 I shouldn't be teaching this. Every time I speak, that little voice pops up. Every time I teach a class, that little voice pops up. Every time I get a new client, that little voice pops up. That little voice in my head that says, who do you think you are that you can do this? That voice that tells me I'm not enough. And that little voice is fear, right? Fear that I'm not smart enough. Fear that I might make a mistake. Fear that somebody will judge me. Fear of being found out. That's imposter syndrome. So I'm not alone in that fear. Just look around the room, right? 70% of successful people, 75% of executive women, 80% of CEOs, 84% of entrepreneurs, all report that they have felt like imposters at some point in their career. And my name is Dorie Kilner. And I coach mindfulness at my company Insightful Culture. But I've been in the Drupal community for over a well over a decade, about 15 years. Because I also run a Drupal agency called Slide of Hand Studios. And so I consider this a pretty successful skill portfolio, right? So I'm curious how I could hold on to this imposter syndrome fear, even when my experience proves that I am perfectly capable. So imposter syndrome has to do with feelings of self-doubt and personal incompetence. And they persist despite your education, your experience, or your accomplishments. So I recently had to recertify my Red Cross training. So I'm driving over to the facility to take the in-person training with the dummies and do your CPR on the dummies, right? And I get to the parking lot, and I go, wow, I feel like I should already know what I came here to learn. All the butterflies came up, like, oh, I don't know enough. I didn't prepare enough. I was already certified. And yet I still felt this way in the parking lot. So we want to prove that we're capable. And this is what helps us gain respect and admiration from people around us. That's a natural feeling, right? So we set our standards for success really high in order to gain that respect. And then we find, wow, we can't necessarily attain the standards that we set for ourselves. So this leads to a sense of futility, sometimes paralysis. We can't make a decision. Or we might even just see our successes as luck. Hey, I was in the right place at the right time. And we just try to hide all these imperfections that we have so people won't find us out. So we're going to start by listening to a short video. It's less than three minutes. That I think explains imposter syndrome really well. And then we're going to kind of dive into your personal experiences with imposter syndrome and how we can overcome those. So let's start the video. Even after writing 11 books and winning several prestigious awards, Maya Angelou couldn't escape a nagging doubt that she hadn't really earned her accomplishments. Albert Einstein experienced something similar. He described himself as an involuntary swindler whose work didn't deserve as much attention as it had received. Accomplishments at the level of Angelou's or Einstein's are rare, but their feeling of fraudulence is extremely common. Why can't so many of us shake feelings that we haven't earned our accomplishments or that our ideas and skills aren't worthy of others' attention? Psychologist Pauline Rose Clantz was the first to study this unwarranted sense of insecurity. In her work as a therapist, she noticed many of her undergraduate patients shared a concern. Though they had high grades, they didn't believe they deserved their spots at the university. Some even believed their acceptance had been an admissions error. While Clantz knew these fears were unfounded, she could also remember feeling the exact same way in graduate school. She and her patients experienced something that goes by a number of names, imposter phenomenon, imposter experience, and imposter syndrome. Together with colleague Suzanne Ims, Clantz first studied imposterism in female college students and faculty. Their work established pervasive feelings of fraudulence in this group. Since that first study, the same thing has been established across gender, race, age, and a huge range of occupations, though it may be more prevalent and disproportionately affect the experiences of underrepresented or disadvantaged groups. To call it a syndrome is to downplay how universal it is. It's not a disease or an abnormality. And it isn't necessarily tied to depression, anxiety, or self-esteem. Where do these feelings of fraudulence come from? People who are highly skilled or accomplished tend to think others are just as skilled. This can spiral into feelings that they don't deserve accolades and opportunities over other people. And as Angelou and Einstein experienced, there's often no threshold of accomplishment that puts these feelings to rest. Feelings of imposterism aren't restricted to highly skilled individuals either. Everyone is susceptible to a phenomenon known as pluralistic ignorance, where we each doubt ourselves privately, but believe we're alone in thinking that way, because no one else voices their doubts. Since it's tough to really know how hard our peers work, how difficult they find certain tasks, or how much they doubt themselves, there's no easy way to dismiss feelings that we're less capable than the people around us. There is no easy way to dismiss feelings that we are less capable than those around us. So how did we get here? So maybe your family sent you messages about the importance of being naturally intelligent. How many of you were told, oh, you're so smart. You're so much smarter than everybody else, right? You're so much smarter than everyone in your class. Instead of saying to you, oh, I can see how much effort you put into getting that A. So if you have kiddos, yeah. It's really there's a long-term effect of telling people, oh, you're so smart. Maybe you