toddler and you is that she hasn't learned to be afraid yet. You have learned to be afraid. And since you have learned it, you can unlearn it. The third reason that I am not experiencing imposter syndrome is because I know this fundamental truth. Confidence comes from competence. I know I've done full episodes on this. I've talked to y' all about it a lot. But if this is the first time you are hearing me say it, let's go to church. I get so many questions about confidence. It's not a fluke that I get so many questions about imposter syndrome. And I also get a lot of questions about how people can feel more confident. And so I'm here to tell you it's not magic. It's not an innate human thing, thing to feel confident. It is not. No baby is coming into this world and you know, the mom pushes the baby out and the doctor's like, oh, it's a confident baby. That's not a thing. Okay. Confidence is something that you learn. Confidence is a skill. I don't care who you have looked at and thought, oh my gosh, wow, she just, she's so beautiful. She's so comfortable in her own skin. She's so this, she's so that. And you think, think that that's just who she is. That is not who she is. That is a skill she has learned and if she can learn that skill, so can you.
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Two iconic soap operas collide in a high stakes showdown. Beyond the Gates and Young and the Restless come together for a must see CBS crossover event. The drama reaches new heights as powerful families, long held secrets and unexpected alliances collide. Packed with love and betrayal, this crossover event changes everything. Don't miss the beyond the Gates and Young and the Restless crossover event all this week on CBS and streaming on Paramount.
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This show is sponsored by Better Help. For some people, summer is their favorite season, right? There are grill outs and cookouts and maybe you go to the beach or you take a vacation. For those of us who are parents, it also means the kids are out of school. And while it's awesome and fun, it can also be super overwhelming to juggle all of the things and to not have the childcare that you're used to. And we don't talk about that enough. And when there's any subject in life that we don't talk about enough, it's a really good thing to bring up with your therapist. That's where better help comes in. Therapy online with the world's largest online therapy platform can help you understand your needs and help you feel confident setting boundaries and knowing how to take better care of yourself this summer so you can take care of everybody else, you just take a quick questionnaire, you identify Your preferences and BetterHelp will match you with your initial therapist to see if they'll work for you. You don't have to say yes to everything this summer. Find support in therapy. Sign up and get 10 off@betterhelp.com Rach that's betterhelp.com. Here's the thing that you've got to understand. When you are looking at someone in a situation where they are behaving with confidence, you are not looking at a single moment in time. You are looking at many, many, many experiences that they have had that have stacked one on Top of another, so that they find themselves in this particular moment, in this particular room, in this particular stage, on this particular conference. Whatever they are doing, you are watching them in that moment. But what you don't see is the hundreds of moments that stacked on top of each other before now. They are confident in those situations because they have been in those situations and maybe even failed in those situations many times before. A billion years ago, when I first started doing tv, I did the local morning news, KTLA Morning News in la. It was the hugest thing I had ever done. I was absolutely terrified. I pitched and pitched and pitched to try and get on the morning news for my event planning business. They never had me on. And then I finally just started making up all these crazy ideas for segments and they finally hit me back for a segment on National Junk Food Day. My entire idea for the segment was that I was gonna bring on a bunch of crazy, different junk foods, like from all over the world or from like the state fair. Just like crazy stuff. And that I was gonna try all the crazy junk food with the co host of the KTLA Morning News. It really didn't have anything to do with event planning, but it was just something to get on camera. And I did so much prep work and I practiced a billion times and I was so terrified. And it went great. My memory serves that it went great. But I remember being so scared. And I remember talking to my husband at the time because he had been earlier in his career, he had been a publicist. And I was so scared to go on KTLA Morning News. And I was like, how on earth do people do the Today show? Like, this is the scariest thing I've. I like, I feel I was sick to my stomach. I wasn't sleeping. I was so scared to do this local morning news segment. How on earth does someone get to the Today show and they're not scared to do the Today show? Like, I would see like Martha Stewart or like Giada or like, people would go to the tape and they were just so casual and chill and chatty and I'm like, how do you get to be that confident on the Today Show? And he was like, oh, Rachel, you don't understand. Like, by the time they've done the Today show, they did a