Stop bullying yourself – real ways you can fight the limiting beliefs you hold about yourself. Statistically, imposter syndrome affects women more than men with current research into Behavioural Sciences highlighting that women consistently score higher on measures of imposter syndrome than men.
While bigger companies have the HR structures in place to support people in the workforce it’s not surprising to find that self-employed women are more likely to doubt themselves on a regular basis. The trouble is that this pattern of repeated negative thoughts creates neural pathways that lead to limiting beliefs that can inhibit their growth.
The good news is that it is possible to challenge and change these beliefs, liming the impact that they can have on your behaviour. It’s not as simple as wishing them away though, you need to take time to look inside, finding those beliefs that form your negative view of yourself, identifying the roadblocks that are hampering your success and stopping them from doing it in the future.
Business owners need to challenge limiting beliefs in order to be the best version of themselves, building new neural pathways that lead to success.
What is Imposter Syndrome?
Imposter Syndrome or Imposter Phenomenon is an overwhelming feeling of not being good enough despite your skills, experience and successes. This belief undermines your thoughts and feelings to the point where you can be paralysed into inaction or be unable to see your own value. This is the difference between how you perceive yourself and how others perceive you.
Imposter Syndrome also comes with the nagging feeling that sooner or later you’re going to be ‘found out’ by those around you, it skews your beliefs about yourself and can cause you to struggle with perfectionism and neuroticism, stifling creativity, action and mental wellbeing.
The International Journal of Behavioural Science cites that around 70% of people will experience imposter syndrome at least once in their life with 25-30% of those being high achievers.
If Imposter Syndrome was a one off that passed eventually it wouldn’t be an issue, the trouble is that Imposter Syndrome can cause something far more damaging – limiting beliefs – and those can truly affect your behaviour and your success.
Are limiting beliefs real?
We know that our brains are constantly evolving and changing in response to our experiences, our learning and our self-talk. Each thought that we experience creates a new neural pathway that embeds itself in our brain and repeated thoughts deepen these pathways making them inherent beliefs that are harder to shake.
It’s easy to understand, therefore, how negative thoughts about ourselves – whether generated by outside sources or by imposter syndrome – can become real beliefs that affect our everyday life.
With repetition, these neural pathways become roadblocks stopping you from doing things: phrases like ‘I can’t’, ‘I shouldn’t’, ‘It’s impossible’ can characterise your thought patterns and stop you moving forward.
Limiting beliefs are as real as any other thought and the impact they can have on your behaviour is significant. Unless they are recognised, stopped and addressed they can limit your potential as a leader.
How to spot limiting beliefs
It’s very easy to believe the things that our minds tell us. As we grow, we learn to trust our brains to keep us safe and informed, that can make it especially hard for us to spot when a thought is harming us rather than helping as a limiting belief.
Identifying those limiting beliefs is the first step to tackling them and it takes a lot of self-awareness. Working with a coach or therapist, even keeping a journal can help you to recognise repeated thoughts or behaviours that do not serve your best interests. To remove them you need to be able to recognise them.
There are some red flags that might spring up when you’re doing this internal work – phrases like ‘I can’t do that’ or ‘I’ve never been able to’ tend to be thoughts we’ve learnt over time – they are the thoughts that stop us taking action. ‘I’ve never been able to manage people’ will stop you from applying for that promotion to supervisor or ‘I can’t do exercise without getting tired easily’ will stop you from walking that extra mile. You may have had evidence once to support those thoughts but you have changed and grown since then, there are courses you can take in leadership, stamina building work you can do in the gym. Just because something didn’t work once does not mean it won’t work now.
Sometimes our limiting beliefs are disguised as statements that start with ‘I can’t’ and you need to do a bit more work to get to the root of your actual limiting belief. For every negative statement ask yourself why: why can’t I speak in groups, is it because I don’t feel like I’ve got anything of value to say or because I think people will find me boring? Both of these are different limiting beliefs stemming from the same negative statement.
How do we stop limiting beliefs?
The good news is that limiting beliefs can be changed, our brains can be trained to create new, healthier neural pathways but it takes work and effort to do so.
If you understand that these limiting thoughts are just neural pathways then you can understand how you need to build new ones in order to create unlimiting beliefs.
There are some simple steps you can take to create these shiny, new positive pathways:
- Celebrate your wins – when you do see success, acknowledge and celebrate it, keep a journal or a log to remind yourself of these successes that you can draw on when you feel imposter syndrome and limiting beliefs creeping in.
- Don’t let negativity win – learn to listen to you negative self-talk, when you hear it starting challenge the thought, where is the evidence for that belief either in support or contradiction.
- Feedback isn’t always bad – learning to ask for feedback can be really valuable, a lot of us belief that feedback is a negative thing but actually it can be really positive and hearing positive things can reinforce the unlimiting thoughts whilst weakening the limiting ones.
- Treat yourself like a friend – when a friend or loved one lacks confidence you treat them with respect and kindness, you work hard to build that confidence up. It should be the same when you talk to yourself.
- Realism rather than perfection – perfection is a myth, aiming for it will only lead to disappointment. By setting realistic expectations you are better able to achieve your goals, reinforcing that positive view.
Conclusion
Our brains are incredibly clever and complex organs and although though most people believe that they reach a point where they stop developing it’s simply not true. Every experience, every thought, every moment in your life contributes to building neural pathways that can positively or negatively affect your behaviour and your belief system.
Imposter syndrome and the limiting beliefs that come with it are common, especially in high achievers so if you’ve felt it at some point then you’re not alone. But, these thoughts and these moment of self-doubt do not have to define you.
By taking simple, actionable steps to change your thought patterns and to build new neural pathways you are creating a toolkit to tackle imposter syndrome and your limiting beliefs once and for all.
