Transcription
Foreign, let's go to Christian. Sister Christian, in Kansas City, Missouri. What's up?
Hey, Dr. John. How are you?
Partying, dude. What are you doing?
Uh, not a whole lot. It's Friday, so enjoying that Friday.
Nice, nice. Risk 28 degrees, I think. So that's fun. Risk 28 degrees. If it got to be 28 degrees in Tennessee, they'd shut the state down. So what's up, man?
Uh, first, I was gonna say thank you for all, all that you all do. Y'all are great. Um, really helps, uh, listen to you guys. I've extrapolated a lot, um, and put into practice some of what you teach and advise, and it's made a difference. I appreciate it. Um, thank you.
Thank you for listening, dude. In our gang. Yeah. And I also, I know you're from Texas, but open invitation. If you ever want some real barbecue, head on over to KC. We'll hook you up.
All right, fighting words. And I've had barbecue in Kansas City, and it is incredible. I've got family in Kansas. I love it. It's incredible.
Awesome. Um, yes, very well done, very well done. So I wanted to call and talk to you about something I think I've kind of combatted most of my adult life. Um, it's a, the one, one phrase, I guess, is the inner critic. But the more ominous title is imposter syndrome. Okay. So I, um, what kind of brought it up was one of your callers. I listened to not too long ago, was a young gentleman that was, um, you'd get burnt out really quick on a job and switch to a new one every several months or so. And then after that, I was just like, you know what, I need, I need to call Dr. John.
So, um, I'm actually taking a new position, um, at the start of the year. Really excited about it. Um, but then here come all these feelings of, are they going to find out that I'm not the right one? Do I know enough? Do I, am I smart enough? Will I contribute enough? Like all of these things that are telling me that I don't measure up. Okay. Um, and when I was starting to write some of this stuff down to kind of keep my thoughts in order, I was like, you know, I think I've dealt with this for a long time. It just manifests in different ways. Um, like one example would be when I was going through undergrad, um, when I would, you know, write all these down and, you know, demand evidence from them, as you would say, um, graduated with honors, uh, 3.8, you know, GPA. So it did really well, but the entire time I was just like, is this, is this major for me? Like, am I smart enough to do this for, for my life? You know?
Is, um, who taught you that your thoughts about yourself didn't count as much as somebody else's?
Um, just home. Um, so like in the about me stuff, um, I had a pretty strict upbringing, I would say. Um, I know my parents probably had the best intentions.
Sure. But it was the way I absorbed it and the way I have kind of been brought up to think about myself was, you know, minimizing pretty much everything.
So, so there's a pretty strict church.
Oh, so good. I was gonna say, there's, um, there's some pretty compelling research about strictness and strictness void of relationship creates very anxious, uncertain kids. Yeah. Because there's a message of strictness, if you will, um, that ultimately says you cannot be trusted. And there's some truth to that. You're a child, of course, you can't be trusted. Right? But there's this, it's the air you breathe. Your thoughts are stupid. What you think you want to do is stupid. The things that you think are going to make you feel good are stupid. You want to be in relationships? Stupid. And it's just this, it's this, it becomes your heartbeat. There is some power to very strict parents who also have very deep relationships with their kids. That's what I'm aiming for. I'm a strict dad. Um, like, let's take video games. I talk about that a lot. I'm very strict when it comes to video games. And I also know that because I've said no over here, means I have to be very open to doing things with my kids. Because I've taken this option off the table for them, which means we've got to spend time together, which means you gotta kick a soccer ball, which means I have tons of opportunity to tell my kids how that I'm proud of them, that they're doing good work. We laugh together. They get to see that they can make their old man laugh, right? Or they're faster than me, or whatever the thing is. And so the strictness is in combination with relationship, and that is the quadrant I'm aiming for. But if you grew up in a home that was just, you know, why we don't do this because we don't want to burn in hell, and you're dumb, right? Not a conducive way to create an adult who feels certain about anything, right?
Yeah. Other than your own demise, right?
Oh my gosh. Yeah. So, yeah, that was, yeah, we went to, you know, church every Wednesday, sometimes, you know, multiple times, twice on Sundays, of course. I was a norm. Uh, Dad was in law enforcement, so it was always like, it's like my same house and behavior and perception were everywhere. Not misbehave because then I look like I can't control my kids, or we get nasty looks at church, or all those things. And if he's in law enforcement, it's, you can't misbehave because if you hold hands with that girl, that's gonna lead you to dancing. And if you dance, that's gonna lead you to smoking cigarettes. And if you smoke cigarettes, you're a murderer, right?
Right. And that's, that's what law, I mean, that's the world, right? That's their world.
Yeah. And so, um, everything's a gateway drug. So all I have to say is this, um, I want to back out and just teach on this for a second. Is that cool?
I'm gonna use you as a proxy. So, okay. Your brain is always scanning 24/7, 365, asking, and again, I'm, I'm way oversimplifying this, but it's always asking, am I safe? Do I belong? Where is my tribe? Right? So, am I safe here? Do I have a tribe to have a gang? And does this feel good? The opposite being, am I in pain? Right? And it's scanning all the time for these questions. And if you find yourself in a new environment, are they paying you more money, by the way?