thousand other segments. First. They know how to be on camera. They know what to do if they mess up. They know how to overcome if they flub a word or if something goes wrong. So they're confident in that situation because they've done A million situations like it before y'. All. I am telling you, this is the key to confidence in every single area of your life. You want to go talk to someone in a bar. You want to go get a tattoo. You want to raise a baby. You want to build a business, write the book, do press, create content, Anything that you want to feel confident in. The answer is competence. And the only way you're going to be competent at something is that you have to do it again and again. There is actually research that supports this. Okay. It's called self efficacy. That is the belief that you can do something in a specific situation that is as simple as you can think of it. Can I do it if I get into this moment? You could legitimately walk into my office right now. I am wearing workout clothes. It is 12:57pm I did not take a shower today. The kids are outside playing like it's just a summer's day. I'm here recording this episode for you. You could walk into my office right now, and you're like, I don't know. You're a spot FBI. I don't know why the FBI is coming in, but just go with me for a minute. You walk in and you say, Rachel, we have 20,000 people waiting in an arena right now. We need you to motivate 20,000 people five minutes from now in the exact outfit you're wearing. I got you. I got you. I wish I was wearing a bra. I mean, I'm not pumped to go talk to 20,000 people without a bra on. But I am telling you guys that I could walk from where I am to an arena. 20,000 people speak for an hour and a half or the entire day. If you need me to. To motivate and inspire and get people pumped up and believing in themselves. Zero fear. 100% confidence in my ability to do that. I know some of you would throw up if you had to talk in front of 20 people, and Vice versa. I guarantee there's something you know how to do that would terrify me, because I've never done it. But the talking in front of a bunch of people and motivating them, y', all, I have done that hundreds of times. Hundreds of times. I have total competence in speaking on stages and motivating people because I am competent at this thing. I have confidence in myself, and so I can walk on that stage with my head held high. I was at a. I was at an event last week, and I was doing a keynote, and I was backstage in the green room. There are A bunch of different speakers on. And I was watching a few of the speakers, and I was watching someone who. Based on title, I'm just gonna say that, like, based on title. I saw their title. I was like, oh, this keynote's about to be amazing. And then I watched the keynote for about 10 minutes, and I was like, oh, this is not a very confident speaker. And when someone's not a confident speaker, but they gotta fill an hour, it's very. It's a bit hard to watch you. I'm sure you've experienced something like this where, you know, the person's nervous and it just keeps getting worse. And I felt bad for this person, and I just sort of put my headphones in and then kept prepping for my moment. Cause I was gonna go do my keynote, and honestly, I didn't want to take in. I didn't wanna take in what they were doing. I'm prepping. I always listen to the same playlist. I was pumping myself up, I was praying. I was doing all of my pre rituals before I go on stage. And it just so happened that I was backstage and I was prepping, and this person that I had seen on stage walked by, and they saw me. And I'm gonna assume that they knew who I was, and I'm gonna assume they knew what I could do. And they said they saw me, like, prepping in passing. They said, do you ever get nervous anymore? Then I looked at them and I smiled and I said, no, I do not get nervous now. The reality is I get excited. I take that moment very seriously. I feel incredibly grateful for the chance to do what I do. I still, after all this time, consider it a huge opportunity, a huge gift to get to talk to people and hopefully help them and give them some ideas that might benefit their life in some way. But, no, I don't get nervous. And it's not that I don't have reverence for what I'm about to do. And it's not that I'm not aware of how big the crowd is or what the opportunity is. The reason that I don't get nervous is twofold. Number one, if you're curious, because I heard years ago, this idea from Oprah. It's where all my ideas come from. I heard her say once that nerves are a selfish emotion. Nerves are a selfish emotion. She said that if you're nervous, it's because you're making the experience all about yourself. And I have taken that to heart for years. If I really unpack nerves, it's because I'm thinking, oh, does my hair look okay? Is my outfit okay? Are they gonna think I'm smart? Are they gonna think I'm worth their time? All of those things, those are about me. But my job in that moment when I get on stage, that is about serving the audience. That's not about me. That's about them. So number one, nerves are a selfish emotion. And number two, I have been on stage so many times, I have failed so many times, and that I had to learn how to catch myself. I can leap in that moment without a net because I know that if I fall, I can build my own net, right? Like, I can say, oh, my gosh, so sorry, you guys. I can't believe my voice is