needed to get approval from your family. So you found you had the strong need to please, and you did it through showing your accomplishments. You might have gotten mixed messages about achievement in school. Or you might be in a competitive work environment. Who's in a competitive work environment here? No one, right? Everyone. And sometimes that diminishes the importance of asking questions and saying, I don't know how to do that. So we live in this culture that reinforces this very toxic perception that you're born with your abilities. You just either have it or you don't. You're smart or you're not. And you learn to hide your struggles. And you learn to hide, you know, to just focus on being infallible, being perfect, instead of being open and accepting challenges as opportunities and just being human. These are all opportunities to learn and grow. We don't have to be afraid of being challenged. So you also, particularly as the studies have shown, if you are an outsider, if you feel like an outsider, if you're part of a marginalized group, you tend to get this greater feeling of imposterism. Because there's this large cultural issue about, you know, also just faking our knowledge rather than telling people we don't know something. And then if you combine that with being in a marginalized group, you feel like you're going to be judged. And so we have this culture where imposterism just festers because we're all afraid to speak up and ask for what we need. And then social media and technology, that makes it so much worse. Here's where we need to portray ourselves as happy and successful, right? You go on your social media, and everybody's doing all these great things. And you're like, well, hey, I've got to look like I'm doing all these great things. And wow, maybe you're being a bit of an imposter right there. So we're reinforcing the imposter syndrome by putting out this fake face into society. And we have this great pressure in society to look and feel confident and successful. And here we are being frauds pretending that we're confident and successful. So I'm going to flash some experiences on the screen and take a moment to read each one and assess whether it applies to you. So these are just going to flash up. I dismiss positive feedback and compliments and overreact to negative feedback. I hold myself to insanely high standards. I think my success is due to luck. I don't feel like I deserve success or praise. I'm a workaholic. I hold myself to high standards and will do everything possible not to make mistakes. I'm afraid I'll be found out as a fraud. These are the thoughts associated with imposter syndrome. It basically, whatever feeds this fantasy, that we can be perfect. So you start to lose perspective about what it takes to feel good about yourself. And because of that, you have all this fear, the fear spirals into anxiety and stress. So there's these two sides to imposterism. One is, you see yourself as a failure if you can't meet the standards, this perfectionist standards that you've set up for yourself. You just kind of fear failure. This is sort of that general fear of failure. So in order to reduce the risk of failure, you don't step out of your comfort zone or maybe you overwork to compensate for that. But on the other side, you're afraid that maybe your success will cause your coworkers or your supervisor to have greater expectations of you. So hey, if I show I can do this, maybe I'll get more responsibility and then somebody's gonna find out I'm a phony because ultimately they'll put me in a position where I can't perform. So you start to develop these coping mechanisms to manage your anxiety, right? So you might work too much to prove yourself. You might turn down opportunities for advancement. Women are notorious at this. They'll see a list of requirements for a job. If they don't meet 100% of them, they won't apply. Men, 40%, they're in the door. So again, it's different for different people and different groups, not to judge anybody on that, but that's the data that's coming out of the research. And so you might turn down all these opportunities for advancement and as you do that, again, the stress is building. Now our coping mechanisms, also they don't align with our business objectives. So there's a internationally renowned expert on imposter syndrome named Valerie Young. And she says anyone who leads, manages, trains or mentors other people needs to be aware of it. It's not a self-help topic, it's a business imperative. The behaviors associated with imposter syndrome will have associated costs for the employee and the organization. So you're actually holding back the organization and other people as well. So Dr. Young identified five types of imposters and knowing which category you fall into might help you manage your imposter syndrome. So we're gonna go through those five types right now. And the first is the perfectionist. This is the person who thinks 99 out of 100 is a failure and I remember in high school, in all the classes I was in, if somebody got a 99, they were devastated. Anyone here ever do that? It's like, oh, I got a 90, I got one wrong. What's wrong with me? Yeah, that's the perfectionist. So maybe you make a mistake in a presentation and you beat yourself up over it. You just want to be flawless all the time. Okay, so it's all about the process. Everything has to be right all the time. The next type is the expert. This is somebody who thinks that the quantity of their knowledge is what's important. So you see people who are constantly getting certification after certification, degree after degree, reading more and more books, getting more and more certificates, and they get held back because they feel they're never qualified enough. Yeah, you don't have 100% of the qualifications, you hold yourself back. The