Discover insights and personal stories about navigating Imposter Syndrome in the tech world. Click play to listen to the full episode.

Resource of the Week: The Goal

The Goal is a novel by Eli Goldratt that was key for understanding manufacturing efficiency in the 1980s. It became the gold standard for defining how work works!

So much so that it was the inspiration for The Phoenix Project.

We will be talking about how The Goal very much applies to us today, even MORE SO now that we have AI. The discussion is coming in a few weeks, so it is important to get the book and read it so you'll have a deeper understanding!

D.J. highly recommends the AUDIOBOOK as it's dramatized and highly enjoyable.

Also available on Kindle and Paperback, as well as a Graphic Novel!

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D.J. is the founder of Thrive-IT.com and it's associated channels on Podcasts and YouTube.
He is the author of Be A Citrix Hero and Just Do THIS: A Simpler Way to Succeed in I.T.

D.J. is a world-renowned speaker and consultant that now offers coaching to those who wish to lead in the field of Information Technology services.

He lives in Middle Tennessee (south of Nashville) with his wife and two cats. 

Imposter Syndrome – How To Thrive in IT ep 001
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DJ Eshelman: [00:00:00] This is How to Thrive in IT, Episode 1, Imposter Syndrome.

If you are tired of merely surviving in information technology and are ready to thrive, You are in the right place on this podcast, we talk life in technology, not just about the technology. Although we may from time to time, geek out on the technology too. Welcome, and here we go.

My name is DJ Eshelman. I have been in IT for a long time, but instead of me giving a full intro in this first episode, I thought maybe it'd be easier to say this with a story. So what better way to start then with my journey with imposter syndrome. Now, like I said, I've been in this industry for a long time.

And so there's a thing that comes with this that is sometimes very much a surprise. And I always thought that this feeling of imposter syndrome, like I'm not enough or I'm not good enough that this would go away over time. And it's really funny because there's certain categories that I've been looking at with this.

And so let me share [00:01:00] those with you. Number one is my age. You're still young. It's something I hear a lot of, but, and it feels well intentioned enough. And sometimes it's from those are younger than me. And sometimes it is from those older than me when it's from those that are older than me. Sometimes that actually, it feels a bit like it's an insult kind of a thing, or it's like, Oh, you just don't know the world kind of thing.

It does not probably intended that way, but that's the way it feels to me. It goes back to my childhood. I've always felt like I was, I had older friends, but not friends, my current age, that sort of thing. Yeah. Up until about high school, when I finally started forming friends that were my own age, it was kind of weird, but that carried on through college and my later life where I had either older friends or younger friends, but rarely friends in my exact age group.

Now, as you get older, that age group expands quite a bit. So that's not as much a factor, but it's terms of imposter syndrome. It really is a factor. It never really feels like I'm old enough. It always feels like somebody else's more experienced. And I think I figured out something about this [00:02:00] too. My generation talks about movie quotes and shared experiences.

Like they say things like remember when X or you remember when this happened or that sort of thing. And so it's natural for us to do that. Well, sometimes what happens with that is that previous generations or even people that are not that far behind. But feel left behind, we'll feel left out again when somebody is recalling their situations and things like that.

And so that is something that has been something I've struggled with as far as that feeling of imposter syndrome in information technology and just in my life in general. So as far as my experience with the world, yeah, I think like this now's probably the time to say that I have been in this industry for 25 years.

So if somebody says they've been at this for 30 years, sometimes that feels like it's belittling my experience. And I'm not sure why that happens. I don't think there's anything wrong with them saying that, but sometimes it just feels that way. You know, it just, you hear that and not other things.

The worst is I find myself doing it as [00:03:00] well, and I hate doing it. That's why it's so much a hesitation for me to even share my experiences with you. Like, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm bragging about myself. I don't want to. Sound like I've got it figured out and nobody else does or anything like that.

There are some things that I do have figured out and we'll get to that in a few minutes, but that's just the thing with experience level. Sometimes you feel like there's always somebody else that has something more. Therefore yours is invalid.

So, yeah, and the other part, number two is community, and this has been tough because in terms of this, in a lot of things that I do, I always feel late to the party. I always feel behind because I only started participating in whatever timeframe. So, like, for example. Even though I started working in technology and that's what I think about 25 years ago, about 20 years ago, I started focusing on Citrix as a technology.

And what happened then is I started working at it, getting better and better at it. And it wasn't really truly until maybe around [00:04:00] 2013 or so that I actually started participating in a wider community of people that were involved. And. You know, that's, there's nothing wrong with that, but it made me feel like I was always late to the party.

