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I’ve coached people at the top of their career game who still have the Imposter Syndrome. It all pervasive none of us are uniquely suffering. How I wish that phrase hadn’t become a buzz word for feeling “less than” when it is the most ordinary of all experiences – it’s common old self-doubt with executive shoulder pads and court shoes.
Dread and anxiety are a ho-hum daily reality, like Holly Willoughby and Alison Hammond, and instead of ruining our day, they can be acknowledged, dealt with accordingly or simply ignored.
Resilience is feeling that gut- wrench dread and whistling “hello darkness my old friend” and getting on with it. It’s just your internal auto-responder on alarm mode letting you know there’s potential danger ahead.
Here’s how to disable that alarm and de-stress the stress:
- A run or walk in nature always helps
- Write it out in your “book of shadows” – all the things you are worried about. Swearing permitted
- Ask yourself the instant game changing question – “what’s the best that can happen?”
- Remember you did it before so you can do it again
- Let other people deal with their emotions/reactions. It’s not your job to protect them.
- Most of the things you have worried about never happened
- Learn unconditional self-forgiveness
- Lower the bar if you are terrifying yourself with your own expectations of what you can achieve
- Drop perfectionism. Sometimes OK is good enough.
- Make a list of all the negative things you are believing about the situation and question whether it’s logical or real
- Anxiety’s nemesis? Deep breathing and meditation
- Stop comparing – you will never know how other people feel
- Reframe fear as excitement.
- Get a download doula – ask a friend to go on speaker phone and let rip. They don’t even have to listen
- Breathe in hope, breathe out the fear
I know deep down tomorrow will be a blast, I will be so high after, I will need prosecco and a parachute to bring me back down. What’s the worst that can happen? That that day is mediocre.
That’s never going to happen. 😊
Graduation day Autumn 2023 below.
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