shaking. Right? I've done that before to get myself out of a fear. Or if I mess up a word, I know how to restart. I know how to be. Oh, excuse me. Let me take that again. Like, I know how to handle those moments. So I'm totally confident going into the situation because I know that no matter what happens, I've got me. You can only experience that kind of confidence in yourself if you have competence because you've done the thing over and over and over. If you feel insecure in a certain area of your life, it's simply because you have not done it enough. Because I guarantee that every single person who is listening to this has things in their life that they do feel very confident. You maybe even wouldn't put that word with it. You feel very confident making dinner. You feel very confident going on a walk. You feel very confident shopping at Target. Think about it. When you were a teenager and you went to, like, Walmart or Target for the first time, or Nordstrom's or Michael's. Like, you probably felt a little nervous the first time that your parents dropped you off at the mall by yourself with your, like, $20 bill that you had made through babysitting. You were so excited to go to the mall with your friends, you felt a little nervous. You'd never done that before without an adult around. Now, you could go to Target. You're not scared to go walk around Target. Why? Why were you nervous back then, but you're not nervous now? Experience. So if you are feeling insecure in a certain area, you need to do it more. And this is the sucky. Catch 22 is that what you need to feel confident is to do it, but you think that you need to feel confident before you do it. You need more experience with the thing, and then you will feel more confident with the thing, you will not need any external support to do the thing because you, on your own, have put yourself into that situation over and over and over again. I want you to think of something that you currently feel insecure about, but that you would like to not feel insecure about. Know that the answer to that insecurity is you doing that thing 50 more times. 50 more times going to the gym. 50 more times going to a bar. 50 more times talking to the girl at the coffee shop. 50 more times applying. 50 more times reaching out. 50 more times. Stop thinking that it's this, like, magical equation and then you're going to be this other person and you need to read another book or go to another thing or go to the conference. Just do it more. That's the answer. Practical, simple, but not the answer that people want. They want to think there's a magic bullet. They want to think there's a magic pill. They want to think that there's a way that they can experience the success or the feeling or the confidence without actually needing to do the uncomfortable thing. There isn't. And anyone who tells you that you can experience a high level of success without being uncomfortable is trying to sell you something you do not need to learn. One more thing. You need to put yourself in a situation more often where you have to sink or swim, where you have to keep your head above water, and it doesn't have to feel good, but you got to get to the other side of it and know that you survived and you're okay and you can go again. Confidence comes from competence. Competence comes from doing the thing. All right, last one. The fourth reason that I do not struggle with imposter syndrome. I start before I'm ready. I start before I'm ready. I start every project without knowing how on earth I'm gonna see it through. I start things I don't know how to do. I start things when I don't have the resources. I start things when I don't have the team, when I can't see the path. I start with the idea and I move forward. Martin Luther King has that amazing quote where he said, you take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step. I think about that a lot. Imposter syndrome lives in that space between where you are and where you think you need to be before you're allowed to exist, right before you're allowed to start. I do not wait until I'm qualified. I don't wait until I have Enough experience. I don't wait to have more credentials. And I swear, you guys, the older I get, the more I understand that gatekeepers. So, like all the people our whole lives that we were told, well, you gotta get this person to give you that thing. Gatekeepers are the enemy. And even bigger enemy than the gatekeepers is the belief inside yourself and that you have to have the gatekeeper's permission before you go do the thing. I was at Tribeca Film Festival last week, and I was listening to a panel, and I sort of had heard this theme throughout a lot of the conversations that I was listening to. But on this particular panel, there was a producer who was talking about making movies. And this guy had been in the industry for, like, 40 years, and he had made so many movies and TV shows and even Broadway shows, and just like a wealth of exposure, experience. And he was like, I have been doing this forever, and I am telling you that the people you admire, in the very beginning of their careers, all the way through today, every single project that they actually get out into the world, they have willed it into existence. Willed it. Like, do not think for a second that those things just magically happen. Those people fell in love with the project and pushed it with forward an inch at a time. And I don't know if y' all