So I know Lori told you all these things about me and what I've done in my, life and career.And some of these struggles are who has made me what I am today. And I struggle with self doubt, you know, even now, and overcoming imposter syndrome and redefining how I need to show up as a female leader in tech. So I wanna share what I learned along the way and how you can deal with some of those moments where the things might become a little too overwhelming for you. And I'm I'm so excited to see all of the folks that are coming in, calling in from Cupertino, Oklahoma, even Canada, you guys, have gone international. So this is very exciting. Oh, even from The UK. Welcome to the call. I'm so excited to be, here with you. Alright. 

So let's talk about what is imposter syndrome. Originally, imposter syndrome was coined by two doctors, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes back in 1978. And before I tell you what it is, I want to share some findings about imposter syndrome that might surprise you a little bit. So imposter syndrome isn't actually a syndrome. It's also not self doubt or a lack of self confidence. And for some of you who think that you need this to be humble or perform at your best, that is also not the case. Both men and women can struggle with imposter syndrome, but women, minorities, and high achievers are most likely to have imposter syndrome. It's that secret fear that we're going to be found out or unmasked as being incompetent or unable to replicate our past successes. 

And, essentially, you are found out to be a fraud, and other people will judge you the way that you are judging yourself. So I want you to think about that for a second. Imposter syndrome is being the fear of being found out that other people will judge you the way you judge yourself. So there's this great doctor, Claire Diosa, from ditchingimpostersyndrome.com that says that key feeling like you're gonna be found out is the the fear of not being good enough, that they've made a mistake in hiring you, that you're wondering, you know, who are you to even be doing this? 

And this is all related to your identity of who you are. And being found out to be a fraud is intertwined with judging, which is then intertwined with shame and hiding. So, really, imposter syndrome is related to that gap of who we think we are and who we think we need to be and when we are trying to do something or achieve a goal. So you've got this perceived gap. And when we build these things called coping strategies, which I will touch on a little bit later, these come at a cost to you, not just personally, but professionally. So what's the opposite of imposter syndrome? Well, here's a little exercise I'd like you to do with me. I want you to close your eyes. 

Everybody close your eyes for just a moment. Now I want you to imagine feeling truly comfortable in your own skin. No more alter ego, no more armor, no more pretending, no more hiding, being able to show up as all of you, speaking up with your ideas without feeling like you have to defend yourself. Now think about how that makes you feel. Now I want you to open your eyes. Does that feel nice? Doesn't that feel so comforting and and comfortable? Right? Well, the opposite of imposter syndrome is feeling grounded. It's feeling confident. Just getting on without all of that drama, without all the worrying, without all of the needing to compare yourself to others. And this is what imposter syndrome, is that is preventing you from having a life without that in it. So here's what I want you to do. 

I'd like for you to chat, put type in the chat some of the negative self talk or thoughts that you have about yourself, whether it's about a job, salary negotiations, taking on a leadership role, maybe questioning yourself, anything. And let me give you an example. One of the negative self talks that I used to have is don't speak up because you're just going to have a bunch of people bashing on this idea. K? So please type in the chat, give me some examples of negative self talk that you have with yourself. So I'm really looking forward to hearing some of these things. Yes. And I women are told to be more meek, so you are absolutely correct. So I want you to post in the chat some negative self talk that you have about yourself. But let me give you an example. 

How many of you have ever had this thought in your head? I don't know if I should be in this need. Or how about I'm not qualified to take this job. Yes. I'm not qualified enough. I'm too young. Right? I'm not good at selling myself. Absolutely. Or I've heard this too. I'm being too aggressive. Well, how many of you have ever gotten uncomfortable when someone introduced you as an expert? What about compliments? Do you get so embarrassed that you turn bright red? Because I don't know about you folks, but for me, I should absolutely blush and turn completely red whenever somebody, introduced me or gave me a compliment. And do you ever diminish your accomplishments? 

So when someone says, you know, you're achieving a great outcome, you're doing something great, and then you say something like, that wasn't me. It was all, you know, such and such or it was all Joe. Yes. That's right. Why didn't I say that out loud? Yes. These are all things that it is imposter syndrome, negative self talk that is talking in your head. So there's a lot of studies and even courses on how to overcome that imposter syndrome, but you have to learn to overcome this. Not not everything, but just learn some of the strategies to be able to overcome your imposter syndrome enough to speak up and open that door for your potential success. Now I I think I mentioned this previously, but Claire Dosa, doctor Claire Dosa has a website about this called ditchingimpostersyndrome.com, and she says that imposter syndrome is context dependent. 

