{"id":1807,"date":"2019-06-10T15:45:36","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T15:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/2020\/02\/19\/moving-past-imposter-syndrome-and-stepping-into-your-light\/"},"modified":"2019-06-10T15:45:36","modified_gmt":"2019-06-10T15:45:36","slug":"moving-past-imposter-syndrome-and-stepping-into-your-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/?p=1807","title":{"rendered":"Moving Past Imposter Syndrome and Stepping Into Your Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nI recently announced that Stillpoint Counseling is expanding this July.\u00a0 This is exciting news!\u00a0 After just 1 year of going into private practice solo, I am humbled to say it was successful.\u00a0 It IS successful!\u00a0 Every day I wake up and think, \u201cIs this really happening?!\u201d\u00a0 It is in that moment I make the choice to walk humbly forward to the next task or the next decision for the business.\u00a0 I wrote a blog post last year about this time on the fear I had when starting the business.\u00a0 All those same thoughts hold true, but it is interesting to reflect on the differences in the process from last year to this year.<\/p>\n

Last year that post was all about how our negative thoughts and self-doubt \u201cweed\u201d up our mind and can hold us back from growth.\u00a0 Check out the post here for the inspiration on the power of intention and finding the middle path between being fearful and being fearless.<\/a>\u00a0 This year I have much the same feelings however it is much more of an embodied experience of walking the middle path.\u00a0 By embodied, I mean a tangible, real, and felt experience as opposed to a cognitive process.<\/p>\n

To start my explanation, I want to discuss the popular psychological term – \u201cimposter syndrome\u201d.\u00a0 While not a clinical diagnosis, you hear many people talk about this phenomenon to describe the pattern of behavior where people doubt their accomplishments and have a persistent fear being exposed as a fraud.\u00a0 Imposter syndrome holds us back when we become consumed by the thoughts of \u201cyou aren\u2019t good enough\u201d, \u201cwhat if people find out you are scared\u201d, or \u201cyou don\u2019t have all the answers, you should just quit\u201d.\u00a0 Those thoughts are the imposter or the self-critic telling you that it would be easier to quit because taking the risk would mean allowing others to see your truth.\u00a0 The imposter would tell you that the truth they would see is your faults and short comings.\u00a0 The real truth is that you risk people seeing your greatness and sometimes that is just as scary.<\/p>\n

Marianne Williamson has said,
\n\u201cOur deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.\u00a0 Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.\u00a0 It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.\u201d\u00a0(Read the rest of her poem here)<\/a>
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\nI think we fear our greatness because to truly be great we have to let go of the control a little bit.\u00a0 We have to be vulnerable.\u00a0 We have to expose our secret dreams and desires to the people and energies around us.\u00a0 The risk is the dream may get lost or we may get hurt in the process of putting it out into the world.\u00a0 BUT, the truth is that holding on to the dream doesn\u2019t necessarily keep it safe.\u00a0 It just keeps the dream buried and will never manifest.<\/p>\n

The answer to making great changes and reaching our goals is still in finding the middle path.\u00a0\u00a0 This does start with challenging the negative thoughts and beliefs that hold us back.\u00a0 However, I feel this middle path in my body more these days.\u00a0 The word for the felt sense is \u201chumble\u201d.\u00a0 As I mentioned when I started this post: \u201cI humbly walk forward to the next task\u201d.
\nThe definition of humble is \u201chaving or showing a modest or low estimate of one’s own importance.\u201d\u00a0 This may sound self-deprecating, but I believe it is the ultimate sense of finding the middle path toward embracing our full potential.\u00a0 When we are humble, we acknowledge and embrace our own insignificance in a larger whole.\u00a0 We see our accomplishments not as a symbol of our own talents and skills, but as a reflection of our harmony with the world around us.<\/p>\n

This business is my dream and it is wonderfully a blend of different parts of me; however, the growth of this business is due to the energy and consciousness of many people in our community.\u00a0 It is the colleagues that have said, \u201cI want to be part of this\u201d.\u00a0 It is the community members that have sent referrals saying, \u201cI think this is what this family needs right now.\u201d\u00a0 It is clients who show up consistently and say \u201cI am worth this work and I am going to use it in my life and show others who I am\u201d.\u00a0 It is mothers, fathers, children, foster parents, teachers, and so many more who are making choices to live holistically and to foster mindfulness in their daily lives.\u00a0 If it weren\u2019t for all those people, I wouldn\u2019t be able to live out my dream.<\/p>\n

So, walking the middle path is felt for me in humbleness.\u00a0 When I feel fear, I step back to the middle path by remembering all those that are on this journey with me and who are doing far harder tasks than me day to day.\u00a0 In that moment, I am grateful for this opportunity.\u00a0 Grateful I get to shine, because so many others are lighting the path for me as they shine their greatness in this world.<\/p>\n

I. Am. Humbled.\u00a0 I am lower in importance than this work – this important work of lifting our community out of chronic stress holistically, and the work that is driving the growth of this business.\u00a0 Gosh, even in writing these words and reading them on the computer screen, I am in awe and so grateful that this is manifesting now and that I am able to be part of it.\u00a0 When I stay grounded in that knowledge, the imposter is squashed.\u00a0 I know my truth is to serve in this way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently announced that Stillpoint Counseling is expanding this July.\u00a0 This is exciting news!\u00a0 After just 1 year of going into private practice solo, I am humbled to say it was successful.\u00a0 It IS successful!\u00a0 Every day I wake up and think, \u201cIs this really happening?!\u201d\u00a0 It is in that moment I make the choice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillpointcounselingandwellness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}