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What if the problem isn’t your job, but the version of yourself you had to become to succeed in it? Corporate jobs don’t trap us because they’re evil. They trap us because they slowly teach us to disconnect from ourselves. If you're in corporate America and your life looks successful on paper but feels empty in practice, you’re not alone.
This podcast is a space for the quiet questions you don’t say out loud at work. We explore the inner side of change: the fear of starting over, self-sabotage, the trap of external expectations, imposter syndrome, and the unsettling moment when you realize someone else’s definition of success isn't enough for you.
This isn’t about quitting your job overnight or chasing money, but asking what feels right for you and finding clarity before making your next move. We deliver actionable strategies for complex career transitions. From managing ADHD-related overwhelm at work to overcoming the disconnect of the corporate grind.
You’re not broken. You’ve just outgrown the life you built.
New episodes weekly.
Welcome to episode 94 of Working towards our
purpose. Today's episode, we're going to talk about the side effects
of imposter syndrome. But before we get into it, we're going to
take a moment to slow down and check in with ourselves.
All right. Hopefully you got to see feel where you're
at today. Right now, for me, I'm in a pretty
good mood. It's a beautiful day out. I'm gonna go outside after recording
this, so I'm excited about that. I've also had
my second cup of coffee, so perhaps a little over caffeinated, but
excited to talk about today's episode, imposter syndrome,
which I did an episode on before imposter syndrome,
and it was one of the most popular episodes and
I feel like I got something new to say about it. So
excited, excited to jump into it because, yeah, imposter
syndrome, I feel like, is just one of those things that is such a.
It's so common. Like so many of us feel it and
yeah, we don't want it to let it stop us. So.
Yeah. So what is imposter syndrome? You know, from a start,
it's the feeling that you are
inadequate or not good enough or maybe you
don't know whatever it is you're doing enough.
Maybe you're newer. Maybe, um, it's
the feeling that somebody else is, is better suited to do it
than you are. And yeah, I think when it comes
down to it, it's just lack of self belief. But specifically
when you are trying to like do something new or
trying to reach for something, usually that's when it pops up
and, and yeah, I mean it's, it's such a real
feeling. It feels so real when you're, when your brain is telling you like you're
not good enough at this, you can't do this yet, or somebody is way better
than this. Why, why are you doing this? When there's other more qualified people
out there, you know, it feels, feels very real.
And I think a lot of times with imposter
syndrome, it's, it's often
telling the people that do have
something to say or they do have something to say
about the topic. It's not like the lack of experience,
it's just the lack of confidence
in yourself and your self belief. So I think
that's kind of interesting.
But yeah, so the side effects of imposter syndrome, like what happens when you
give in to imposter syndrome and when you let imposter syndrome win.
For me, I have a specific story about this
so back when I was still in my corporate career and
I was looking for a way to get out of it, I was looking
to utilize skills that I had that I could make money
at in a different career. And the only thing that I knew how to do
other than the engineering degree that I had, was
audio engineering, which is a completely different type of engineering.
I know they're both engineers, but audio engineering is
way different than mechanical engineering. But I knew how to
record audio. I was really into music. I loved playing music
throughout high school, and I knew how to record
a good amount. But when I was thinking about
what can I do to leave this corporate job, I thought about
recording musicians and recording
bands and. And I wanted to do that, but
I felt like I didn't know enough yet. And
there may have been some truth to that, but I also
felt an immense amount of imposter syndrome. Like, I thought about
me sitting down and recording bands and being like, how could I do that?
I don't read music. I don't know theory. I
don't know so many different things about music that
I should if I'm going to record bands. I've never really done it that
much. And yeah, just all kinds of
excuses from the software that I use. It's not the industry standard pro
tools, like, you got to learn that before you can do it. And just
all these excuses because I felt like I wasn't good enough to do it.
So as I was thinking about leaving this corporate job,
I thought about it for a second, about recording music, but I'm like, no, that's
not going to work, and you'll have to find something else. And then that's when
I kind of stumbled upon podcasting. And
I was listening to a podcast one day coming home from work, and I was
really into listening to podcasts because I had a long commute at the time. And
I found this cool new podcast that was super specific
niche, and the content was great, but the audio
quality was not great. It was really bad. And I
remember being on the highway, turning my volume up all the way. I could
hardly hear it. It was really noisy. And that's when I thought
to myself, oh, if I had that audio file, I can make it sound better,
I can level it, I can remove the noise.
Doing that's easy. Then I thought about it and I was like, oh,
maybe that's a business idea, and maybe I can do that. I'm not good enough
at music with audio, but I can certainly do spoken word,
like one vocal. I was confident enough in that.
So that sent me down this whole path of
getting into podcasting and doing podcast editing.
And for some reason, I was confident enough in that because
it wasn't all the way to music. It was just a little piece of it.
So it was a trick for me that I didn't feel imposter syndrome with podcasting,
but I did for music. And yeah, it
sent me down this whole path. And I had this side business for a while,
and then I opened up a podcast studio and I started working with
clients more and more and really getting into podcast
development and social media clips
and all this stuff that surrounded podcasting. And then
I kind of realized a few years into this, I
quit my corporate job. I was trying to make that podcasting business work full time.