soloist. This is somebody who thinks that if they didn't do it all by themselves, they don't deserve any credit, okay? So if it just doesn't count. And these people tend to take longer completing tasks because they fail to ask for other resources. Maybe that sounds familiar to you. The natural genius, these are people who think that their intelligence is inherent. So they should have been born knowing how to be the perfect leader or the best coder, right? And if they have to struggle to master something, they can prove that proves I failed. I'm an imposter. This is hard for me. And this super human. This is the person who thinks they have to be perfect in every aspect of their life. So this goes beyond work. I have to be the perfect mom, the perfect dad, the perfect coworker, the perfect community organizer, the perfect partner all at the same time. Never giving anybody else a chance to do anything. It's all about me. So we need to get out of this cycle of imposterism and which is I'm gonna define here as the gap between your actual performance and your ideal standard. That gap in there is your imposter syndrome. Imposterism, it interferes with your ability to accept that you have achievements, that you have done positive things. And this starts to impact your psychological well-being. So you'll end up with burnout, emotional exhaustion, loss of motivation, your achievement starts to drop. And maybe you even feel guilt and shame. All of this just gets reinforced each time you go through a cycle of imposterism. And so the best way to overcome imposterism is to bring awareness to the narratives in your head. These stories and patterns that we carry along with us for our whole lives and learning how to detach from them. And by questioning these beliefs that we have about ourselves, that helps to weaken imposter syndrome rather than enforce it. This is the only way out folks is to start to think differently. There's no magic pill here. And you're not gonna walk out the door and say, I'm cured. So mindset theory is what we're gonna talk about to help you change how you think about imposter syndrome. And it's a set of ideas based on the belief of whether you were born with a fixed set of abilities or you believe you have the capacity to grow. So these beliefs can influence your behavior. If you believe that your abilities are fixed, you end up blaming yourself for any shortcomings. So you probably hear in your head, I should be able to do that. I should know that. I should have done that right. Lots of right and wrong black and white thinking. That is a fixed mindset. And you tend not to look for potential opportunities because when you start to learn something new, that's when you have to recognize that you're not perfect. You have to learn something different. So you see all your challenges as obstacles and you avoid them so nobody can see that you might fail. But if you embrace a growth mindset, you believe that you have the potential to develop. So you're more likely to focus on developing yourself if you have this new way of thinking. So challenges and feedback become opportunities for growth. And you start to value effort and motivation to learn. And this is what's gonna help you make long lasting changes and they're gonna be small changes, but they will stick. So when you commit to developing a growth mindset, you give yourself the space to become something else. Not just to be with what you are, but space to grow and become. And so your brain is capable of changing and developing new ways of thinking and this is called neuroplasticity. And this is the way that we can change our behaviors and our habits. Neuroplasticity allows us to change the neural pathways in our brains and then we practice these exercises over and over again. We start to see some success in overcoming imposter syndrome. So we're gonna discuss those five types of imposters again and how each one of those imposters can shift their perspective and start to reframe our thinking to overcome our imposter syndrome. So the perfectionist. So you're really intense people, perfectionists, super intense. And you don't have a real reality-based understanding of your capabilities. You just have to continuously drive. And I am not gonna tell you not to be a perfectionist. I truly, truly am amazed and appreciate people who really care about their work. So we're not saying don't care about your work. But you do need to remember that you're being a perfectionist is probably going to slow down yourself and your team. Okay, so you're starting to interfere with other people's business priorities. I have absolutely seen this in the workplace where somebody feels like that report has to be so perfect and so right on that it comes in three weeks late and they were expected to do two other projects during that time and everybody's waiting for the work. So you really start to impact resources. So what you wanna do is start to identify what will it take? What's the reasonable amount of effort it will take to get a job done? So when you get a new task, that's how you need to reframe it. What is good enough? So we're not saying do shoddy work. Just saying start to notice that gap between where your mind goes, perfection and what is good enough for this particular job. And that's gonna depend. It's gonna depend on budget. It's gonna depend on the criticality of the work. It's gonna depend on a lot of things but at least you start to slow down and say that. Oh, it depends. Depends. The expert. So you're at the top of your high school class. This was me to go off to college and there's all these really smart people and gee, a lot of them were way smarter than I. All these exceptional people and then you start to doubt your own talent, right? So you begin to just pursue knowledge. It's like, oh, I have to catch