What is imposter syndrome?

So let's go ahead and start talking about what today's show is all about today. I wanna talk about what is imposter syndrome,

just because I know as we get closer to the holidays, I wanna talk a little bit about mental health. Again, I am not a psychologist. I don't pretend to be a psychologist. I just have a lot of insight. I dealt with a lot of mental health issues. I had a really traumatic event. I've had a lot of traumatic events actually happen in my life.

But I thought it was so important for us to sit down as a a community and talk about these things that affect us. I think that pretending like we're okay, this whole suffer in silence, like suck it up and suffer in silence, just needs to end. So I wanna talk about my experiences and experiences I've had coaching people. So what exactly is imposter syndrome?

So imposter syndrome is the persistent inability to believe in one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills. So just myself, I will tell you how many times I feel, why am I here? Like who am I? Like, you know, why am I the one teaching these people? And that is an example of imposter syndrome.

Now, I definitely think that it's overused. I think that there's a lot of people that are not suffering from it and they just have low self-esteem. But if you are a business owner, and if you suddenly feel like this anxiety like in your chest and you're like, I'm just winging this, like what if people find out I'm not successful as I,

I think I am. That is a great example of imposter syndrome. So, and that's, and that's just, you know, again, it can be low self-esteem, but a lot of times it is just simply a woman feeling this way. Kate Winslet, who played Rose on Titanic, I feel like everyone should know who that is in that role,

she consistently felt like people are gonna realize she's not as talented as they thought she was. And it's this deep seated fear. Now it can manifest itself in so many different ways, right? It can manifest itself in anxiety, in depression, in feeling lethargic and feeling paralyzed with fear. Where theirs is the thing, right, is that the whole point of imposter syndrome is that,

you know, rationally you are a badass, but there's like this little evil voice on your shoulder saying like, no, you're not. Who are you? No one cares what you have to say. Like these really toxic things. And I think so many of us, maybe not every day, but there's sometimes we're like laying in bed. You know,

we're right, we're ready to fall asleep. And just as a business owner, especially women business owners, we're sitting there saying like, what if I wake up tomorrow and nobody, nobody's gonna be there at my grooming salon. No one is going to pay attention to what I'm doing. What if this is all fake? And it's this really insane place,

right? It's this really toxic place that we go to. And I just wanna look for other examples outside of the grooming industry so people can hear it. Because maybe you're like, well, you know, how do I know? These are great examples? I just looked really quick online. Some examples of imposter syndrome would be, my friends are only still here because they pity me,

right? So another example would be, you know, in your, in a grooming business, the equivalent would be, you know, people only like me because I'm cheap, right? Not because you do a good skill, not because you're a great groomer, not because you have great customer service, but because of my price point. People will only stay with me if I'm cheap.

Another one would be, I'm not as good as people tell me I am. They're just being polite to me. How many of you guys have like put out a groom in a Facebook group and people are like, oh my god, it's great, it's beautiful, it's amazing, dah dah, dah it. And you kind of deflect it. You're like,

oh, it's not that good. I'm not this person. You always like idolize and put up on a pedestal, somebody else, right? You know, we can name names, but it's so interesting, especially women business owners, we do this a lot where we'll be like, oh, you know, I'm not this person, therefore I'm unworthy, right?

Another saying would be, this good thing is just a fluke. Now, I had this really unhealthy habit in my life that if something bad happened, it felt right. Like it felt like I was always waiting for the the, I used the saying the other shoe would drop. I was constantly waiting for something bad to happen because that felt normal and that felt right.

And then when something felt good, it was a fluke. It was just gonna happen for a short period of time. And it really came down to, and I really kind of stepped back. Like I didn't think, oh, I'm a bad person, deserve bad things to happen to me. What it was is that I was just feeling like deep down,

I didn't deserve good things to happen to me. Not because I did anything in particular to not deserve them, but you know, it was almost like being a supporting character and everyone's story and needing to feel like if something good happened to me, there would be a consequence. And again, we're kind of going outside of imposter syndrome, but I think this whole mentality ties really well into itself.