It's like, I wasn't really truly part of the community. And you know what? I still struggle with that today. I still struggle with feelings of being excluded. And I don't know why. I just generally don't know why either it's actually happening or not. Now, in, in some ways it has literally been happening.

A lot of people assume that I am a Citrix technology professional, a CTP. No I'm not, they have rejected me twice, actually. So Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. But in, in terms of that going it's one of those things where it's just like, it feeds into this imposter syndrome when you're getting those kind of.

Rejections. And it's hard to focus on the wins sometimes when you have these rejections they speak louder [00:05:00] than your other things. And we'll get into that in a few minutes. Like, I'm not gonna leave you hanging. I promise. I'm not just going to make this just a drone fest of negativity.

We are going to get into some positivity here. I promise. Number four is my work as far as areas of imposter syndrome. So in, let's go back to 2011. And I started working with Citrix consulting, and I found that consulting was insulting. And what I mean by that is that people with marketing degrees and, you know, some, even like one, two years, 10 years less experience than me sometimes treated me as if I were less because I was a contractor as a consultant, not an employee. And so there was this default setting of, well, they just don't know what they're talking about. They're just here to fill in a gap and they're not really truly knowledgeable. All my work was like kind of fact checked, which is actually a good thing, but it didn't feel like a good thing at the time.

It felt like, wow. Thanks [00:06:00] guys. Thanks for, you know, why do I even bother? You know, you obviously have this figured out. Why do you need my help? That sort of thing. These last went through my head. It really did. Eventually, like I said, there was some things that got cured of that. And then even in recent history, you know, being let go being fired.

I talked about it. It's on a Thrivecast episode way back in, in 2020, when we were talking about all that. When it was oddly enough fresher than it is now, for sure. But that sort of thing, you know, when you're, especially when you're fired for something that doesn't make any sense and that sort of thing that, It didn't help my feelings of imposter syndrome at all.

You're always questioning, why did I do this better? You know, and you're cooking yourself a little bit of a depression that feeds into that too, by the way, there's a little bit of those kinds of thoughts and feelings that come into my life that that are real and, you know, that need to be addressed too, but that, that feeds into imposter syndrome too or they'd feed each other probably.

Yeah. Burnout makes me feel less of a person. When I say burnout, you know, it's not a matter of length of time, it's a length of [00:07:00] trauma. And there's a certain level of experiences that you have. There's a certain level of drama that comes with this world. And eventually I got to the point where I couldn't function anymore.

I couldn't really do things that like I could before I couldn't perform in technology and not just in technology, but there's a lot more than technology, especially when you're in consulting. There's a lot of soft skills that are involved in that. There's a lot of thinking ahead. There's a lot of kind of project management style stuff.

There's a lot more than the technology you have to know. And in later episodes, we'll probably get into some of that, by the way, because that's, I think it's really crucial. That's why I wrote, just do this. It's really important. So anyway, the, but at the same time, it was a lot and I did a lot of it all at once and the burnout actually started.

For me, about six years ago, it didn't really rear its head until right around 2020, 2021, when I realized it was like, Oh, I just, I don't feel any love for this anymore. I'm just done. So, you know, [00:08:00] that, that hasn't helped with my imposter syndrome because now I feel behind and I feel like I'm not contributing.

And so it's, when I do things like this, I'm like, Oh, is anybody going to want to even listen to me talk about things that aren't technology? You know, it feeds the imposter syndrome. Just. Kind of a shame, but it's what it is. So when it comes to what I'm doing more of now as an independent person, where this affects me in a big way right now is those offers, those proposals for sales.

I shy away from those. I try and do anything, but that I find excuses not to I've got literally a proposal that needs to be sent out today that I haven't sent yet. I've had it for a week and I just haven't said it. I just find other things to do. And I just, it's my livelihood and I still can't get myself past it.

It's that imposter syndrome is feeding into that, those thoughts of rejection that overall discomfort with the feeling salesy or talking about myself in a positive light at all, all this stuff feeds into it. And so I let it fall off. It's not [00:09:00] good. So my life is another factor.

And I think yours is too. We have to realize our life experiences feed into imposter syndrome. And I've gotten to know quite a few of you out there and I've heard your stories. And I've heard people tell me about how even some were told not to do technology because it was what geeks did.