up with everyone. I've gotta learn all this. You can't possibly know everything. Somebody once said you can never get to the end of the internet, right? So there's no expectation that you know everything. Nobody is expecting that of you. So your reframe is to say I don't have to know everything but I do have to know when it's too much for me. I do have to know when to ask for help. So there are some things we do have to know about ourselves but we don't necessarily have to know all the knowledge in the world, okay? The soloists. This is the one thing, if this resonates with you, it's really important to tell yourself that you need to include other people in your work. You just, you cannot work in a vacuum. And if you have trouble with this, one thing that's really helpful is to ask for some tasks in resource planning. So if you feel like you have to do everything yourself, start to learn about resource planning as a project manager, we were taught there were this three-legged stool, there's time, money and people. And they all have to come out and balance or the stool falls over. So if you're the kind of person that tends to work alone, see if you can find some tasks where people will help you learn how to plan resources so that you can see, oh well if we have more money then we can do it this way. If we have more people we can do it that way. You start to see that there are options, okay? And you also start to include other people. And when you get support from other people, guess what, they might know more than you and you can learn something from them. Or maybe they have a different perspective that you hadn't considered. So gee, it's just like our use cases where we should be going out and seeing the community of people who are going to use our products and having more voices in the room helps improve that use case, that's what this is about for you. And the natural genius, this is a person that really, really will benefit from a growth mindset. So it is not failure if you have to work on mastering a task. This is your reframe. Your challenge is an opportunity for growth, it is not failure. So you really need to move from that fixed mindset to the growth mindset. And so if you start a new project, maybe you start to keep a log each week. Here are new terms that I'm learning. Here are new people I'm working with. Here are new processes that I have to understand. And then meet each week with your supervisor, with a coworker and talk about these things. And this helps to normalize that knowledge gap that we have. Just to say, okay, this is something new and write it down and discuss it with somebody. And if you're the super human, attempting to be the best in every role that you're engaged in is not required. You're gonna just keep setting yourself up for failure because nobody is perfect at all these different roles. Not only that, this sends out a really unhealthy message. It sends out a healthy message, especially if you're a supervisor and you have people reporting up to you or if you have kiddos, what message are you sending to people if you say you have to be perfect at everything? You're just gonna create more imposters, more people who are stressed out who have to feel like they have to be perfect at everything they do. So don't set yourself up for burnout, slow down, set some healthy boundaries, know when to say no to people and delegate. So if this is you, start to delegate to others and guess what, they wanna feel valued too. Delegation is not a burden if it's done properly. It helps other people feel valued. So when you start to challenge these negative thought patterns and your beliefs, this helps you separate your feelings from facts and help you discover new ways of relating to yourself. So it's all about the reframing, it's all about understanding different ways of thinking about yourself. So we're gonna discuss now some really effective ways to change your perspective. It's only once we can change our perspective can we begin to overcome imposter syndrome and I'll tell you it never goes away completely but we change our relationship to it. We change how we manage it and that will be a huge relief. So first of all, give it a name. It's imposterism, it's imposter syndrome. If something has a name, that means other people are experiencing it as well. At least everyone in here is either experiencing it or is here because they have a coworker who they wanna help who's experiencing it and I guarantee you, you go back out into your lives and you'll find this is true. So give it a name first and then start talking to people. You're not alone. And we all are afraid that we're gonna have this conversation with a friend, a coworker, a mentor, a colleague and they're gonna say to you, of course you don't know how to do that. What were you thinking? Has anyone ever said that to their friends? No, not a hand went up. We don't say that to our friends, what do we say? You got this. We say you got this. Right before I started somebody sent me a text and said you got this. Which was like great, you just reinforced everything I'm doing. So their feedback is going to help you learn that other people feel the same way you do. Normalizing these fears. Now, many of us dismiss compliments that we receive. This is a tough one, they're like I don't deserve that compliment. So the next time somebody pays you a compliment, write it down. Give yourself the space to really appreciate it and thank them. Just say thank you, I appreciate that. It might feel like it's not enough, it might feel phony, but again it's changing those neural pathways in your head to acceptance that you are enough. Okay, so listen to those words. Now I suggest you write them down, you store them in a folder. Store them in an email, put them someplace. You know, some people just like write