And I think we need to expose it because I think a lot of people are fighting this like, you know, suck it up, rub some dirt in it, and then going home and being upset and crying and doing this in silence. And it's not okay. You know, as an industry we have incredibly empathetic women who deserve to feel good. And I'm not gonna sit by and pretend like this is not an a problem in our industry.

Another saying would be, everyone is going to realize that I'm just a fraud. And some days I feel like that, I'm like, who am I? Like, you know, people will put like, well what are your credentials? And I, and I'm thinking to myself, oh my God, I don't have a PhD or even, you know,

a an M B a A MAs, you know, master's in business. You know, I don't have those things. And I'm like, am I less worthy because of that? Am I less effective? Of course not. You know, I don't think spending the next eight years in college is going to help anyone here. I think what's gonna help them is getting,

you know, boots on the ground and making courses and helping them change their lives. So it's things like that. We create that. And a lot of times I'll see people who are like, I wanna get my master groomer certification before I open a business. Because if I don't have that, then everyone's gonna realize that I'm just a crappy dog groomer.

I'm a bad CAC groomer. And they're not. And it's so interesting. It's like this piece of paper do doesn't make you more valid. It doesn't make you more worthy. And on the flip side, you know, having that piece of paper, you know, having that certification is an accomplishment. We can say it's both. We can say getting this,

you know, certificate does not make you more worthy. While also saying accomplishing something is amazing. We can say both guys as an industry. And I think that's really important. Another one is saying, what if I'm just faking being a good person and everyone is falling for it? I sometimes feel this way with coaching is again, like I know rationally that's not true.

Sometimes I'm like, man, like am I really helping these people? Like what if what I say to them is gonna destroy their lives? Like what if I'm not as good as I think I am? And that's not rational because if you talk to anyone, can, I just had a great coaching call today. If you talk to anyone who has been on my coaching calls,

who's ever been in any of my classes, I know the results I get, I know. But there's still this piece of me that tells me, what if you're wrong? You know? And it's not from a healthy place. It's not from that cautious healthy place. It's from this really toxic place. And it's either generally childhood trauma or it's relationship trauma.

You know, whether that's not having a mother who loved us enough, not having a father who supported us. Some of us have had kind of all of that, you know? And that doesn't mean that we can't grow up to have fantastic relationships with their parents. My dad unfortunately passed away before we could fix that relationship. You know? And I,

and I share with people that my dad, I think was very broken and broken. People hurt other people. I think about how unfortunate his life was and how unhappy he probably was. And as a healthy adult, now I can look back and realize that's what happened to him. It's not that he wanted to hurt me. He was just so unhappy.

He inflicted his unhappiness onto me and my siblings. One of the biggest aha moments I had, 'cause it crushed me. I remember being 18 years old. Now mind you, I moved when I was 16 and I was teaching a dog training class and I was so proud. 'cause here I was 18 and you think you're a hot shit. And I'm so smart and I'm teaching this giant class.

And he came to watch it and I'm like, oh my god, my dad's gonna see me shine. He's gonna see me be a badass. He's gonna see all this. And I'll never forget what he said to me. You know, he was smoking a cigarette. He was, he literally smoked a carton, not a pack, but a car and a cigarette today.

And he was flicking his cigarette. He said, man, it must really suck to know that your job can be replaced by a rolled up newspaper. And I will never forget how much that crushed me. And I was a smart, you know, ambitious 18 year old girl, but my daddy told me that I was useless and pathetic. And whether I wanna pretend otherwise,

that's incredibly damaging. You know? And maybe you didn't have that happen to you, you know? But as an adult, as a healthy adult now after going through a lot of therapy and learning a lot of things about me, I don't think he said that to hurt me. I think there was some kind of like jealous, mad feeling of like,

here she is living her dream and I'm suffering. You know? 'cause he was working a job he hated because he felt trapped and he was unhappy. And people like that hurt other people. And unintentionally, you know? So I don't think it was a bad person, but I think hurt people hurt other people. So, you know, things like that,

you know, that means I have to parent myself. I have to be my own cheerleader. So when in my head, you know, things like, man, nobody caress what you say. Nobody. Why are you even doing this? You know, people are gonna think this or they're gonna realize you're not as smart as you think you are. I have to go wait a minute.

