In this blog post, I’m going to take an unorthodox approach towards Imposter Syndrome and go through 3 Steps to navigate imposter syndrome powerfully. This starts with Step 1.

Step One:  Become Aware that Imposter Syndrome Is NOT REAL

Now, I know you’re thinking, “Orion, it feels pretty fricken real to me.”

It does for me too. The anxiety in the chest. The debilitating fear. The procrastination and putting off your dreams and expression. I know the sensations and experience very well.

But the sensations and experience are VERY different than the label of “Imposter Syndrome”.

The label has only been around since about 1978, when psychologists started to study the phenomenon of feeling like an imposter even when all evidence points to the contrary. The way I describe this phenomenon is:

The gap between what your gifts, talents, and genius actually are AND the beliefs and perceptions you have about them.

That’s it. You don’t have a syndrome. You don’t have a mental health issue. And you aren’t broken. 

You simply believe something other than the Truth. This is par for the course in this day and age where we’re all trained at a young age to suppress our Truth and fullest expression in order to fall in line and be good students of what we’re supposed to learn.

And so there’s a gap between the Truth and what you believe. The world has trained you to think you need to earn certificates and get a perfect score before you’re prepared to share your gifts and talents. This results in fears, doubts, and believing you’re never ready or never enough. 

And that gap causes the experience. The experience is VERY different from the label.

Instead of trying to address or overcome the LABEL, I’m inviting you to separate the label from the experience and build your capacity to be with the experience. 

Labels are dangerous because you can quickly define yourself as “having a syndrome”, even if unconsciously. Then you get on a never-ending hamster wheel trying to fix, address, and overcome it when there’s nothing to overcome. 

Instead, you can begin to build your capacity to be with the discomfort of the experience that is happening, building awareness around it and more deeply understanding it. 

So let’s look at the experience. Often the experience is such that, even if you’re presented with tons of evidence, people wanting to pay you money for your gifts and talents, telling you how much you’ve helped them, and telling you how amazing you are, that there’s still a part of you that believes:

Whew, that was lucky! Somehow I got one over on them and they think I’m greater than I am. 

Cue the anxiety. It’s a really interesting phenomenon when you can step back from it, stop trying to change it, and get curious about it. 

This leads us to Step 2.

Step Two: Honor Equally the Lineage AND How You’re Designed to Learn 

With all of that in Step 1 said, it is important to acknowledge and honor those who came before you. To honor and learn through study about the lineage that laid the foundation for your genius to emerge as a leader in your field.

AND it’s equally important for you to bring awareness to how you, and all humans, are actually designed to learn, grow, and create. This is VERY different than the sterilized and suppressive version of a school system that uses study to squash innovation while rewarding memorization.

How humans learn naturally is through exploration. But for the last 13000 years or so, children have gradually had their creativity squashed at ages (3-18) when they’re supposed to be playing, exploring, and defining who they are:

• First with the advent of agriculture, they were made to work at young ages for LONG hours in the fields 

• Then with the Industrial Revolution, in order to support their families, they were expected to work long hours in factories

• Eventually, with the advent of more automated technology, this led to them training to be good citizens for 8+ hours in school per day, learning to listen and be obedient and fall in line. 

Which has all led to our modern education system. None of that is wrong and it’s not worth spending any of your energy judging it or feeling like a victim to it. It just is. It happened. We’re always doing the best we can. 

But it IS important to be aware of it. Because that’s the 1000s of year old conditioning field you grew up in.

As a child, you were put into a classroom and forced to memorize and study and pass the tests at an age when you were naturally inclined to explore, make mistakes, and push the boundaries of your creativity. 

And this is how the gap between Truth and Belief is created. You unconsciously start to buy into the conditioning and unconsciously choose to suppress your own brilliance in order to be an accepted member of society. 

And this is good news. Because with Awareness, you can begin to choose something different. You can choose to learn, study, and understand the theory of your field as a COMPLIMENT to your explanation, NOT a replacement. Forging your way through your own personal journey and bringing the life experience of resiliency through challenge is a more important qualification on its own than a certification. And formal study to honor the lineage and complement your experience is THEN an important step. But, a certification on its own means nothing without actually being an Apprentice of Life and your field.

You can choose to be an Apprentice in your field. In fact, realize you will ALWAYS be an Apprentice. As long as you’re choosing to be a Leader, at the leading edge of your industry or at the leading edge of HOW people operate in your industry, you will be an Apprentice. 

That means you won’t have it all figured out. You won’t always know all the answers. And you’re going to make mistakes. And that’s okay.  

If, in your field, you’re responsible for the mental, physical, emotional, or spiritual well-being of others, YES please continue to study. Please have a mentor in your corner like Apprentices are designed to. And please stay humble. Always ask the right questions: do I have the skillset to really help this person? And if not, who can I call on to support them? And how can I continue to develop?

