According to Merriam- Webster dictionary, an imposter is a person who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive.
Now let’s wonder, what could cause a person to want to pretend or deceive?
When I think of times where I felt like an imposter, it has always been when my flaws get revealed before others. I remember one of the times when I had begun a YouTube channel to encourage my audience to build emotional awareness. It was during the first year of COVID in Sept 2020. A few months into the journey, I had an emotional breakdown. Ever since then, I have not been able to record a video.
Whenever I thought of it, there would be a voice in my head that said “You don’t know to handle your own emotions and you want to preach it to others?”
Although I have resolved it and accepted that I am not perfect. I am on a journey and sharing my learning with the world, it took me quite a lot of time to get there. Here is what helped me accept myself.
When I did some introspection on this I found that it stemmed from a sense of fear. My truth was revealed in front of people I worked with. That made me feel threatened and evoked a need to protect myself.
And what about it was making me feel threatened?
Perhaps, my own frame of how I saw the world.
As humans, our primal instinct is to perceive the world as being against us. Which causes us to judge ourselves through the eyes of the world. You could call it a defence mechanism.
On the contrary when we realize this and shift our frame to believe that the world is not against us but with us. The threat dissolves and so does the defence mechanism of self-judgement. Now, I don’t need to protect myself from the world because the world is with me and supporting me in my journey.
It’s when we start seeing the world being on our side,
- Criticisms shift from attack to learning opportunities
- Comparison and competition with others shift to self-acceptance and camaraderie
- Fear shifts to love
- Survival shifts to learning and growth!
And an IMPOSTER shifts to THE REAL MCCOY!
I got introduced to this concept a year ago through the book The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. But it’s only recently that I began internalizing it. I’m still weaning out of my conditioning and in the process of completely adopting “The world is with me” frame. And trust me the journey is worth the while!