Uh, it'll be the same pay, but, um, like right now, I'm working from home and I think part of my issue is just where I left. I had a really great relationship and I don't, like, I'm, you know, pretty isolated. Just really hard to get any sort of meaningful interaction. So, right. This place will have some, some interaction. This will be like a hybrid thing.
So very cool. So, so this idea of, am I going to belong here? And so your body's already spinning like, man, I don't know about this. And then the safety, what if they meet me and they don't like me? And if they don't like me, I'm gonna get fired. If I get fired, and and I'm not, man, this is a gift that people who work in law enforcement give their kids. But it also turns into a curse of an adult. You are trained as the child of somebody in law enforcement to think 17 steps down the road. And you very quickly, I'm guessing, can go from, what if I don't know enough to, I'm homeless and destitute. And my family's fear, catastrophizing is one of my go-tos.
Well, hey, it's because our dads, my dad's the same. That guy loved me like crazy. And all day, every day, he dealt with murder. And so he knew the steps to not get murdered. And that was right imposed on, like, on as a kid. And so, man, everything was done out of love. And also it made for an insecure adult. Like, I don't know, I don't know how to walk. I don't know what to do. There's murderers everywhere, right? And it's just spinning.
So, um, Claire Joseph has a couple of great definitions of imposter syndrome. One is, imposter syndrome is the gap between how you currently see yourself as being and who you think you need to be. And for your whole life, somebody has been telling you who you need to be. And instead of teaching you how to ask yourself that question. Okay, that's number one. Number two is, imposter syndrome is the fear of others judging you the same way you judge yourself. And you are not nice to Christian, are you?
Not at all. Because Christian sucks and he's never doing it right and he's always good. Come on, come on, Christian. Oh, now he's going to hell.
Ah, got it. Right. There's no way. There's no way for Christian to win. And so you spend a ton of time thinking about Christian and how is Christian going to keep safe? And I won't put you on the spot, but I often see folks who are, um, world-class, I'll say this nicely, I won't say liars, but exaggerators. They're able to get in and out of social situations or work situations, and they're able to navigate this and navigate this because they've been practicing it since they were a kid. They're very, very skilled at it. And then all of a sudden, they find themselves in a professional position and they have either said they could or demonstrated or kind of around the edges given the impression that you can do this job. Cool, you're hired. And then it goes, oh, no.
Yeah. Right. You're talking to a guy that hired an accounting student to come into my office. You sneak into my office, and he taught me how to use Excel when I was running multi-million dollar budgets because I didn't know how. Right? I had to go get extra training from a student who was paying me tuition dollars so that I could do my job. Right? And so,
[Music]
Let me just say this. Ask you this. Are you a fraud? Are you a fake?
No.
You're not. I know you're not.
No.
Okay. So self-doubt is about what you know you can do and can't do. Self-doubt is about skills. All right? If you don't have self-doubt, you know what you can do and you know what you can't do. Imposter syndrome is not about what you think you can or can't do. It's about who you think you are. And that's a huge difference. That you don't belong, that you're never going to be enough, that you're going to get fired, that you're going to screw this thing up, you're not going to fit in at this new job. What, right? It's a feeling in your body that you don't belong in this job, or you don't belong in this room, or you don't belong in this marriage. That's imposter syndrome. Okay.
And so I'll ask you, so, so solving this problem, let me say this, solving this problem isn't about trying to get new skills. It might, you might need to learn some stuff in your job. In fact, I would hate it for you if you took a new job and you don't have anything to learn. That would be a lame existence. Hopefully, you have tons of new things to learn, right?
Yeah. Yeah, it'll be a plenty to learn for sure.
Yeah. Going into a situation and not knowing things is only bad when you've lied about what you know. If you've misrepresented yourself, if you haven't done that, then going into a situation and not knowing what to do next is called being a human. You've heard me on this show say, I don't know. When somebody calls me with their problem, or I've been pretty open about a number of times, I call an expert like Dr. Lynn Jennings or Dr. Michael Gomez or Dr. Lane Norton. I call him and ask him, hey, I'm getting this. I'm having a call today on the show. I don't have any experience with this. Walk me through what, uh, what you would do because you're an expert in this thing. Like that's just, that's being a normal human being. And so that comes down. The cool thing is getting over imposter syndrome is an internal thing. It's not an external thing. You see what I'm saying?
So, yeah. Go ahead.
So I've done a lot. What do you think?
That makes so much sense because like growing up, like I have, like one of the phrases I heard repeated a lot was, you have so much potential. Why aren't you doing X, Y, or Z? Like, why are you only getting a B? Like, why, why aren't you doing this homework? Like, why aren't you, whatever? Or when I would, even younger, when I would be upset or something, I got, I'll give you something to cry about. Like, there was, there was no physical abuse, but there was that threat that whatever you're upset about is not worth what you're, like, the energy or effort you're putting. I mean, granted, I was probably young and I wanted the toys I couldn't, you know, I couldn't have it or whatever. But, you know, growing up and that's all you hear, right?