And I parent myself. You know, river, you're amazing. You're helping so many people. You know, I have to be in my own head that supportive father figure of like, I'm so proud of you. I know it's hard to do this. I know this is outside your comfort. I know the last thing you wanna do is be in front of people.

'cause I don't like the spotlight. I I really, it was funny, I had a conversation with a friend of mine and I said, man, I wish I could just give someone my knowledge and they could go do this almost like a speech writer. But unfortunately sometimes we're called to these things, right? So being able to do that and parent myself,

soothe myself when these things happen, because that's what I wish I had. I wish I had a mom or a dad. My mom is much closer to me now. We've, you know, really grown closer. And a lot of that is though she wasn't parented in a healthy way. And so she has to in her, you know, fifties and sixties.

I don't know how my mom is, I feel bad. I'm like, I don't know. I'm doing some math. Not sure, you know, she looks good for her age no matter how old she is, you know, helping her parent herself because she didn't get the support that she needed. She needed that love and hugs and kisses and you can do anything you want.

And she didn't get that. So if she didn't get that, how could she give me that? And so I have to do it. So with things like imposter syndrome guys, we have to understand who we are and understand what we are giving ourselves. If we don't get it from somewhere else, it's these really toxic, unfortunate feelings. And I say women a lot because I think that women and men,

you know, without any politics involved, we tend to just feel differently. We are, we are socially trained to be humble. I mean, you would never hear a man say, I, I got into an accident because I wasn't being humble enough. That's, that's not how the universe works, right? That is a toxic part of our brain that says,

you do not deserve to succeed. You do not deserve, I'm getting goosebumps. That's how I know I'm on the right track. You know, you do not deserve to do well. And that's super toxic. And it's okay because we hear it in ourselves and we go, wait, wait, wait. If I had a loving father or a loving mother,

and I'm not saying you guys didn't, I didn't. So they love me now. And I know if my dad was alive, now he would be here for me. I really, well I hope, I hope he would have had the time to grow and to get out of those toxic cycles, you know, I hope. But that's unfortunately with death,

you, you don't know what someone could have been. You know, that said like, we have to break free of these things because it's the mindset. It doesn't matter how much money you're making, if your mindset is bad, if you feel like you deserve to go into a car accident, then that just means we have internal work to do. And give yourself some,

some grace. We can't be mean to ourself either. 'cause 'cause what happens is we get very like beat ourselves up again. It's like, not only are we like, man, you suck. You know, you weren't humble. You got into a car accident. Then the other side of it's like, you're being dumb. Don't be dumb Candace. Like,

what do you think this is? Just be kind to ourselves. Again, think about like the dog that's scared on the table, the dog that's like pancaking. What we wanna do is be super mad with the dog that's scared, but we know that he's just not used to being groomed. So we have to be kind, right? We have to train kindness and compassion,

right? While still getting things done where we can be so kind and compassionate. We don't get anything done. We've gotta find a balance. So that's where Candace, you can parent yourself there and say, you know, Candace, I, you know, that's a really unfortunate train of thought. You know, being humble is not the same as being humiliating.

You know, you taking care of your wonderful family, you having ambitions, you wanting to grow, you wanting to do more does not mean that you deserve bad things to happen to you. You know, no differently than a child gets cancer, right? A child doesn't get cancer 'cause he deserves it. You know, that's not because he like, you know,

colored the walls or something, right? We would never think of that to somebody else. If you just imagine you, I always think of my age around five or six. 'cause I had a traumatic event happen when I was around that age. And I just think about Little River, you know? And I like to just imagine braiding her hair and being like,

sweetie, you know, this isn't the way things work. You know, bad things don't happen to good people because they've done bad things or because they feel like they've gotten too big for their britches. That's not why bad things happen. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. And that's just the way the world works. You know, I've had amazing people in my life have ha horrible things happen to me.

