A journal exercise to help you tackle imposter syndrome

Through our careers survey last month, we found that 70% of you struggle with imposter syndrome.

Call us crazy, but we think that’s way too high! Imposter syndrome can seriously wreck your confidence and your career. So we wanted to do something to help our readers out and bring this number way down.

Enter Joy Poole - leadership coach extraordinaire. This week, she teamed up with us to run a workshop about ditching your inner imposter. And we learned *a lot* from it.

Before we talk about any of that, though, we need a good definition of imposter syndrome. It’s the mental habit of thinking you’re inadequate, despite evidence that you’re actually doing alright. As Joy reminded us, the habit feeds off of comparison: it’s all about taking other people’s achievements and skills as a legitimate measuring stick for your own. Not only that, it often places much more value on the things that other people have done than the things that you have.

But comparison is inherently limiting. If we’re using other people as benchmarks, we’re not leaving space for different milestones, new ideas, and our own authentic experiences. And beyond being limiting, it just - well - sucks. Feeling like a fraud is truly terrible. But because it's a mental habit, it's something we have the power to train our brains not to do.

How does that work exactly? We know it sounds like a pipe dream, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. According to Joy, it's all about choosing a new narrative. If you’re struggling with imposter syndrome, the stories you’re telling yourself about your abilities are clearly not serving you - so you’ve got to try new beliefs on for size. But coming up with healthier perspectives can be a big task if you’re deep into imposter thinking.

That’s why Joy has developed a super helpful journaling exercise that can help you address where your negative self-talk is coming from and where you can go from here. Check out her 5-day journal prompts below. We recommend you set aside 10 minutes each day to get to the bottom of your imposter thinking. Trust us - it’ll teach you things about yourself that can truly change the game.