How do you become fully confident and in control of your emotions and experience at work? It’s by mastering your own psychology and that of others. On this show, we decode the science of success, exploring how to get out of your own way and advance your career to new levels without becoming someone you’re not.

I’m Melody Wilding, bestselling author, human behavior professor and award winning executive coach. Get ready and let’s put psychology to work for you.

Have you ever felt like from the outside you appear successful, but you don’t feel that way within? You give a presentation to your leadership and instead of celebrating you fixate on that one slide transition. That could have been better. You’re selected to lead a big project, but rather than seeing that as recognition of your capabilities, you wonder if they just picked you because everyone else was too busy. That promotion you just got. Well, clearly they must be desperate.

This is all thanks to something you’ve probably heard a lot about. Imposter syndrome, and you know what I mean? It is that nagging feeling that you’re somehow fooling everyone. You have tricked everyone into thinking you know what you’re doing, that your success is just luck or good timing.

Any minute, now someone’s going to figure out you don’t really deserve a seat at the table. That despite your accolades, the praise you get, the successful projects under your belt. That persistent voice in your head questions everything.

Everyone loves to throw around the term imposter syndrome, and we tend to use it to label any moment of self-doubt or insecurity. But here’s what really is going on, and it’s far more fascinating and maybe even frustrating than just not feeling good enough.

I wanna be clear though that imposter syndrome is not a mental disorder. It is not a diagnosis. I want you to think of it more like a thinking pattern gone wrong or that’s unhelpful.

Most people assume that success builds confidence, that each achievement is like a brick building up how you see yourself in a positive way. But for people that struggle with imposter syndrome, success actually bounces off of us like Teflon. Failure sticks to us like Velcro. The data goes in, the promotions, the degrees, the glowing performance reviews, but it doesn’t get properly integrated into how we see ourselves. It doesn’t get integrated into our self image.

When something good happens to you, you likely do one of three things. You attribute it to external factors like luck, timing, other people. You minimize it. Well, anyone could have done that. Or you completely discount it. Oh, they’re, they’re just being nice. But when something goes wrong, your brain is ready to claim full ownership of that and file it away as evidence that you are actually inadequate.

So the key insight here, and this is very crucial, is that imposter syndrome isn’t fundamentally about your capabilities. It’s about your relationship with success and your accomplishments. It’s about how you process and integrate positive experiences into how you see yourself or more accurately how you don’t.

So this disconnect between external success and your internal experience is really common for people that we call sensitive strivers, people who are deep thinkers, feelers. I talk a lot about this concept in my first book, Trust Yourself. And as someone who is more sensitive, you’re more genetically wired to take in more information about what’s happening, both in yourself, your own thoughts and emotions, as well as around you.

And that heightened awareness, that depth of processing means you are constantly analyzing, evaluating your performance, and those qualities can make you excellent at your job. They help you spot opportunities or risks that other people miss. They help you deliver high quality work. But they can also make it a lot harder for you to internalize your achievements.

You’re so good at seeing what could be better or how you’re not measuring up, that you miss how far you’ve already come. And the irony here is that the very qualities that make you doubt yourself, your conscientiousness, your attention to detail, your drive for excellence are exactly what make you so valuable in your role.

But when you’re caught in the grips of imposter syndrome, it’s like wearing glasses with the wrong prescription. Everything you see about yourself or think about yourself is just slightly distorted, it’s slightly out of focus. Your success becomes minimized while your perceived shortcomings get magnified.

So as you’re listening, I want you to make a mental note of how many of these seven statements you relate to and for reference, these all come from something called the Clance Imposter Phenomenon Scale. It was designed by Pauline Clance, one of the first researchers, or the first researcher, I should say, to study imposter syndrome. And as you’re listening, make a mental note of how many of these you relate to.

So number one, I can give the impression that I’m more competent than I really am.

Number two, when I’m praised for something at work, I’m afraid I won’t be able to live up to the expectations of me in the future.

Number three, when I have succeeded at something and received recognition for my accomplishments, I have doubts that I can keep repeating that success.