So when something is really important to you, it's more likely to trigger that imposter syndrome. So if it's a new job, something really important to you, you really wanna go for that, you're gonna see more of this imposter syndrome come out. So let's talk a little bit about what can you do that causes what are these causes of imposter syndrome that you can actually identify so you can work on how to overcome those? So there's no single cause of imposter syndrome, unfortunately. Culture, environmental factors, they're all significant, and I like to kind of lump them into something that I call personal experiences. And these are things like your upbringing, trauma you may have experienced, or maybe you're currently experiencing, right, your cultural background, even a personality trait like perfectionism, they can all lead to imposter syndrome. And this isn't by any means an exhaustive list. And because we're talking about personal stories that shape imposter syndrome, I wanna tell you mine. 

You know, there's no fear, no judgment, no hatred. It's just my honest, candid experience, and I don't share this because I am expecting pity or empathy or anything of this sort. I just want you to know that you're not alone in this, and you don't have to live with it forever. And while I may not have gotten over mine completely, I am able to see where I've made some significant progress and where I still maybe need to improve a bit. So here's here's my story. And I don't know if you can tell, but I'm not white. I'm not a man, and I'm also not very quiet. I was born in Korea and I immigrated to The United States when I was four years old. 

Now when I left our apartment in Maryland where I grew up, I was in America. But the minute I stepped back inside my house, it was Korea. And what I mean by this is my parents raised me, you know, the way that they knew how, which was the way that they were raised. And so inside the home, we spoke Korean. We ate Korean food. We write Korean newspapers. We answered the phone in Korean, and my brother and I were expected to act as though we were living in Korea even though we were living in America. And it's not like we didn't know we were probably here permanently, right? We came here with the specific goal to get our citizenship, live that American dream, but we were expected to act like Korean people in a foreign country. 

In Korean culture, it's not very common to compliment your children or say I love you or say really nice things about your kids. Instead, it's very common for parents to point out all the things that you don't do well or where you're essentially seen as having some kind of shortcoming. So the whole time, my mother would rather than compliment me on the things that I did well or I was good at, she would call me stupid, but in Korean, while she was pointing out the things that I did wrong. And she regrets this now and apologizes for it quite often. But what's really funny about that situation is I had my IQ test done when I was a child, and I tested at 160. So clearly, I'm not stupid. I was just young. And young people make mistakes. We make a lot of mistakes. Right? 

But growing up, I always thought I had a lot to prove because I had so many flaws that my parents would point out to me. And in my professional life, I was constantly thinking, I can't apply for that job. I'm not qualified. You know, I wonder if they'll hire me because I didn't have that one skill out of everything they had listed in the job description, even though I had a thousand other skills that might have been better. And this bled into my personal life too. I was with someone for five years who blatantly flirted with other people in front of me. He told me I needed to lose 20 pounds, made absolutely no effort to prioritize my feelings, and he wasn't the first one. Right? There were friends that I let take advantage of me, my time, maybe stab me in the back, take a job I wanted, a man I was interested in, you name it, I've probably experienced it and guaranteed you probably have to. 

And you can see it wasn't hard to imagine that I didn't feel good enough or sometimes I felt like a fraud. And I'm not saying that compliment the heck out of your kids, right, because telling them that they're great all the time actually leads to other issues but you have to balance. And people have told, been told when they're doing something well and when they're veering off course and I love to hear that but, when they veer off course and you tell them why and you tell them why they might want to get back on course and how to get back on that course is a lot better than telling them that they're probably stupid. 

So if any of these examples resonate with you, I want you to know that there's hope. So I don't want you to feel like you're alone. So if you really want to overcome imposter syndrome, and I know it sounds hard, but you can do it, I'm gonna share some of the techniques that you can use to overcome that imposter syndrome. First, I want you to ask yourself, are you really ready to do this? Are you really prepared to do what it takes to make this change? If you are constantly telling yourself that it can't be overcome or you need it to perform or you need it to be humble, then you're probably never gonna actually overcome this. You need to be, believe in the fact that you can overcome this. And if you really are ready and all of those myths and limiting thoughts that sabotage yourself are out, then I have a technique for you. 

Alright so you have to clear this, as I was saying, at the thinking level and at the body level. But if you're really ready then let's dig in. Alright. So number one, we are going to ditch coping strategies. Now I mentioned earlier that we talked about some of those coping strategies that bridge that gap of who we think we are and who we think we need to be to achieve or do something. Now there are four common ones that I want to share with you. The very first, four that I want to talk about, they're called the four P's. First one is perfectionism. It's that unreasonable high standard and writing things off as luck when you achieve something. And number two is procrastination. You delay until you use that stress and adrenaline, all of those stress hormones to push through and get something done. The third P is paralysis. 