So am I even, so you just, you just nailed imposter syndrome. Number one, the finish line always moved on you. Yeah. Hey, dude, I got all these A's and a B. You couldn't have got one more B, one more A? Really? Yeah. You know, like, seriously, is that who you are? You're just an all A's and a B kind of guy? And so, right. So you go home and you have this like, I did it. I got all A's and a B. And then the finish line moves. And then you would have got straight A's and it's like, one of these is at 90. You barely made it. And then, all right, so the finish line moves again. And then at the same time, you're being told on repeat, you cannot trust your feelings. Bam. I hit my head. Oh, that hurts. No, it didn't. I'll give you something to cry about. Right? And it's this, it's this, it's like, um, it's like, uh, like an hourglass, right? With the sand, like just slowly draining out of, out of it. That's what happened to your ability to trust yourself. And so what you have to practice moving forward is, how do I trust Christian again? No, not again. How do I trust Christian? Period. And here's the way I've had to learn to trust myself. I hold two things in, in one, in one hand and one in the other. In my left hand, I hold, bad things could happen. I could get fired. I can get hit by a dump truck. And so I'm gonna make sure I've got life insurance so my family's taken care of. And I'm going to make sure I'm really good when I show up at work. I hold that very loosely. What I hold relatively tightly, in the other hand, is, it's probably not going to happen. Does that make sense? So I give myself grace. I make room for, maybe this isn't as big a deal as your, as your body's making it out to be. Maybe it's not. So let's don't respond to an email for 24 hours. On the other side of it is, hey, my body's telling me this is a huge deal. It might be. So in 24 hours, I'm gonna re-examine this. I'm just gonna learn to trust myself over time. And when my body starts to feel like I don't belong in a room, like I'm an imposter, like I'm fake, like I'm, ah, I just smile. And then I'm curious, what are you trying to protect me from? Because I know this. Here's, here's the thing that happened. We got, I got a call out of the blue. I'm getting on an airplane. I got a call out of the blue, hey, Jordan Peterson's team just reached out to you. Um, would you, would you be on his show tomorrow morning in Los Angeles? Um, I was like, okay. And then I thought, oh man, that guy's real, real, real smart. And we don't agree on everything. And he is a controver, he loves contra. What if I end up getting dragged into deep water and he's smarter than me and we head off into the, like, he's a union psychologist and I'm not. In fact, dude, I started going. And then it ended up with, who do you think you've already be sitting at this table? And then I started smiling. And I was like, oh, I know what you're protecting me from. Embarrassment, getting canceled, looking dumb, right? And then I worked myself back. Dude, I've worked in colleges for years. I've been with faculty members who are brilliant and have wonderful minds and interesting perspectives. And that's my. So I was able to just demand evidence from it and reverse engineer it to, I'm just gonna have a great conversation. And if I look dumb, my wife still likes me on most days. My kids love me, right? And I can go back to being a high school basketball coach. I love. I was good at that. And so I was able to land in a place where I could have a good conversation. And now they're, that particular episode's got millions and millions of views because it was, it wasn't a. And I found also Dr. Peterson be a lovely human being, like off air, he was a great, great guy. So all that to say is, no matter how good you think you are, I've got two PhDs. I've got all this stuff. I've got a number one bestselling. But my first thought was, you don't belong at that table. Who do you think you are? Right? It still happens. And then I'm just gonna work through my process. I'm gonna be curious about what my body's trying to protect me from. Am I safe? Do I belong here? And does this feel good? I'm going to be off to the races. Is that cool?
Yeah. Cool. My hope for you is you you begin to trust yourself as much as your employer trusts you. Are you married?
Yep.
Does your wife trust you?
Yep. No question.
Are you worthy of her trust? Do you lie to her a lot?
No.
You cheat on her?
Nope.
Okay. So your wife, who you love and trust, has said, I trust you. A, a for-profit company, who can only stay open if they make money, has picked you as the best person to lead that organization in that particular area. They hired you to help them serve people so that they can make money to stay open. They picked you. So it sounds like the only person who doesn't trust Christian in this equation is Christian. And maybe Christian's family, who again, loved you deeply in an effort to keep you safe, ended up robbing you of the ability to walk on your own two feet. And so your life mission for the next five years, 10 years, is learning to trust Christian. Learning to trust your feelings. Learning when to know when, when your feelings are bananas out to lunch, they're way off. Um, learning when to make the next right move. Learning when, hey, this is something I should really be scared about, or, uh, it's just my body being anxious again. You're going to practice those things. Write them down. Write them down. Write them down. Write them down. Check in with your wife. Chances are she's tired of Christian talking to her husband the way you talk to you because she loves you. But remember, self-doubt is about what you can and can't do. You don't have that. Imposter syndrome is, who do you think you are to even be in this room? And my hope is over time, with practice and with intentionality, you can lean back and throw your shoulders back and say, I'm Christian, and I've earned the right to sit at this table. Your move, man. Congratulations on your new job. You're gonna do awesome.