Ever feel like a fake?
Last week I had a call with one of the women in my mentorship program Lacey. She is just starting her photography business and, like many of us, has all sorts of thoughts that go with it. She wonders if she can do it. She wonders why people would come to her for photography. She wonders who she is to start this business without any experience or know-how. Basically, thoughts in her head are keeping her stuck.
Can you relate?
What do you want to do that your head talks you out of?
What does your heart long for, your head says is out of reach?
Or unattainable?
Or unrealistic?
You see, we have to learn to think differently. Our thoughts will derail us every time.
Our thoughts will keep us right where we are are, even if that is going nowhere or opposite of what we want because it is comfortable being where you are, even if it is totally uncomfortable because you KNOW that place.
My thoughts go cray-cray too…
Who am I to teach women? To say I’m an artist? To dance, paint, write?
I don’t know what I’m doing.
What is the point of writing a blogpost? It doesn’t really make a difference.
Why would anyone want to work with me?
I feel like a fake.
If I listened to these thoughts, I wouldn’t do anything. I’d just be thinking.
When I first starting living my passion, these thoughts would take me out a month, even several months. I’d wallow in the hell of my mind and take action on nothing because I thought I wasn’t good enough. I’d stay in bed, distract myself or blame someone or something else for why it wan’t happening for me. It sucked.
Fast forward a couple years… Now it still happens but I know it’s my mind. I know my thoughts are running the show. I know that whatever excuse or mean thing I’m saying isn’t the truth. And if I don’t see it, I have my coach, my hubby Tony, or accountability sisters to kick my ass and say when I’m totally delusional. I’ll be in a funk maybe a couple days. WAY better than a month.
One way I started changing these thoughts was by adding in new thoughts. So, back to Lacey. I had her make a list of 100 things (via Fearless Living Lady Rhonda Britten) she is awesome at…
I am awesome at ____________.
I am an awesome ____________.
My intention was to break up the self criticism and start feeding her confidence. When we talked again after that assignment, it was really interesting. She could write “I am awesome at” a couple things, but after that she wanted to write “I am good at ____”. I asked why she couldn’t say she was awesome.
And this is when things got interesting… She was living in comparison land.
For example, one of the thing she said was she was good at was sports. It was difficult for her to write she was awesome at sports. When I dug a little deeper, I found out she played varsity basketball in high school. She was runner up MVP and was drafted for college third division basketball. Now to me, heck yeah she’s awesome at sports. But to her, she couldn’t write that.
When I asked her who she was comparing herself to, she said… “Well, I wasn’t MVP. And it wasn’t drafted first division, I was drafted third division.”
Whaaaaaat?????This is my point. We are all comparing ourselves to someone in our head.
You may not know it yet, but you are. For example, for me, it stretches me to write I am an awesome hula dancer because I know how much more I have to learn. I am comparing myself to hula sisters who have danced since they were five years old. I’m comparing myself to my Kumu and women who dance at Merrie Monarch, the Super Bowl of hula.When I stop and think about the years I have spent learning, dancing, opening myself up, heck yeah, I am an awesome hula dancer. I am awesome at expressing my emotions and letting people feel my power.
We are taught not to brag or show off.
There is something that feels a little bit wrong about bragging at how awesome you are at something. Here in Hawaii, we are all about ALOHA. The H in ALOHA stands for Ha’aha’a, humility. So why am I proposing you Brag?
There is a difference between bragging to others in order to get love versus bragging to yourself to open to love.
When you brag, you start shifting your mindset from criticism to love and appreciation. From beating yourself up, to confidence. This isn’t about reaching outside for affirmation, this is about reaching inside. We all have that voice in her head that keeps us stuck. It compare us to others and would have us believe we are terrible, but that’s not true. If anything, all that voice does is keep us from growing, learning, and opening to new opportunities and possibilities.
So what’s been happening since Lacey started her Brag List? Doing this has made her begin to realize that she can be amazing everyday at not only something that’s a skill, but at things like the effort she puts into a task or relationships or interactions she has in her everyday life. She is now understanding that in order to be amazing at something doesn’t mean she has to be the best in the world or that it has to be a huge accomplishment in order to count. Even her every day small accomplishments can be amazing, and let’s be real, over time a large amount of small accomplishments will amount to something big.
Here’s a sample of what a daily entry in her Brag Journal looks like:
Write your own Brag List. Not just skim this article and move on because that won’t change anything. And if you’d like to see some massive change, start a Brag Journal like Lacey.
I want you to write what your awesome at. I want you to right why you’re an awesome person. Own it. Don’t stop at number 3, 5, or 10. Keep going. Because when you hit that block when you start to feel stuck, that is where it gets juicy. That is when you start to retrain your brain. That is when you make miracles in your mind.
