If you focus too much on your shortcomings and ignore the value you bring to your organization, what started out as productive mindfulness can balloon into insecurity or imposter syndrome, holding you back from reaching your full potential, writes Alisa Cohn in the Harvard Business Review’s Ascend Newsletter.
Here are a few strategies we can all use to combat self-doubt and build confidence in the workplace.
Channel an alter ego. Sometimes, being too tuned in to our own limitations can make it difficult to move past them. When this happens, it’s helpful to gain a little distance from yourself by channeling an alter ego. Taking on the persona of someone more confident can help you acknowledge the challenges you face without letting them completely take you over. Psychologists call this “self-distancing” — a method of gaining perspective that empowers you to get out of your own way and activate more productive behaviors.
View yourself as others do. Another strategy that can help snap you out of excessive self-consciousness is to intentionally think about yourself from someone else’s point of view. Cohn offers this example:
“While waiting my turn to interview for a prestigious coaching group, I felt myself getting so nervous that my brain started fogging up. I knew I was qualified, and yet I could feel my confidence evaporating by the second. To escape this spiral of insecurity, I consciously shifted my perspective to think about how my client viewed me. I had helped the client make miraculous strides in their leadership skills and we had become close. I thought about this person laughing at me and saying, ‘What do you have to be nervous about? You’re a rock star!’ Immediately my anxiety melted away, my brain cleared up, and I was able to perform at my best.”
Tune out uninformed feedback. Constructive feedback can be incredibly valuable, but when feedback is not constructive, it’s essential to learn to ignore it. Especially if you hold a leadership role or some other visible position within your organization, everyone will have some opinion on how you could do your job better. You have to remember that not everyone’s opinion is useful.
Reframe self-talk. Whether we realize it or not, we talk to ourselves all the time. This self-talk is mostly unconscious, and it’s often highly negative, keeping you stuck in a loop of doubt. Identifying these negative internal voices and intentionally replacing them with a more positive, productive narrative can help get you out of this paralysis and move toward action.