How would it feel to show up to work today trusting that you are enough? What would you do?
Let’s start with what you wouldn’t do:
- When you look at your flooded inbox and the left-overs from yesterday’s to-do list, you wouldn’t panic.
- You wouldn’t feel overwhelmed and stressed and start telling yourself it’s too much for you. That you shouldn’t be here. That you can’t do it.
- You wouldn’t sit and spin in indecision about what to tackle first.
- You wouldn’t start a task, and then when it becomes difficult, feel an urgent need to check your WhatsApp.
- You wouldn’t give yourself an hour to review an agreement and then spend 45 minutes worrying you’re going to miss something and imagining the worst that could happen if you do.
If you trusted you were enough, here’s what you would do:
You’d look at your overflowing inbox and, when your brain thinks, “I’m a fraud” and “I shouldn’t be here”, the first thing you’d do is remember that this is just your Imposter Syndrome. That it always gets triggered when you have a full inbox and it looks like there’s too much to do. That nothing has actually gone wrong.
The next thing you’d do is stop resisting. You’d acknowledge the knot of anxiety forming in the pit of your stomach and, just for a moment, you’d allow it to be there. After all, you are a lawyer. Sometimes that means doing hard things.
Then would come the urge to jump straight into a frenzy of “doing” because there are deadlines to meet and the number of messages in your inbox isn’t getting any smaller.
But you would know better.
You would know that real confidence (the kind that lasts), and with it the ability to deliver at your highest level, doesn’t come from the action you take. It comes from your ability to trust – to trust that you are enough, that you know enough, that you can figure this out.
Having this level of trust means you stay calm. You feel grounded. You are in control. And this is how you know exactly what to do next.
You prioritise and you plan.
You focus. You get to work.
You think creatively. You solve problems.
The result is that you smash it. You turn a day that could have had you spinning in fear and drowning in overwhelm into a day where you keep your cool, you get stuff done and you figure things out.
Happy Friday,
P.S. In Imposter Speech Coaching you take your Imposter Syndrome and you use it to build real confidence – the kind that lasts. Confidence that lasts comes from who you are at your core, not what you think you can do in the circumstances. So conquering your day doesn’t depend on things outside of your control – like the state of your inbox. It depends on knowing who you are and trusting you are enough. Imposter Speech Coaching opens for enrolment soon. If you’re not on the waitlist, now’s the time. Join here.