them on stickies and put them all over their cube or their laptop. And the next time you start to feel this imposterism, go look at them. Yeah, I think I can do this. Okay. Now, quieting your inner critic. Even if you're not experiencing imposter syndrome, lots of us have that inner critic in our heads, right? That one that says we're, you know, you did this wrong, you're, oh, I should have said this, I should have done that. Okay, we can't necessarily change this, but we can start to understand that that's human. It's absolutely human, it's proof of your humanity that you have self-doubt, okay? Humans are not perfect creatures. So we're all works in progress. And if you only remember the mistakes you make, you need to start practicing, thinking about what's good. So every time you start having these critical thoughts about yourself, I want you to take out a pen or pencil, not your laptop, nothing digital, actual physical writing, and write down three reasons why that's wrong, three reasons why that's a lie, okay? So once you start to see this evidence, it's going to change your bias towards negativity, okay? This allows us to start paying attention differently to what we think. So taking that space to break out and say, uh-huh, no, no, this isn't true, I'm not that person. And I highly recommend starting a meditation practice. This also helps you quiet your inner critic. Becoming aware of your breath and body can really calm down your nervous system. And this gives you that space that you need to become more aware of these stories and patterns that we all have in our heads. Those stories and patterns aren't true. We just keep perpetuating them in our minds because our brains really, thoughts are just thoughts. They're not necessarily the truth. And if we can detach from that, if we can accept that, then we have this spaciousness that we need to reframe and embrace the growth minds that we just talked about. So what I do when I am struggling with a task and saying, oh, I can't do this, oh, I don't wanna try that, I step back and I say, why do I believe that? Why do I believe this is true? And so a meditation practice helps give you that space to notice when you're starting to get out of control and go, okay, wait a second, why is that? Why am I thinking this? Why is that true? And this also helps you develop those new neural pathways. There's 40 years of science behind meditation and the development of neural pathways for change and regulation, regulation of our emotions, of our fears, of the blame. And I had this discussion the other day, believe it or not, with a group of meditation teachers. So they came to a breakout room, a virtual breakout room I was in where I was leading a discussion on imposter syndrome and somebody had the best view of this, they said, when I feel those butterflies in my stomach, instead of equating those with fear, I take a breath and I go, that's new growth, that's the butterflies are the end process of growth and development and they're freeing and it's exciting and beautiful. And I just kind of carried that with me into this session because I just thought it was just such a great, and this was somebody who actually came to the session because he had severe imposter syndrome. So he was afraid of actually leading meditation sessions as a meditation teacher. So those butterflies, reframe those butterflies as growth and excitement. And finally, when you believe that you're an imposter, you're sending out these signals that you don't trust yourself and subliminally other people pick up on that and they start to think, well, why should I trust you if you don't trust yourself? That's big, that's big. And it's unconscious, it comes from a primal part of the brain called the amygdala and people can sense each other's trust and ability. So noticing how to build your self-worth is kind of important in this regard. You have to embrace self-compassion over self-judgment. So the qualities of compassion can be cultivated. There are loving kindness meditations that you can learn to practice self-compassion. You can accept yourself as human and each day maybe taking some time out to say, who am I today? Who am I today? Opening some connection to the human experience, breaking your sense of isolation. So when I hear that little voice in my head, the one that says I'm not enough, I follow these three steps I'm gonna share with you now. So first, be aware. So I notice it's happening, just like when I was at the Red Cross Center, just like right before this session, just be aware. It gives us a space to remember to say, why do I feel this way? I've got this. Then I don't listen to the little voice. I write down three things as to why it isn't true. I try to find evidence. One thing I heard just this week, Sharon Salzburg, who's a meditation teacher, a well-renowned, especially on the East Coast, where I'm from, well-known meditation teacher, founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Boston, she said that when the voice arises, that self-doubt voice, that inner critic, she gives it a name. And so somebody in my session the other day said, oh yeah, I call mine Jamal. Okay, good. Give it a name. And then sit that inner critic down for a cup of tea. Say, Jamal, go over here, have a cup of tea, I got this. So just start to talk to your inner critic. And don't listen to what they're saying. And then take action. Move ahead, because there's consequences to listening to that voice, right? We need to shift to a growth mindset and see these challenges that we face as positive. And we need to say, okay, so if I have a misstep, if I make a mistake, that's okay. So you start to trust yourself that you know what you're doing. And simply say to yourself, I can do this. It really is about reinforcing those kinds of connections in your brain. So