Number four, if I receive recognition for something I’ve accomplished, I tend to discount the importance of it.

Number five, I tend to remember the incidents in which I haven’t done my best more than those. I have done my best

Six. Sometimes I feel or believe that my success in life or in my job has been the result of some kind of error.

And seven, it’s hard for me to accept compliments or praise about my intelligence.

So out of those seven, how many do you relate to? If you were like mentally checking off more than half, then I want you to listen up because overcoming imposter syndrome or at the very least, managing it more effectively is entirely possible.

But this requires you retrain your brain specifically. You begin to internalize your success. You stop overriding it, explaining away your achievements. Instead, you take responsibility for them. You learn to savor and appreciate them just a little bit more.

And I wanna be clear. Internalizing your success does not mean becoming bigheaded, becoming conceited, being a bragger.

I want you to think of confidence as extremes. On one end, we have people with imposter syndrome. They have low confidence, but high competence. And on the other end of the spectrum you have people with what’s called Dunning Kruger syndrome. That’s the opposite of imposter syndrome. So those people on this end have high confidence, but not a lot of competence.

Think we all know people like that. And really where we wanna land is coming to the middle here, having a healthy sense of confidence.

People with healthy confidence are able to recognize both their strengths and their weaknesses. They don’t over-index on one or the other. They advocate for their own needs.

They’re open-minded. They admit they don’t know everything, or they make mistakes and they don’t. They don’t beat themselves up endlessly for that.

So I wanna give you today four actionable steps you can use to begin internalizing your success, to take steps to overcome imposter syndrome starting today.

And in our signature group coaching program, Resilient, we go much, much, much more into. Strategies exactly like this to help you feel more calm, more confident, to get out of your own way, to find more inner peace in your career, and every day at work. So head to my website, melody wilding.com/resilient. You can learn more, you can get all the details about that program there. But today, let’s dive into these four actionable ways to internalize your success.

Dr. Martin Seligman, his research shows that there are typically two ways people explain their experiences. And let me show you how this plays out in real life. Say you just gave a presentation, you knocked it out of the park, your team is buzzing about it. Everyone’s really excited. Your boss sends you a great email. The client asks for a follow-up meeting. Awesome. Now, here’s where it gets interesting. How do you explain that success to yourself? If you’re dealing with imposter syndrome, you probably have a pessimistic, explanatory style. When something good happens to you, you tend to attribute it to external factors, and as a result, you see your achievements as one-off. They’re temporary. They’re not a sign of your intelligence. They’re not permanent. Your success is temporary and fleeting. You think, well, the timing was great. Everyone was in a good mood that day. You turn it into a fluke, something that happened to you rather than because of you.

But when you have an optimistic, explanatory style, you see good things that happen as a result of internal factors. Your effort, your capabilities, your intelligence, you see good things as more stable and permanent. It’s the difference between saying, I’m always great at data analysis versus, I don’t know what happened, I must have been having a good day because it’s really unlike me to do well on something like that.

When you have an optimistic style, you look at the situation and you would look at that presentation and think, you know what? I really did know this material inside and out. I prepared, I put to work my understanding of what the client needed and I delivered. Of course, it could have been better, but that was a great success and I’m proud of how I did You view your success as evidence of your capabilities rather than just a happy accident?

So the good news is that your explanatory style isn’t just something you’re stuck with. With some practice, you can shift it. So this week, when something good happens to you, maybe someone compliments you for something, asks for your input in a meeting, catch yourself when you start to explain it away as external, temporary, not permanent. And instead ask yourself, what if this happened because I actually did put in the effort. What if this is evidence of things I’m good at rather than just a lucky break.

All right. Our second tip to internalize your success is to accept compliments. I know this may sound so simple, but it is remarkably difficult when you don’t believe in yourself.

When you have imposter syndrome, you don’t allow yourself to take in praise or recognition that other people give you. Your boss may say, I was really impressed with how you handled that, and you say, oh, it was nothing. No big deal. It was a team effort. You minimize it.

