“Even when I sold my business for $66 million, I felt like an absolute fraud!”
-Shark Tank judge and real estate mogul, Barbara Corcoran
This is what imposter syndrome looks like. So many highly capable people experience it. On the outside, you’re highly competent. On the inside, you’re quaking, afraid to be found out to be the incompetent person you truly believe you are.
As you may have found, it can sometimes be helpful to find a strategy that helps you step out of your ‘not good enough’ head into your ‘capable self’. This is a brilliant mind shift that can instantly bring a change to mood and outcome.
However… Mindset strategies on their own are only part of the story. What many people don’t realise is that confidence / self esteem / positive mindset (however you prefer to label it) is held in two distinct places.
The one that responds to mindset type strategies is found in the cortex, the verbal / thinking brain. This one responds best to positive messages, a shift in perspective, evidence of achievements.
But underlying this is the emotional brain. It is mostly non verbal. It operates very differently to the verbal brain. And this is where our core sense of worth develops. Whether we are good enough, not good enough, a fake, a fraud, confident in our own skin.
This part of our self esteem cannot respond to mindset level strategies. It is present as a deeply held belief. Logic won’t get a look in because we know and feel that we are not good enough. It needs depth psychotherapy or depth coaching for it to be reached and to update its early programming. It’s one of the things I help high performers with, in my role as a Resilient Success coach.
