I bet that you can reflect on times in your life when you never felt good enough, felt unprepared, or felt like you lacked a set of skillsets and tools to get a specific job done. These feelings are common when we are starting something new. These feelings often arrive because we haven’t had sufficient experience or training or need more time getting comfortable with a new tool. These feelings are natural and healthy as we grow.
These feelings can also haunt certain people and show up as an undercurrent of whatever they are doing, regardless of how long they have been doing it or how much training they have had. When these feelings arrive not in situations but throughout your experience, you might be battling something called Imposter syndrome.
Imposter syndrome is an inner experience of believing that you aren’t good enough, not successful enough, or not competent enough.
These limiting beliefs become an “I am” type of thing, not a situational type of thing. Individuals plagued with these life-long limiting beliefs often carry an early life wounding of being told they weren’t good enough in some area of their life. Sometimes these can be simple messages repeated in childhood offered with the good intentions of being motivating. The nuance of “you can do better” is a powerful message that can be taken two ways – on one hand, “not enough” and on the other “enough and able to reach for higher potential.”
It’s the first message that can become a weight carried through life.
This inner experience exists across people of all genders, races, and socio-economic backgrounds. Still, I often see high-performing women or individuals with a perfectionist mentality and a deep resistance to a perceived failure. I wish to highlight that I prefer to remove the label of “Imposter Syndrome” when working with individuals. I don’t particularly like the way we stick labels on opportunities for personal growth. I feel that they are sticky and can be a disservice to the healing process.
If you or someone you care for carries the weight of a belief that they aren’t good enough, I recommend starting with that story and re-writing it. Take some time to scan your life for evidence that you are enough and reflect on any external feedback offered to you that points to this being true. Let those messages and affirmations sink in and feel them as genuine.
Another recommendation for combating these limiting thoughts or patterns of perfectionism is to spend some time reflecting on your values. Connecting to your values and your virtues connects you with perennial energies of goodness. Some examples of these are honesty, truth, compassion, kindness, or grace.
Allow these to become your measuring sticks, and you will find more joy and a sense of goodness naturally arriving in your life.
Remember that you were here to care for others and create from your heart. Your performance in life and work are markers of a job-well-executed, not a life well-lived, and you will forever be bigger than what you “do.”
About Amelia Vogler
Amelia Vogler (www.AmeliaVogler.com) is Grounding and Energy Medicine Specialist, an internationally respected teacher of energy medicine, and meditation guide. In addition to her teaching and meditation, she has an international private practice. In her 15-year career, she has helped over 7,000 individuals’ re-pattern self-limiting negative beliefs through grounding practices, intuitive insight, and advanced energy medicine.
If you are interested in the energetic, sign up for her FREE grounding course at www.AmeliaVogler.com/Grounding or find her on Instagram: @AmeliaVogler_Healing