They didn't want to have nerd for a son. But it was one of those things where that I've heard stories like that. I've heard things that never seemed to have matched up or never lived up to your parents expectations, that sort of thing, or.

Or your families or some, even it's spouses have a, an expectation of how things should be and things like that. So for me, I would say that there was some experiences in my life that actually did contribute to this. I grew up in the eighties. And around 86, my parents moved us to a town in the, well, not even a town, just an area of Colorado that was unincorporated and [00:10:00] we lived completely off grid.

So we had no electricity, we had no running water. We finally got a phone like around 88 or something like that, I think it was maybe 89, but that was it. So all throughout my middle school and high school years. I had no utilities. And so things like video games, that whole thing passed me by, you know, my experience with video games went only for, you know, what I was able to see other kids play or like that.

A lot of like TV and movie shows and things like that, that passed me by as well. We eventually figured out that we could do like, a generator and power inverter and things like that for the occasional. You know, reaching out to the world or watching TV or whatever, but it's really not the same as being able to just point a remote at a TV and all of a sudden you're vegging out.

I didn't have that experience growing up. Not really. So it was an interesting thing where there was a difference in my life that is incredibly unique. And you would think that would be very empowering. And I've got to be honest, it really is. It [00:11:00] really is very empowering to have that level of experience behind me.

I can tell you a lot about preparedness and a lot of that journey and what it taught me, but also it does feed into that feeling of imposter syndrome because you feel like you are not really worthy of where you are because you didn't have the same background. You're always feeling behind. That's been a theme for me is that I always felt like I was a little behind.

Oh, I shouldn't say always. Actually I'll say, I'll go back even further in second grade. They wanted me to skip second grade, third grade and go to fourth grade. But because of some bureaucracy at the time with the public schools and where we were at in the eighties at that time, that was deemed not possible.

And so even though I had already proven that I knew everything that a third grader did or should know, I was still forced to go to classes and that actually Caused me to get a bit of a behavior problem. And my grades actually slid, even though I knew the material, I didn't care. I didn't have [00:12:00] a why behind it anymore.

And so the next year, when I went into fourth grade, I was actually behind. And so I went to a new school and new schools make you feel behind. Right. And so, there was that. And then the very next year, fifth year, fifth grade is when we moved to, to Penrose in Colorado. And so. That was another issue there is that, that, you know, I just felt like it was a little, not quite there, not quite in the group I wasn't in.

And I never fit in really, truly. I mean, there was nothing like wrong with me. I don't think I just didn't fit. It felt like for my entire high school and college career, I didn't really feel like I fit. And so that is always kind of fed into that natural assumption. It's like a default setting in my life.

You don't fit. That's the message I heard. And we're going to talk about that, by the way I want to pull that out specifically, we're going to talk about that in a couple of minutes.

So let's talk about the final concept area. And that is my contributions. Now, this is where it gets really complicated and why I'm [00:13:00] sure some people that are listening to this are going to be really surprised to hear me say I'm struggling with this because of what I've done content wise for the community and for the tech community and just in general.

And that is that I am two books in. I've published two books, I've self published two books, and I still feel like a failure and want to shut it all down. Why? And largely, I have to admit, it has a lot to do with seeing others in my self publishing groups and things like that. They get 200 reviews on their book in the, in a year, or maybe even in a couple months.

I get five reviews in four years. Five. It's crazy. My books sell maybe around 10 per month on a good month. There's do 10 in a day. It's hard not to compare yourself. And that comparison trap is very real. And so even though I have contributed something that the people have told me that is, is good, I feel, Oh, there must be [00:14:00] something wrong with me.

I'm just posing here. I don't really know what I'm talking about. I'm just making it look like it. And, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, you're told to project authority and things like that. And I try to, but sometimes it doesn't feel that way. And so the honest truth is, you know, even though I've written these two books, sometimes it feels like I shouldn't have.

And that's just the honest truth. Me being honest with you, that's what imposter syndrome is like. If people don't buy my courses, I want to quit. If people don't want to read my emails or they unsubscribe, then I just stopped talking to everybody. If people thumbs down a video or leave a comment, it's nasty.

I just want to stop trying altogether. And it's these negative voices that really contribute to imposter syndrome. So let's talk about that a little bit. What contributes to imposter syndrome? So we tend to talk more about tech than our feelings is one of the things. And that doesn't seem like on itself, that would be a thing that would.

Be a major contributor, right? [00:15:00] The problem with that is that if we're only talking about technology and not about ourselves, we don't give context of things in the right kind of context, a lot of times we won't see. It's like that Instagram effect where you only see the perfect pose, you don't see the other 30.