I don't think my daughters died because I deserved it when it first happened. I did. Because that's what we do, right? We torture ourselves, right? I mean, that's what we do, right? I'm not a good enough mother. I'm not this, I'm not that. Therefore I deserve, that's not the way this goes. This is not the way the universe works.

If it is, you know, then I think that if there is a God, if there is a universal plan, I, I just can't buy that, you know, e I just can't, I can't imagine anything working that way. Maybe that's hopeful. Maybe that is, you know, maybe that's a little too rose colored glasses. I just don't buy it.

I don't buy that. The world is meant to be painful. I've ne once I decided that my life would be fun and that the world was meant to be fun, things got a lot easier. You know? And I don't know exactly what that means. And some days things suck, but guess what? Ultimately things are going to work out and you just have to have faith in that.

And some days they're gonna suck. Especially coming into the holiday season, I think preparing for these things, there are so many things in our industry that we don't talk about. Like, I agree, we need to raise our prices. I agree, we need to streamline our business, but there's, there's no way to do any of those things if we are mentally unhappy,

unprepared, you know, we just can't do it. Like, if you feel like if you feel like you don't deserve what you have, then it's impossible to get more of it. And on the flip side, if you have this very like, negative egotistical, I deserve, I earned dah, dah, dah, that's not good energy either. We've gotta find a balance,

right? Like, I don't think I deserve savvy groomer to do well. I think I've earned it. I think I've put in the time, I think I've been able to help enough people to earn a good living. And that's what I want for you guys. I want you guys to earn a good living, to build wealth, to build long term whatever it is that you want.

If that's freedom and flexibility, great. If that's simplicity, great. If that is a huge empire, great. Whatever you want in this season of life and in the next season of life, great. And I think that's the thing is rationally you feel like, okay, rationally you think, I know, I know I'm good at what I do,

but it's just this little heart space and it's, it's healing those either childhood wounds or you know, know just things that we haven't learned. You know? And I, I do wish I had had a different upbringing of warmth and support, but if I did, I couldn't be here for a lot of people. So I'm okay with it. Ultimately it all works out.

You know, it's, it really, really tough because in that scenario it's like, did I do something wrong? And you know, rationally you didn't. But emotionally things just feel, you know, you could have weird feelings about things that make zero sense. What's interesting, Megan, is when something bad happens, you don't go, oh goody, something amazing's gonna happen afterwards,

right? That's unfortunately you can tell, right? Because if, if you really believed in the 50 50 split, every time something bad happened, we would be like, oh, this sucks. But okay, what's the awesome thing? What, what's my prize? But we don't feel that way When something good happens, we say, oh, what's my punishment?

And that is generally either societal or childhood trauma. And especially as women, we are taught that you can be only so happy, right? It's kind of the high heel thing. You can look, you can look really sexy or you can be really comfortable, right? It's like that. Or even you've heard of like the crazy hot, like, women can't be beautiful,

smart and lovely. They can only be so much of so much, right? We can't be everything. It's just crazy. So I think that is really painful society wise, you know, and I'm not here to tackle society. I'm here to have us think about how it applies to our lives personally. Because I think that if we change the individuals,

we can change a culture. And especially in an industry that people treat us un you know, I think unintentionally poor, they don't know what we do and they don't understand what it is that we do. They don't understand how hard it is to do what we're doing. One of, you know, one of my coaching clients, she has a hurt shoulder.

It's because she does lots of big dogs and she's gonna have to cut her big dogs. And when we talked about it, she's like, I tried so hard not to do this. 'cause I didn't want them to think that I didn't love their dogs. And I'm like, girl, you are 26, you've hurt your shoulder, you're probably gonna need surgery.