Just don’t decide that you don’t have the skillset before you actually give it a go. Because at the edge of your comfort zone, you will be uncomfortable, you will be doing things you’ve never done before. And you will be learning. 

This is Human Nature. 

Let’s look at Blacksmithing as an example.

At some point, blacksmithing was discovered by someone who witnessed metal melting. I imagine this was INCREDIBLE to witness for the first time. And then they noticed that, when it would cool and harden, it would melt and harden into a new shape. Then they started to explore. What if we bang it with a hammer? And they learned through exploration that, at different temperatures, it can be forged into new shapes and new objects. 

And so, they started to create this field of blacksmithing, at the leading edge of blacksmithing. Then, they would have apprentices and teach who would learn through practice and exploration. And those apprentices eventually had their apprentices. But the field of blacksmithing was ALWAYS evolving, with the more advanced blacksmiths forging new techniques and technologies. And so, they failed forward. As did their apprentices.

This is natural. What’s NOT natural is that we decide that we’re proficient at something by passing a test. If you’re in the coaching industry or a leader managing with a team, have a mentor in your corner. Read some books to honor the lineage of who’s come before. AND most importantly, do the inner work first with yourself. Go into your dark places, the shadowy corners of your consciousness, and find a deeper self-love for yourself. Be willing to work through the issues you bring to relationships, personal and professional. And then begin to practice with peers, forging your way by learning how to navigate your own emotional capacity. 

This is a greater and more natural qualification than any Coaching or Leadership Degree or Certificate. The brain knowledge MUST complement embodied wisdom in order for it to mean anything. On its own, it’s just theory.

If you’re reading this and feeling like an Imposter, my bet is you’ve been on the journey of deep inner work. And you feel like you’re an Imposter because you don’t think that’s enough. But, my second bet is that you’ve also read books, taken courses and complemented your wisdom with knowledge. And yet, you still feel like an imposter. 

There’s still that gap between the Truth of who you are and what others see in you AND what you believe about yourself. 

There’s still that part of you that believes you’re not good enough – that your skills and talents and genius aren’t good enough – that you need to have it ALL figured out instead of acknowledging you’re a forever Apprentice a few steps ahead of those that need YOUR help.  

This brings us to Step 3. 

Step Three: Be Gentle with Yourself.

Be REALLY gentle with the part of you that really truly believes your gifts and talents aren’t enough even in the face of piles of evidence, payments, accolades, and acknowledgments of how much you’ve helped people, and how good you are at what you do.

You don’t have a syndrome. There’s nothing to fix. 

This is a NORMAL part of stepping outside your comfort zone in 2022 within THIS conditioning field you grew up in. OF COURSE there’s a part of you that doesn’t believe you’re good enough. Of course there’s a part of you that gets scared as you start to step back into your fullest expression of your gifts and talents and out of the box you put yourself in. And of course, there’s sensations of nervous excitement in your body and chest as a result. 

Nothing is wrong with any of it! So find some gentleness. Slow down, give your inner children a hug, and gently move forward. 

That’s what this is all about. There’s no syndrome to address or overcome. In fact, the sensations that have been labeled Imposter Syndrome will always be there for you as you step outside your comfort zone again and again in your career. They’re not bad. Just become aware of what’s actually happening and then, through gentleness with yourself, begin to build your capacity to move forward outside of your comfort zone and into your genius WHILE the sensations of discomfort are happening. Breathe into them. Expand. 

As you continue to step into your genius, keep staying humble and asking yourself good questions: Am I prepared enough to support this person? Do I have the skills, gifts and talents that this person needs to support them where they are? Am I willing to acknowledge when I don’t? Who can I enlist as a mentor? What can I read and learn to better equip myself as the forever Apprentice I am?

And if you have the answers to those questions, then let yourself explore.

Because if you do hit an edge where you can’t help someone, you can recommend them to someone else. But most of the time, you’re going to find that, when you let yourself move and navigate WITH imposter syndrome instead of treating it like something that’s broken about you, you  have exactly what that person needs. Because there’s a reason they came to YOU. They saw how you were banging the hammer and what they were forging and they felt you could help. So please allow this to happen. Let them receive support from you. 

And as you do, the gap between TRUTH and BELIEF will begin to close. And you’ll build your ability to be with the discomfort that comes with being at the leading edge of your comfort zone and of humanity’s comfort zone. 

You are amazing. And you’ve got this! If you are looking for a tool that can help you connect more deeply to the TRUTH of who you are and your genius underneath all the conditioning, I’ve created a PERSONALIZED report for you. It utilizes the Human Design System, created by Ra Uru Hu and puts it into the context of your life through the Phoenix Method. It will greatly help you build your capacity to be in the nervous excitement and discomfort that naturally comes as you come back into your power. 

Download it below and enjoy! And post any questions you have in the comments below!

If this post resonated with you, I invite you to join the “Human Design Applied” Facebook Group where you’ll find support and inspiration to embody your Human Design, align to your truth, and trust yourself like never before!