know this about a lot of your favorite films. They take a decade or more to go from idea to movie theater. Some of my favorite books, 10 years, 12 years, 15 years, it took people to write them. They willed it into existence. Which means that all of those projects started and began to move forward before there were resources, before there were helpers, before there was information, before there was knowledge. I start before I'm ready. You are not going to feel ready, period. The. The thing that you keep telling yourself, like, oh, I'll do it when I'm ready. That is the earliest form of imposter syndrome. It is the thing that is protecting you from having to try. And even bigger than that, that is protecting you from having to fail. Because if you never fully try, then you never fully fail, right? And if you never fully fail, then you don't have any proof of this fear that you've got in your belly that says that you're not enough. It was never a fraud. You were never a fake. You were never an imposter. You were just at the beginning, starting before you feel ready. It's not reckless, guys. It is the only way that anything ever gets built. Every single person I know who has achieved something cool, it wasn't Feeling ready that preceded them creating the thing. Readiness was a feeling that they experienced once they started to create. Okay, so let's bring this back around to imposter syndrome. Let's bring this back to that feeling that I'm assuming if you're still here, you have experienced. I want to offer you a reframe. You are not an imposter. You are someone who is in process. You are in the process of becoming. And being in the process of becoming is not the same thing as faking it. An imposter is someone who pretends to be something they are not. You are attempting to become something that you haven't been yet. That's not fraudulent. That's human. That's the process. That's the toddler learning to walk. That is how every single person who ever got good at anything got good. So four things that I want you to take away from our conversation today. Number one, whenever possible, build with your own Legos. Own your process, Own your resources. Measure your growth against who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today. Number two, be a toddler. When it comes to failure, get up more times than you fail. That's it. That's the whole trick. If you get up more times than you fall down, you will keep succeeding forward every single time. Getting up is the whole game. Number three, stop waiting for confidence to arrive. Just start. Go get competent at the thing by doing it again and again and again. Do the thing, Learn, become better. Do it again, over and over and over. Competence is where confidence lives. Number four, start before you're ready. Ready is not a feeling that you get before you begin. It is a feeling that you earn on the other side of beginning. Yeah. Now, if you dug this episode, this is my moment to remind you of two things. Number one, share it. Send it to a friend. Text it to them. Be like, hey, this really helped me. I really dug this. Let's get coffee and talk about the fears that we have and how we're going to hold each other accountable and be better buddies to each other and encourage each other to try and fail. That's number one. Number two, are you part of our premium community? So if you do not know this, every single month, I do a deep dive episode. I consider this episode you just listened to very high level. But once a month, I go deep dive into a subject. There's a workbook that comes with it. It's both audio and video. So if you're a nerd like me and you love a class, it's like a full class it comes the first Monday of every single month. That's part of the Premium Podcast experience which also includes all podcast episodes ad free forever so you can go back thousands of episodes plus all of our premium classes available to you immediately. Plus coolest part the Premium Community. So we're in a private group together and we comment and like share stories. It's really cool. And it is $10 a month. So if you are the kind of person who wants to take a deeper dive, you want some community who is also working on their stuff. You can find information about Premium Podcast available in the description of this episode and at the very I hope you will consider subscribing if you have not subscribed yet. We bring out a new podcast every single Monday and Thursday and they'll always be ideas like the ones in this episode which will hopefully help you in whatever you're working on in life. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you listened in. I am Rachel and as always, I love you and I'm rooting for you. The rachel hollis podcast is produced by me, rachel hollis. It's edited by andrew weller and jack noble. Hey everyone, it's me, Morgan Stewart and I have a new podcast called the Morgan Stewart Show. Join me each week as I talk about pop culture, fashion, my personal life and just a warning, I'm going to be giving my opinion on everything. I'll also have some really fun guests to join in on the fun the Morgan Stewart show is out now. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts or watch full video on YouTube. Hey everyone, it's Olivia Culpo and I can't wait to tell you all about Abercrombie's new summer collection. All their new dresses in colorful swim feel perfect for a Euro summer.
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