Why your inner imposter is your best friend if you want to be bigger, braver, bolder.

We’re only making plans for Nigel

If you’ve already met your imposter, you may be surprised to know how useful they can be.

My inner saboteur is called Nigel. He is my inner imposter, the whiny, nasal toddler in my head who tells me I don’t know what I am doing, I must be a fraud. There are so many other people who are more qualified, more authoritative, just-plain-better than me, so why am I bothering with all of this?

You may well have a name for yours.

You may even have read my blog on how to identify it and quieten that voice in your head.

Top takeaway from that post - to stop feeling like an imposter, stop thinking like one.

Choose to want something else for yourself.

The more you allow Nigel to talk, the more evidence he has that he is right, so the louder he becomes.

As you think, so shall you become, as Bruce Lee famously put it (I think, technically he stole that from Buddha, but I am splitting hairs here)

The less you think like an imposter, the more evidence you have that you can do it, that you are as good as your rational brain/CV/testimonials/friends and colleagues say you are.

And then, when the voice is quieter, you can put your inner imposter back in their box, for when you might need them. For when you do happen upon a sabre-toothed tiger on the leafy streets of your neighbourhood

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I am making some assumptions.

I assume that if you are reading this post, you want to be a little bit better every day. You want to learn, grow, be braver, bolder, more successful (in whatever that means to you). You want more.

Many people will tell you to silence your imposter. Make them go away. You have no need for them.

A good friend decided one day that her imposters’ days were up. She looked at the dragon on her shoulder, with her talons digging in, and decided that enough was enough. She would never have allowed anyone else to speak to her in the way that her imposter did.

If she had a friend who spoke to her in any way like that, she would have punched them long ago.

She chose a different way.

I quite agree.

But here’s where I disagree with other people on the subject.

I think that your imposter is really useful.

If you want to be the better, more successful, braver version of yourself, you actually NEED Nigel.

Bear with me here. I don’t mean that you should listen to everything he says. We know now that he is talking rubbish but trying to keep you safe. But that’s why he is helpful.

Now that the rampant, ice-cream fuelled, snotty-nosed toddler in your brain is becalmed, in his PJs with a blanket and a story, this is where you can use him to your advantage.

Let me introduce you to the Zones.

COMFORT: We all know and love this one. Safety, security, the ‘known’, convenience, relaxation. A safe place to reflect. Where we like to hang out in our onesies.

This is also where fear lives, and action is limited. This is Nigel’s Gaff.

FEAR: Disbelief, overwhelm, panic, emergency, anxiety, fearful, exhaustion and stress.

You’ve stepped out of conscious competence into unconscious incompetence - you don’t know what you don’t know, but you know you need to know more.

LEARNING: Your footsteps become surer, you take on new information, self-belief starts to grow. You move into conscious incompetence - you know what you don’t know, but you’ve got a plan.

GROWTH: This is where the magic happens. Adventure, challenge, confidence.

This is where excitement lives, action is taken and fear disappears.

Now, clearly, we do NOT want to be wandering into the red zone. I find myself in here when I have tried to do too much, too quickly, have tried to take ALL the courses, tried to do ALL the things at once. It’s where a lot of us spent the first few weeks of Corona-lockdown. It isn’t a happy place.

The comfort zone is a very comfortable place to be. But if you stay in here, it is the equivalent of carrying seeds around in your pocket and then wondering why the flowers come up.

It is where you want to head back to and relax, reflect and put your slippers on, but don’t get stuck there.

Green is the happiest place to be. But your imposter doesn’t want you to go there. He doesn’t see the green and the good. He just skips straight to the red zone. And there be bears.

You can see the green zone though, no? All that lovely growth. All that action and excitement. All the fun that lies waiting for you if you were just to peek your head out from under your Comfort-Zone-Onesie.

And here is where your imposter becomes your bestie.

If you put your head up above the parapet and stride into the Learning Zone, Nigel will be right at your side, tugging on your clothes to pull you back into the warm. He will tell you ‘you don’t want to go there, it’s dangerous and scary and you aren’t really qualified. That’s where other people live, not you. You aren’t good enough to go there’

Let’s not forget, he is trying to keep you safe. But as all the internet memes will tell us, there is no growth in the comfort zone.

When you are trying something new, or trying for the raise, the promotion, the Facebook live, the big contract you would just LOVE to land, you will hear his voice.

Hear him, recognise him, understand that he is trying to keep you safe, thank him. and then go and do it anyway. When you hear him start to whine, that’s when you have to start revving your engines, because he is showing you the way to the good stuff.

He is waving his hankie at you. Don’t think of him as Nigel. Think of him as Cha-Cha Di Gregorio with her neckerchief at the start of Thunder Road

Go and be that better, braver, bolder version of you.

Just remember to come back to the Comfort Zone and tell Nigel all about it.