I wanna hear your stories. This is my contact information. I'm DM Kellner on Drupal. You can reach me there. You can call me anytime. You can email me anytime. I design workplace mindfulness programs. I teach, I speak. I wanna hear your stories about how you're coping with imposter syndrome. I wanna know whether this was helpful to you. So keep in touch, because I'm going to continue this as a topic of research for myself. And I want to understand how you're relating to the information that I'm sharing. So are there any questions right now that have come up? I'll give you a moment to think. Yes. What are your thoughts on cultural aspects like imposter syndrome, the forms of the field? Sound like everyone, talk like everyone, like accents, or speak up. So is this a disperse game? So I'm just curious how you talk to people who felt that way. So that they're the things that you've seen work or are those common threads? It's a great question. So the question is, how do we deal with the cultural aspects of imposterism? If you don't look, sound, act, if you're not from the same background as other people. And I think this is super challenging. So thank you for bringing that up. It is harder, I think, when you're in an environment where you don't see yourself as same. It's very difficult to deal with that. And so like I said, you're not gonna leave this session with necessarily a solution. But over time, as you start to practice some of these actions, you can start to feel more confident in this is who I am and I deserve to be here as much as the next guy. But society really is toxic right now and is pushing on all of us. And I think that's a much bigger problem than just imposter syndrome. I think for me, I take things in small steps and small bites. So if I start to feel like an imposter, I know as a woman in tech and I started in tech 40 years ago and there weren't any women in tech. So I've experienced a lot of that myself as well. And it wasn't an easy thing. I didn't necessarily have these tools available to me at that time and I struggled a lot. But I do tell women I work with now, which might be not exactly along the same lines as the cultural things you're thinking about. But I do tell them that you have to be who you are. So don't give up yourself for somebody else. And that's just kind of general rules of engagement right now. You are who you are and you're worthy just as you are. But practices like meditation do help to reinforce that the brain is capable of changing, which also means it's capable of making you feel like you are deserved in that space. And your own strength in your convictions are really what you have to fall on. You can't change other people. We see that now. It doesn't work. But you can change how you relate to them and how you relate to yourself and don't give up on yourself just because others around you might not accept you who you are. Thank you for that question. Any other questions? Yes. I have a similar question about if you have any thoughts on whether your position sort of lends itself to you in the masters of there. So for example, I'm the, I'm on a team of engineers and I'm the non-engineer. So I come from a technical background. I did 10 years of doing technical things but then I decided I wanted to be the less technical person. But now I'm the less technical person on a team of brilliant engineers. And even though I love my work, sometimes it makes me feel sort of intimidated or when everyone's having a conversation about the really intense engineering work that they're doing, I'm just sitting there like, cool. And it just has that feeling of like, I don't feel like I'm as smart as that or as good as that or whatever because I just do different work on the team. But they could be really awesome guys. Yeah. Yeah, so the question is what do you do when you're feeling lesser than a colleague because they have different skill sets than you? But what are your skill sets? What do you bring to the team that they don't have? So again, it's a matter of recognizing that we don't necessarily have to compare and judge. So comparison and judgment are really detrimental to growth and to self-acceptance. So when we start to look around our society and see that, oh, well they have something I don't have or they did this great thing, what have I done? You need to call up your great things. So if you're a great project manager, if you're a great designer, it doesn't matter that it's not technical. Nobody put technical at the top of the pyramid and said we all have to meet this high standard of being technical, great technical developers, great coders, great integrators. I mean, yeah, maybe they're solving hard problems but who solves the hard problem if there's not enough money? The project manager does that. I remember when I was a project manager, I gave credit to my team all the time. Oh yeah, they did that, they did that. But when something hard comes up and it didn't work out quite so right, I was like, yeah, that was on me. So there are hard things that every individual, regardless of industry, regardless of position, regardless of rank, regardless of career path, everybody's got hard things, challenges and whatever and everybody has successes. So the more confident you are in your own successes and say, yeah, it might not come up at the table because you're discussing a technical problem but that doesn't mean that you're lesser. It means you're different and different is fine. We're all different. We all have different desires and different goals. I moved from tech into being a mindfulness teacher. I don't feel any lesser. I don't feel like I can't come to this conference that I've been coming to for a dozen years and not feel like I'm part of the community. So just keep reminding yourself, this isn't my time to shine. This