Worth a Listen, Look or Read #19 — Give Your Imposter Syndrome a Time Out
“The only person you should compare yourself to is the person you were yesterday.”
Jeff Ikler here for Kirsten Richert with our weekly “Getting Unstuck” mini feature: Here in about five minutes, we extend the idea of this week’s podcast with some related content that we feel is definitely “Worth a Listen, Look or Read.”
The idea
This week “Getting Unstuck” talked with Daniel Bauer — https://bit.ly/2Y1QTH2 —
> host of the Better Leaders, Better Schools and School Leadership Series podcasts,
> author of the highly anticipated book, Mastermind: Unlocking the Talent in Every School Leader,
> a masterful mastermind group facilitator, and
> a much-in-demand leadership coach.
All of his efforts are dedicated to helping school leaders become “ruckus makers.” Ruckus makers? Daniel explains:
“I so resonate with this idea of making change happen that I call the community “ruckus maker.” So the listeners of the podcast, the leaders I get to coach and to me, it means that you're an out-of-the-box leader making change happen in education. It's about having a preference for thinking out-of-the-box, innovating, and having a bias toward action, so that we can make meaningful change within our wonderful industry.”
Danny’s interest in growing leadership talent is special. He’s in touch with his followers almost everyday, providing them with inspiration and free materials. His Better Leaders podcast arguably has the largest following of any educational-focused podcast. If he reads something or listens to someone, it’s stored in a seemingly infallible mental hard-drive that he can later access and share with others.
Yet even with all of his success, he’s human like the rest of us.
“My editor told me that the content was great in the draft of my new book, but that the organization sucked, right? Like, those weren't the words she used, but that's totally what I heard. And to be honest, like my imposter syndrome was raging flaring up at that time, because for my first book, I had hired somebody to put it into a book format, so it looked, felt, and read like a book. She took my crazy ideas and packaged it and organized it for me. So when my editor said, your organization sucks, and that's your job, I'm like, ‘Oh, no. Do I have what it takes to package this and organize it in a way that serves the reader?’”
Taking the idea deeper
Dr. Melissa Hughes is a brilliant neuroscience researcher who specializes in using plain English to explain how the brain works. Her book, Happier Hour with Einstein: Another Round, is an international best-seller.
In her recent TEDx Talk, Mellisa explained that an imposter syndrome:
“is having a distorted perception of what you think you can do, of what you can actually do, and what you think everyone else can do. It's not a fear of failure or a crisis of confidence. It's more a dismissal of merit, a predisposition to minimize accomplishments as something you stumbled into rather than something you earned.
Now, we all have an inner critic who provokes self-doubt and fears to some degree. The imposters critic is extremely persuasive, loud and rude, a bully. And even though intellectually you can reason that your success is the result of grit and hard work, the critic lives in the emotional brain, where negative thoughts are amplified. We just don't do our best thinking under those conditions. Negative thinking creates psychological discomfort and disrupts rational thinking.”
If you’re curious…
> why high achievers are particularly susceptible to the imposter syndrome, and
> why humans are wired for negative thinking, and
> why social media and ghosting have contributed to the growing cases of imposter syndrome, and
> how you can begin to send your own critic to a time out,
… then watch Mellisa’s talk.
Putting the idea to work
How active and powerful is your imposter syndrome? The following assessments can pull back the curtain on your seemingly forever dissatisfied inner critic,
> https://testyourself.psychtests.com/testid/3803
> https://impostersyndrome.com.au/index.php/questionnaires/
Finally, this resource provides additional information on the imposter syndrome and how to combat it.