Overcome imposter syndrome as a yoga teacher

Overcome imposter syndrome as a yoga teacher – Transcript

Hello and welcome. This podcast has been designed to help yoga teachers teach with passion, avoid burn out and earn a fair living.

This episode is all about overcoming imposter syndrome as a yoga teacher.

Do you find that you have endless passion to share yoga with people, you have so many ideas fuelled by the practice of yoga but you’re held back by self-doubt? You worry you have a lack of authority, a lack of knowledge, a lack of experience? You think ‘why would people want to come to my classes? Why would people want to learn this from me…?!’

This podcast episode explores what imposter syndrome is, and how to overcome it, and we have our 3 day Shatter Imposter Syndrome challenge which goes much more in to detail about what imposter syndrome is, how it can affect you, big things and little things that you can do in your life – and in your teaching – to beat imposter syndrome.

We’ll start off with a look at what imposter syndrome is, and the impact that it can have on our lives, before looking at how to reduce and overcome that impact.
The definition of imposter syndrome is: A phenomenon in which people feel that they’re not worthy of their success, and they have a persistent belief in their lack of ability, skills or competence, despite evidence to the contrary.

I’ll read that again.

A phenomenon in which people feel that they’re not worthy of their success, and they have a persistent belief in their lack of ability, skills or competence, despite evidence to the contrary.

Let’s break that down:

People FEEL that they’re not WORTHY of their SUCCESSSo; it’s a feeling, not a fact; open to your subjectivity, your paradigms, your views, your interpretation, your memories. But it’s not fact.


SUCCESS
as we go through this episode and through the challenge, keep in your mind what you think success looks or feels like; how you see success in others, and then in your own life, again just let this be ticking over in the background

PERSISTENT BELIEF in their LACK OF ABILITY
so this links with self-worth and comparison with others. But the key word here is belief – it’s not fact. A belief is something that can be changed

SKILLS / COMPETENCE
your views on your skills or competence are – of course – subjective, and coloured by comparison with others

DESPITE EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY
this is what indicates that the facts are different to the belief or the feeling

So let’s go through the definition one more time:A phenomenon in which people feel that they’re not worthy of their success, and they have a persistent belief in their lack of ability, skills or competence, despite evidence to the contrary.

Imposter syndrome commonly manifests in the following ways:

• Overworking

• Over preparing

• Avoiding new things

• Procrastination

• Self-doubt

• Insecurity

• Perfectionism

• Self-criticism

These feelings and experiences are part of being a human, but any combination of some or all of the above, when experienced often, can and will affect your life.

Now let’s take a moment here to remember that we’re sharing yoga; something that has endless possible benefits to people, something that helps people live with less pain, less stress, more presence. So when we are held back by imposter syndrome, it doesn’t benefit anyone; not us, not our yogis, not our potential future yogis, so it really is important to overcome it.

This podcast is all about helping yoga teachers teach with passion, so teaching yoga not held back by self-doubt. You know, we’re not looking to completely remove all nervousness, we’re not looking to replace acute imposter syndrome with acute confidence; but we are looking to find a healthy place in which we can confidently share our knowledge of yoga, without being paralysed by anxiety, without working ourselves in to the ground overworking and over-preparing. A small element of nervousness is helpful; it keeps you on your toes and ensures that what you’re delivering has value to it.

Those experiencing imposter syndrome often mistake feelings of apprehension and nervousness for a sign that they haven’t prepared enough, but actually, the apprehension is a sign that you care.

Ok, so now we know what imposter syndrome is, the different ways that it might manifest in you, and how it impacts on our ability to teach yoga.
So now, we want to look at the ways to overcome imposter syndrome.

Create a fact file of successes

Start off your fact file of successes – this is a document or a physical folder, or a folder on your computer, that you can refer back to any time, to provide evidence to yourself that you are successful, and the reason you are successful is because of your ability, skills and / or competence. Your fact file might be full of things that make people green with envy, or it might be more ‘run of the mill’ things that were hard for you but you achieved them anyway. No one ever needs to see this list. The sole purpose is to provide you with your own evidence base. Remember, imposter syndrome is having a persistent belief in lack of ability, skills or competence. So let’s build an evidence base to the contrary that you can’t argue with.

Gently push your boundaries

In your yoga teaching, get out of your comfort zone, but comfortably so. Haha! Only you know where you are now, what boundaries you have in place and where you want to be. Start slow and start small. Pick a boundary and smash it to the ground! And do it today! Maybe that’s booking in teaching a workshop on something that you love, or enrolling a course, or something. When you get a doubting, nagging feeling, simply pause – notice the feeling in your body, acknowledge it, breathe deep and continue! Remember that one of the ways that imposter syndrome can manifest is as procrastination. So, no dilly-daillying. You probably already know what you want to do, so go go go – do it!

Journal

You might like to journal this process. Let’s say you want to put on a workshop to help office workers reduce their stress levels. You think of a name, write up the blurb, and just as you’re picking a date, your imposter syndrome starts up: This workshop sounds pants, you’re going to have to make it more exciting. Or, you’re charging far too much, no one will pay that with your lack of experience. You get the picture! Pause, and write down these thoughts. Sometimes seeing them on paper removes all their power.

Social media cleanse

Comparison is the thief of joy! Be mindful when scrolling scrolling a) that you’re looking at peoples’ highlights and b) if there’s anyone who makes you feel bad about yourself, just unfollow them. You can always re-follow when you’ve done more work on overcoming imposter syndrome.

Ask for feedback

Ask your yogis for feedback; why do they come to you, instead of another yoga teacher, or instead of doing something else entirely like going the pub or watching TV? This might go straight in to your fact file of successes!

All of these are laid out, talked through and added to in our challenge, so come join us, and to confirm, it’s completely free!

Let’s recap! Imposter syndrome is most certainly a thing, but it can be overcome, and by doing so, you’ll be benefitting yourself, your current and your future yogis, and maybe even your loved ones too.


Overcoming imposter syndrome isn’t a quick process, it’s something that you need to attend to over time, and it’s not linear either, you’ll have days where you are super confident in your ability and other days where you want to hide somewhere because you’re feeling so exposed. If in doubt, start small, and build on the work you’ve done over time, motivated by the fact that overcoming imposter syndrome will make your yoga teaching even more enjoyable and even more effective.

That’s all for now, lovely teachers!

And, as always, happy teaching.