is their time to shine. That's great. I have my time to shine as well. Did that help? Okay. Any other questions? The question is how did I talk myself off the ledge before I came up here today? I sold myself that I was prepared. That I did the research. I did the work. I put together the presentation. I practiced the presentation. I had done this before, not this particular presentation but I had spoken on the topic before and just myself, I know this. I know this. And I felt the butterflies and I remembered back to when my friend said the butterflies mean that you're growing. And that's all I did. And just said, no, not listening to you. Go have your cup of tea. I'm coming up here. I'm doing my thing. It really is just about that. It's just about when you are able to just reframe and change your mind and you're like, oh well no, that's hard. Of course it's hard. I'm not, none of this is simple. I'm not saying any of this is simple. But it does take time. It takes time for your mind to start thinking in a different way. But we see in the research that it's possible. So you just start thinking, okay, I've got this. I remember the compliments that I got the other day when I presented. It just starts to change those neural pathways and help you to just feel better. I mean, I'm not perfect. I have it. I still feel it every time I speak but it's not crippling anymore. Any other? Yes. I'm sorry, I'm having trouble hearing it. The question is, is it dangerous to become overconfident? So I don't know that we tend to see imposter syndrome in people who are highly capable. And so the ads of you becoming overconfident in your capabilities is probably not really there. You are competent. You are perfectly competent at doing your own work. And I don't think any of these kind of lead to arrogance. It's just a way kind of, I love the way you just said I talk, talking yourself off the ledge. It's not, I'm not looking for people to have this toxic positivity, this overconfidence and I can do anything attitude because part of it is knowing what you can't do and what you don't know how to do and bringing other people in to help you with that. So I don't think that we're not necessarily looking for you to just run out in the world and say, I can do anything. Just be confident in your own abilities and not allow them to keep you from getting advancement and getting the happiness that you deserve in your life. Yes. I was wondering if you had any tips for how to frame conversations when working with people who are, for example, perfectionists. Like I'm a project manager and I work with a lot of perfectionists and it's really hard to say like stop working on that. It's good enough because that can easily be interpreted as you were too slow or something like that. That means it's your time. How to tell someone how you're doing a great job but don't make it perfect. Right, right, good. The question is, how do you work with somebody who's a perfectionist without telling them, oh, you were too slow, not making it into a negative. And I think it's similar to what I said earlier where I would never tell a perfectionist to not be a perfectionist. Make sure they understand that you totally appreciate the effort that they put into their work. So when you're working with a perfectionist, you want them to maybe include them in some of the underpinnings of the project, let them see the timelines and the budget and the schedule and how it all fits together because I think project managers and supervisors, they have that perspective that their teammates don't necessarily have. When you start to include people in your perspective of the work because we all have different perspectives, they have the perspective of maybe I'm building this module or I'm doing this integration, whatever piece they're working on and they tend to have tunnel vision on that. And if you start to include them and here's where you fit in and this is why I need you to help me, I need you to help me figure out how much effort is reasonable for you to put into this. Because I've also seen somebody has a $50,000 project, they put in just as much effort of a $50 million project and these perfectionists don't see the difference. So help them to understand it isn't that I don't love your work, it isn't that I truly appreciate how much work you put into it but let me show you what I'm dealing with. Let me show you the constraints that are on this project and you tell me how much effort is going to work so that we come out at the right point. So I think involving people in discussions that let them see a different perspective, particularly perfectionists, helping them to see other perspectives is very useful. Anything else? I think we're pretty much at time. What I'd like to do is invite you to a couple of sessions that I'm leading the next four days. This is the first time we're doing chair yoga and meditation and triple con and I'm so excited to be leading these sessions. So if you're curious chair yoga, any type of yoga is actually moving meditation and then we're doing that Monday and Tuesday and then Wednesday and Thursday that we're doing mindfulness meditation or I'll be leading the group. Each one of these sessions will be about 25 minutes to a half hour depending on whether you have to run to the next session. I don't wanna hold you, keep you from getting to your sessions but I invite you to join me and it's in a funny place in G129 and 130. You kinda go down the hall here and you'll see like a yellow tunnel. Walk into the light. Let's go towards the yellow tunnel and you'll find us right down there. There's signage at the beginning and end of the tunnel so I invite you to join if you're interested in any of these, learning a little bit more about meditation or reach out, happy to talk anytime and thank you so much.