Because you didn't want people to think you didn't love their dogs. Because that is what happens in our minds, these crazy leaps, right? And it can't be, I have to protect my body, you know, because I'm, some people are just not designed for it. There's some of us that can groom big dogs for 30, 40 years and not hurt.

And then some of us, our bodies just break down. I don't know if it's genes. I think some of it is we have bad habits. I think some of it is what we're using for mechanics. But I mean, we have a lot of big crazy dogs and those are hard to groom. But I want you to think about it. If you,

if you really believed when something bad happens, something good happens and something good happens, something bad happens, you really believe in 50 50. Then when something bad were to happen, you would think, oh goody goody, I get my prize now. But we don't, it's always the other way. It's always, we think of some, something bad happens to us and we're like,

oh, I deserve it because of this. Or Oh, I knew this couldn't last that long. You know, it could be your marriage. Right? You know, I was just thinking that if I was still married, I would be four years married. Today, this is my ex's wedding anniversary and it's crazy. You know, I can't believe that,

you know, I would've been there. And it's so weird to think about because it's weird to think that, you know, when I, when I got married, I was like, okay, like this is the person I spent the rest of my life with this and that. And then when that fell apart, it was my fault. And I felt awful.

Like I was a failure. Like, you know, here was this good thing and then something bad had to happen because things were too good. It's really toxic and it's not our fault that we feel that way, but it's our opportunity to say something nice to ourselves, right? You know, I wish I had had the parent that when I, when I feel that way and I feel like I can't do anything right and insert terrible feeling,

somebody would've just like picked me up as a little girl and just hugged me and be like, you can take on the world. Don't worry about it. Everything's gonna work out. But there wasn't that person. So I have to be that person. And it's really weird sounding, it's really weird to say like, okay, now in your mind, pretend that you're a little girl and comfort her.

But if you didn't have that, like I didn't have that, that's a great way to do it, right? And so like for Megan, like in that situation, you know, she can just sit there and imagine whatever age you remember yourselves needing that parenting and just being like, you know, Hey Megan, I, this is just a tragedy.

There's no reason people pass. You know, I wish there was, you know, there, there's no way. 'cause you wouldn't have never told me when my dad passed, like, oh, he passed because of this. Or my, I can say that my daughter's passed to help people, but that's not really the truth. It's that when my daughter's passed,

I took that hurt and anger and frustration and why me and I use that energy to help other people, right? And I'm sure for you, you used those feelings to do something good. Whether that was to put your time into, you know, your child or you know, make sure your marriage works better, right? You put that energy, you know,

you have two options. You can either stick in the woe is eye, why me? Or we can go, okay, you know what good can come from this and it's really hard. And there's no right or wrong way. If you stick in, woe his eye. You can do that. I think having a pity party is a good idea for a little bit.

Have it up, cake, balloons, the whole shebang and then decide what you wanna do. Because pretending like you don't deserve a pity potty is really not fair because, you know, suffering isn't is a complicated situation. You know, it's just how long you wanna stay there, right? How long do you wanna live in the pity party and how do you wanna leave?

You know? And it's your party. You can cry if you wanna, right? So don't feel bad. But you know, staying there, and we've all seen people that stay there. We've seen the people that suffer needlessly for a very long time. I had one client who had a boyfriend who died 20 years ago. Love of her life, it's awful,

but it's all she ever talked about. And she just stayed stuck. She never got married, she never had kids. She had this one poor dachshund that she tortured because she just was empty and just like made this poor dog crazy because, I don't know, I think she just needed something to love and dote on, right? And in a healthy way.

And we see that in our clients. You know, it's, it's easier to point it out in a client than it is for us. And so just give yourself some grace guys, you know? So that was today's topic. I hope that was useful to you guys. You know, it's all about what is imposter syndrome. And we talked a little bit also about some other mental health topics.