And then after a few years of doing that, I was like, why
am I doing this? Where did podcasting come from?
And then I kind of had to think back and I was like, oh, yeah,
I did podcasting because I didn't think I was good enough at music.
And the original plan was to make enough money with podcasting
and then you can do music for fun and there won't be any pressure on
it. And that kind of never really happened. And then
that's when I started making a switch of
focusing more on actual music instead of
podcasting. So anyways, long story short or no,
that was a long story long of explaining
the side effects of imposter syndrome. Now I'm doing music.
Now I'm recording music and bands and artists, and I'm doing what
I want to be doing and what I've wanted to be doing. But because I
had imposter syndrome with recording music, I. I
didn't allow myself to do it. So the side effect is that
my path kind of got derailed or I took a
longer way to get there. And I'll say that in a
regret for a way, because I think I learned things that I needed to. And
this podcast exists because of my path down podcasting. So that's been something that's
been fulfilling for me and I wouldn't change it.
But it's interesting now how I can look back and look at
the side effects, side effects of imposter syndrome.
It led me down this path that was trying to
walk adjacent to the one that I wanted to do but
didn't believe in myself enough to. So, yeah,
moving on from the story, recently, this past
weekend, I went for a walk with a dear friend
and this kind of came up and I was kind of
describing how what I just did the story of
not doing music for so long. And then my friend was describing
how they wanted to take another
class in their area of expertise and how
if they took this next class, then they would feel
good enough or certified enough to do what it is they
want to do. And I don't know, we had this moment where we kind of
both saw that we were doing similar things. We were both
looking at finding something to tell us
that it's okay for us to pursue the thing that we really want, when
in reality, we were just looking for our own permission to
do the thing that we want to do. We're plenty qualified. In
wasn't a lack of knowledge, but a lack of feeling like you're good
enough to do it, which is imposter syndrome,
the feeling that you're an imposter. So, yeah,
it was really quite interesting.
And if you're struggling with imposter syndrome, I feel like
things that. What's helped me in the past is vocalizing
it and saying it out loud. So
me going for a walk with a friend, a close friend,
and vocalizing it, that's helpful because then you can kind of point.
Point the mirror. You can be mirrored to your. What am I trying to say?
Your friend can mirror you and you can see, like, oh,
I'm just afraid of this. I'm not actually not good enough.
And I've been fortunate to have friends in the
past who have done that for me, and I'm definitely grateful for that.
So if you do struggle with imposter syndrome, I feel like finding
community in what it is that you're doing. If it's music or
art or writing a novel, whatever it is.
Finding community where you can talk about your
imposter syndrome and get it out in the open, and then you can
all be like, oh, wow, yeah, I struggle with that too. Or I struggle with
that too. You're really good. Why do you struggle with that? I'm not good. And
you can kind of get it out of your head, and then it
becomes less real and it has less weight over you. So.
So that's kind of one takeaway, I think, if you're struggling with imposter syndrome. But
then I also kind of wrote myself a little
note while I was planning for this episode, and
it's kind of like something that I would tell my younger self
myself when I was quitting corporate, and
I didn't think I was good enough to record music or
to work in music. So then I went. I went down the podcasting
route. I would tell myself this that what's most
important isn't the things that you know, but how
much you care about it. You can always learn more
skills, but you can't replace the drive that you have for something.
And I think that that is so important
because you can always learn things,
but you have to have the drive to want to learn them. So what's important
isn't how much I know about audio recording
or music or guitars or music theory. It's
the drive that I have to want to make music and to want to
create. And that's the most important thing. So if you're struggling with
imposter syndrome, maybe you can try to think of it in that way.
Is it the lack of skills that's holding me back or is it the
passion for it that's holding me back? And maybe that's
helpful. I don't know. But for me, I felt like that would be a
helpful thing to tell my old self. So. Yeah.
And then I also want to leave you with one question.
In talking about imposter syndrome and feeling
like you're not good enough,
what would it feel like if you believed in yourself? Or how would
things look different if you believed in your own abilities?
And yeah, I don't know. Just maybe ask yourself that question because I think
it's important to believe in yourself for sure.
I know it's really hard to do that.
But just imagine, even if
you don't believe in yourself, what would it look like if you did believe in
yourself? And yeah,
maybe think about that for a minute if you want to. But
that's all I have for you today. I'm imposter syndrome. Hopefully this was
helpful if you struggle with your inner critic.
I have a 7 day free guide of softening your inner critic
because I think imposter syndrome and inner critic go hand in hand. I actually have.
So it's a seven day free guide and one of the days specifically talks about
imposter syndrome and how to how to move through imposter
syndrome. So if you struggle with imposter syndrome, this guide might be
helpful. It's free. It's a PDF download that
you can find anywhere. It's called Softening youg Inner Critic. It's in the show
notes, it's in all the links. Thank you for
being here. Thank you for listening. I appreciate all of you and
I'll see you on another episode real soon. Take care.
Sa.