You don't see all the work that went behind the scenes. You don't see all that kind of stuff. You just see the perfect pose and think that person has a perfect life. That's kind of the way this works when we're only talking about technology, because it just feels that way sometimes. Now it's, I'm not saying we needed to have like love ins at every tech gathering or anything like that, but there has been some benefit.

And I've seen this firsthand of really. Diving in with our with how things really feel and how things really are. And people are craving that. So that's a big deal. But if you're only talking about the technology, really the comparison trap becomes, well, I don't know as much as this person, therefore I'm less, if you're not really doing anything more than talking tech, that tends to happen.

I'm not saying that's the intention. Not at all hear me [00:16:00] on that. I'm not saying that talking technology is just a opportunity for the, those who know to brag to those that don't very much, not the case in the vast majority of cases now, unfortunately, there are those that don't follow the rules of society and they're just jerks and they just feel so insecure about themselves.

That they will just go on about how they're right. And everyone else is wrong, that sort of thing. And if you don't agree with me, then you are bad, evil, whatever. These people are out there. They're out there on YouTube. Trust me. I've been encountering them that way.

We often model behavior. We see, and we don't realize it that we're modeling it. I talked on a YouTube episode a while ago about the, this myth that you're the average of your five closest friends. No, that's not it at all. What Jim Rohn said was that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

And that's important. That's really important. Because If we spend a [00:17:00] lot of time around people that are very negative, we can become negative. If we spend a lot of time with people that are modeling these kind of behaviors that encourage imposter syndrome, then we get stuck in the same boat. We get right there with them.

So we perpetuate the cycle of trauma in IT by, by modeling that same behavior. And we don't even realize we're doing it. We very often have to ask for help or seek out answers from others in technology. Now this isn't bad. It's not bad to ask for help. In fact I often say that, you know, I built my career on Google because I did everything I figured out.

Usually it was by Googling it or like close to it. Like when I figured something out was very much like I Googled it and it was like, Oh yeah, this is close to my search results here. I could see that where this is going and try it out. And if it doesn't work, I just kind of tweak from that direction.

And generally speaking, figure things out. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think actually that's good. I don't think we [00:18:00] should be people that, that have to remember everything. We should have access to knowledge. I had a professor in college that was really big on this. He said, don't try and know everything.

No people that know things and it's really critical, but unfortunately imposter syndrome. And this is objectively true of me. So I definitely feel like because of what I just said, that because I feel like I always have to Google everything that I don't know things. I'm not worth anything that I'm not, I don't have anything to contribute to the world because I have to Google everything.

It's the truth, right? So it's something where we have to recognize that we, it's part of our job and our livelihood and something we should be doing. And so we have to be aware of those kinds of things and shut them down. That sort of thing. So that's the reality of that. So in terms of this in our industry, facing imposter syndrome, I recently had some conversations with people that I didn't record and I wish I would have.

And I [00:19:00] didn't get really clearance to use any names. So I'm not going to but the reality is that what I found is that more people are facing this than ever in information technology, especially if you use, if you're in an area of user facing support. Like, I've. Like I said, I worked in Citrix for a long time, that end user computing or what's now kind of being shifted towards digital employee experience focus.

It very much is a higher trauma kind of environment because you've got people yelling at you potentially, you know, and not everybody gives out hugs. I tell the story often of what got me into Citrix in the first place was When I was deploying it at a medical clinic and the next day, one of the physician's assistants saw me in the hallway and came running at me running.

And I was like, oh my gosh, what is this? And she just threw her arms around me and gave me a big old hug and said, thank you. I haven't spent any time with my kids in almost a year. [00:20:00] And that's because she was having to stay late and do stuff. And I'd given them remote access. And so that was the good.

I still try to remember that obviously a lot, but there's a lot of negative that came with that too. A lot of expectations that get set up once you, once they have that, if it goes down, their tone changes, doesn't it kind of contributes to the trauma quite a bit. That shift on you is something that's been happening more and more, especially as the, some of these technologies have become more prevalent in easier.

The expectations have become more intense. And so I think more of us are facing this than they ever had before. And the people who hand out the comparisons, the honest truth is they're probably feeling it more intensely than you are in other words. It's a defense mechanism, sometimes that when they're saying things like, when you say I've worked in something since presentation server 3.0 somebody will say, well, yeah, I've been working on since the WinFrame Why'd they do that.