And this is because with imposter syndrome, praise creates cognitive dissonance. Hearing good things about what you’ve done doesn’t fit into how you see yourself. So instead you reject it. The flip side is that you tend to amplify and harp on your mistakes ’cause that does fit with your self-image. So the next time someone gives you a compliment, all I want you to do is receive it gracefully. Say thank you. I’m so glad you noticed, or I really appreciate that. No over-explaining. No verbal vomit.

You can take this a step further by asking a question, get more information, like, thanks so much for that feedback. Actually, what did you enjoy most about the presentation? What stood out to you?

Alright, our third tip to internalize your success and overcome imposter syndrome is to start a brag file.

Have you ever sat down, you wanna work on your performance review or you wanna update your LinkedIn profile or your resume and suddenly you can’t seem to remember one good thing you’ve done in the past one to five years? And many people struggle to think of anything worthwhile they’ve done in recent history. This happens all of the time. All you seem to recall is the way things didn’t go right, the way things failed, didn’t measure up. I know. I certainly have been there.

But you’re listening to this because you are likely someone who is accomplishing great things every day. You will never gain confidence from those if you simply just move on to the next thing.

You will never gain confidence if you don’t pause to take in your wins. This is not frivolous, the act of just sitting with your successes, it changes your physiology, it strengthens your psychology. When you do that, your body releases endorphins. It encodes that experience in your brain, and that reinforces a feeling of competence that we know what we’re doing.

So one very simple way to build this habit is by creating what I call a brag file, a place where you are documenting important successes. Maybe it’s increasing revenue, or pushing a major project over the finish line. This is a reference point for you to keep milestones you’ve achieved, kind words from customers, positive feedback.

This comes in very handy. Come performance review time. It also is such a great confidence booster. You personally? I keep a brag file. Anytime I’m having a bad day, I do this. I look at my brag file, I look at testimonials, emails from past clients, members of Resilient who talk about how our work has changed their lives.

I look at notes from readers who say how my books have had a huge impact on them, and that brightens my mood. It reminds me, why am I doing this? Why does it matter? Even though there are tough moments.

Today’s final tip for internalizing your success is to develop a new definition of success. Because when you have imposter syndrome, you probably have a very narrow, specific definition of success, demanding excellence, and perfection at all costs at all times.

I’m not saying you need to lower your bar, but I want you to broaden your idea of what qualifies as a win. Achieving a desired outcome isn’t always within your control. So I want you to broaden what you consider a win. Pushing through fear or resistance. Taking a stand for your belief. Finding a creative approach to a problem. Or changing your mindset. Hitting a small milestone on the way to a larger goal.

So where can you give yourself more credit for something hard you did this week? Just think about that. Focusing on your strength helps increase your sense of resourcefulness that you have what it takes to handle challenges.

So there you have it. Today we talked about four ways to overcome imposter syndrome by internalizing your success.

Shift your explanatory style from pessimistic to optimistic practice accepting compliments. Start your brag file and expand your definition of success.

If this resonated with you, then you definitely need to check out Resilient. That is our signature three month group coaching experience that is designed to help you regain your confidence, master your emotions, and really turn your sensitivity from what feels like a liability into an asset in your career. Because just imagine how much further you could go without imposter syndrome, perfectionism, burnout, overthinking, holding you back, how much more fulfilled, productive, effective you could be if you got out of your own way.

Resilient helps you do just that. The program is chock full of proven strategies of live coaching to help you go from feeling helpless to more empowered, from insecure, to confident and assertive from emotionally spiraling. To balance and grounded, so head to melodywilding.com/resilient. That’s melodywilding.com/resilient. You’ll find all of the details there.

Thanks for joining us today, and I’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to today’s episode of psychology at work. If you enjoyed the show, I’d be so grateful if you could take just a minute to rate and review wherever you are listening. It’s how we reach more professionals just like you. And if you’d like to see even more content on how to feel more self assured, grounded, and in control of your emotions and reactions at work, follow me on LinkedIn or head to the links in the show notes.