That's when you freeze and you can't perform. And the last one, people pleasing, is when you over give. You have no boundaries, and you end up being exhausted because you've given everything to others and you don't have anything for yourself. Now these four p zap our energy. They cause burnout. They normalize imposter syndrome, and we just tell ourselves, well, this is how life is. And it traps people to stay in this vicious cycle. So how do you begin to let go of these things? I want you to pause and ask yourself, what are these four Ps if you're employing one of these strategies? What is this doing for me? Ask yourself, am I doing one of these four p's and what is it doing for me? 

Then I want you to ask yourself, what am I trying to avoid by exercising one of these strategies? Now hopefully you have these answers in your head and you have to open be open to rewiring your brain to think differently. We're gonna talk about changing your thought habits and starting from a place of excitement rather than from a place of fear. Alright. So let's talk about how to spot that imposter syndrome. So most of the imposter syndrome happens in our head and in our thoughts. Those thoughts affect our bodies and this cycle self sabotages us. And so some examples could be that you go very quiet in meetings, maybe you switch off, maybe you don't share your ideas or your opinions, you don't retain or process information very well, or you don't go for that opportunity you really want. 

Hopefully, some of those are resonating with you folks in the call because for me, it was not sharing my opinions. My self talk was, what if that's not correct? Or they think I'm stupid. Or what if I'm saying something that's totally wrong? My body temperature would then get really, really hot. I could feel getting really warm everywhere, and my face would get completely flushed. Oh, sorry, you guys. I did not mean to go all the way to the end, but let me go back. Alright. So as I was saying, my face totally red, kind of like, what happens when sometimes when you drink, your face gets very flushed. And I mentioned earlier that it's usually triggered when something is really important to you. 

So when you're fighting for something really important to you, you can experience all of this self doubt. Most of you probably felt that kind of tight stomach. You know, your body flinching, you feel a little twitch somewhere. It's the earliest sign of imposter syndrome, and it's telling you that it's about to rear its ugly head. So all of those things that are happening physiologically, right, those are all triggers for imposter syndrome that's about to occur, and you have to identify this trigger. You have to recognize that this is about to happen. And doctor Joseph says that when you have these kind of triggers that you can start to feel, you have to ask yourself that self coaching question, and you have to be brutally honest with yourself. Is it really true that I'm not qualified? I'm not ready. You know, I'm not, gonna speak up because I might be wrong. Or is it just imposter syndrome speaking? 

Are you really actually not qualified or are you just having that fear reaction? So that is step number one is you've got to spot that physiological change that's happening in your body. Next, you've got to learn to press pause on those stress hormones. That stress cortisol, the adrenaline that's rushing in when everything else that's happening in your body is telling you that we're stressed, we're worried, we're anxious. You can do all of this by slowing down your breathing, closing your eyes, and then and then having that self moment. So remember, when you're starting to feel that stress, all of that redness, all of your, you know, temperature going up, take a deep breath, slow down, sometimes close your eyes. 

I've seen people do this, and remember, is this really fear versus imposter syndrome talking? And when you learn to let go of that story, we keep telling ourselves in our head that we're not good enough, we're not qualified enough, we're not right. Right? All of that worrying, all of the what ifing, you can actually bring your stress levels back down to neutral in under sixty seconds. So as soon as we let go of that need to be stuck in that stress adrenaline, we can let go of the need to be firefighting, and we can stop beating ourselves up. That my inner critic that was saying your idea is ridiculous, don't say it out loud, you don't want people to think you're an idiot, I've learned to recognize that trigger. Stop that inner critic by, you know, assessing, was it true or was it imposter syndrome on that particular topic? 

And once I realized it wasn't true, it was just my imposter syndrome rearing its ugly head, I began to slowly speak up as little ideas for small things, Speaking up for more impactful things and then until eventually, you know, this went on and on and on, and I'm able to say large strategies without feeling like I'm gonna be totally wrong and called out for that. 

And now I'm not saying that you're gonna, you know, blurt out everything tomorrow. It's a gradual rewiring process in your head. You're teaching your brain to think differently, and it's not used to it because it's a muscle that hasn't been used very often. And what do we know about what you need to do with muscles? Right? We have to train them and if you don't work them, you don't use them, then they don't happen. They can't actually be used. So you've got to practice this every time you hear that inner critic that says you can't do this, You're not qualified for this. No one wants to hear what you have to say. You have to tell yourself you can do it. 

It's not it's not, you know, really my, true fear, it's actually imposter syndrome that is making me tick. So stop that out of control inner critic. Now I hope