Well, what did that add to our conversation? Maybe I shouldn't have [00:21:00] started with my experience or to begin with. That's one of the lessons I guess here, I'll inject early, but I think it's a defense mechanism that we've learned that we just have to inject, we don't want to feel like we're less.

And so we, Oh, well, actually I've done that. I've done more than that, you know, and I'm gonna tell you about it. You know, it's a weird behavior that we have and almost everyone in technology does it. Like I said, It's a behavior model. You don't realize it because you're spending time with these people more than positive influences.

But it is kind of a defense mechanism against imposter syndrome. And so that can lead to that and help it grow, unfortunately. And continuing the cycle of it trauma by letting others experience it as well, congratulations. The reality is your experience is valid. You're growing every day.

I hope so. If I hope you're growing every day, and if not, you're in the right place. We're going to help you out with that. I want you to grow a little bit every day. I don't want you to worry about [00:22:00] massive transformations. I want you to just have little transformations throughout your week. That's more, much more powerful.

Trust me. You already have a lot of experience. If you've been working in it for a week, you have more experience than someone who hasn't started yet. So. That's valid. And the honest truth is there are people right now who look up to you for what you've accomplished and who you are. It may not feel like that, but that actually is true that there are people that actually do look up to you for what you've accomplished.

Now we have to remember that there's a. Concept that all pain and all trauma is universal. I don't know where it comes from. I think it's just an innate thing, especially in technology where we deal in absolutes a lot. A friend of mine was on my other podcast, better than you found it. And we talked about some traumas she faced as a young person.

She was literally stuck in a cult as a child and was very much abused. And manipulated and it was very [00:23:00] awful. And I remember saying to her, as I can't even comprehend what this would be like, I can't even bring it to my level. You know, I feel bad about ever having complained about anything.

Basically, I mean, I'd say it that way, but, you know, that's what it feels like. And she said, you know what? A pain scale, a pain for me, that's a 10 is not the same as a 10 for you. And we have to remember that in IT, that, you know, there's different scales of experiences. There's different scales of traumas.

There's different things that people can handle and can't handle. It's why I often say that you won't rise to the occasion. You'll only rise to your level of preparedness. So preparedness is something that is looked over a bit, I think, but that's our level. That's what we can handle. And I think beyond that is trauma.

And so a lot of us have gotten to the point where we can handle more trauma because our level is higher. And [00:24:00] so. When it comes to that, we have to recognize that there are people that may be at a different level or a different area of what they can handle than you are. And there might be certain areas in your life that you can't handle and they can.

This is why working together. So, so crucial, by the way, and we're going to get to that in a moment. Just recognize that a 10 for you is not a 10 for them. Now, there are people right now. that are dealing with depression, drug use, some are struggling with infidelity, and even suicide rates are on the rise within the information technology world.

So this is something that needs to be taken seriously. And unfortunately the stats aren't reliable because tracking by profession isn't really done as often. And so the studies are low but honestly, the we all know. Right. We all see it happening. We are experiencing it. So we have to take imposter syndrome seriously.

And that's why I'm starting this whole series with that is that we want to talk about that. That's how you thrive. And it is surviving. [00:25:00] It is not good enough. We have to thrive it. We have to wait to change our processes. So question becomes what to do about it. First off, be honest with yourself.

Don't just pretend this is not happening. Sweep it under the rug and just think, Oh, you know, this is, it's just what life is like. No, it shouldn't be like this. And we know it. You need to follow our instincts on this. We need to be honest with ourselves. So what I'm encouraging you to do is write out the challenges that you face.

Actually physically write them on a piece of paper, write out your challenges. Write out the things that are beat into your imposter syndrome, things you've heard, things that you've felt when you've heard them. What kind of things are contributing to that? And then what I also want you to do, maybe even on the same piece of paper, maybe in a similar place, somewhere you can get to it very easily.

What I want you to do is list all the positive things that people have said about you. All the positive feedback you've gotten. It's not some new age cheery kind of thing [00:26:00] I'm saying here. It's a exercise in realizing that we have multiple voices kind of going on our heads, multiple things and certain things are louder than others.

And. They're louder than others because of our nature is our nature to look to the negative. Our brains are made for only a few things There's certain priorities that the brain has first and foremost. Well, not first foremost, but one of the priorities is Conserving energy. The other one is a feeling of safety.

I mentioned I didn't say actual safety. I said a feeling of safety And so if one of those are violated, then we have a trauma experience. And so what we have to do is recognize that by having all these things written down, that we can go back to them and say, no, no brain, we're okay here. We don't have to feel this imposter syndrome because we have these things in place.

We, we know that people are saying these good, positive things about us. We know that the re the world is not like this. We know [00:27:00] this. So your life's on the line here. I have to say it like that. I can't believe I have to say it like that, but having seen people fall into all these things and literally even had a suicide scare this year.

It wasn't that they didn't pass away, which sucks a lot, but you know, it was feared to be a suicide at first. And that really kind of made me thinking about this, like how people reacted to that was interesting because it was, they weren't shocked in a way you think they were shocked by hearing the, that news, even though it wasn't correct, it was still the sense of, oh, there goes another one kind of thing.

There was that kind of tone to their voice, to their interactions. So your life might literally be on the line here. Do it, fricking do it. Write down all the things that are positive that people said, don't just write down the negative, write down the positive, write them both down.

And then what I want you to do out of that is form affirmations. Now this can look different for a lot of different people as far as how affirmations are made. [00:28:00] That might even be a topic for a whole other podcast episode or whatever we call it.

Affirmations are really important. And so whether this is just doing things that are just generally encouraging or what you can do is when you write out a challenge, you can literally just say the reverse of that. And when it say I don't feel confident when this, you literally turn that around and say, I feel confident when this, and it sounds weird.

It sounds kind of like I said, a new agey. It took me a while to get into this. And I still struggle with it. If I'm being completely honest with you, I do is that, that lying to yourself, the more research I'm doing, the more I'm realizing on this is what I was saying earlier about the brain is really true.

It feels that way and it's hard to break it out of it. And so you literally have to lie to your brain. And when you do, it believes it sounds weird to say, because your brain is blinded itself. Like I know, I don't know, I don't need to be mansplained today. Thank you. But that is what happens.

As far as that goes from a processing [00:29:00] standpoint, it's like the result is that you live in that reality as if, and so if you previously felt unconfident about something, you say, I'm confident in that enough, and your brain will start to believe it. So, yeah, that's how affirmations work at a high level, like I said, there's more to it and, you know, that's probably not the topic for this completely, but it's a big part of it.

And the other part is a surrounding yourself with a positive community. Now, I know that there's a lot of communities out there already that will focus on the technology and things like that. And a lot of times life experiences will come out of that and relationships will form out of that, which is good.

That's really good, but my longing is to have a positive community that's a little more intentional, that's actually talking about life and not about technology, life in technology without talking tech. It's very difficult. And so that's why I'm trying to model all this for you is to try and get this stuff out there.

And if there's enough interest, this is something that I might even [00:30:00] pursue. From this platform is a, an actual community that's dedicated to that. So let me know if that's something that interests you. I very much am interested in your feedback on that. I just, I've, I felt a gap in a lot of the tech communities that I'm part of right now.

They don't seem to really have what I am looking for in that. And so I assume that's a gap there as well. I'm not saying it has to be an exclusive thing, you know, by no means, but I want to feed that if I can. So. Life and clarity coaching is another thing that I wanted to bring up. We all heard, you know, it's like everybody's life coach these days.

And this is always tough because I'm a life coach. And so I don't like calling myself a life coach, but I am a coach, but I call it clarity coaching because that's really what coaching is for me is moving forward. It's about having a clear sense of where you're going and making little corrections along the way.

Now, in terms of coaching, there's a couple of things to realize here. One is that you [00:31:00] may not have resources at your work. You might. In fact, that's something that I'm encouraging a lot of workplaces to do is to offer coaches to their staff to literally help them Thrive in it cheesy. I know, but it's true, right?

That's where I'm at these days and have had some great successes with, so I want to keep carrying that forward and I can talk more about that in another episode. I'm sure the concept here is I want to challenge you sort of like I've been challenged to invest between one and 3 percent of your annual income back into yourself outside of technology.

In other words, technology is. Equal to survival and learning more technology. All you'll learn how to do is survive another day. That's really not really moving things forward at all. In fact, sometimes you might find yourself moving sideways. There's other skill sets that if you're really honest, you realize you need.

And so that's where these other things come in. That's not just your, how you think about the [00:32:00] world, but also just how you implement the technology, not just physically how, but how you work with other teams and that sort of thing. There's a lot more to it. That's how we thrive. It takes a lot more.

So in, I would say 2012 or so is when I actually started this journey myself. I started to listen to a lot more books on audible, audio books, started to read more, started to get more positive influences and more information like that into my life, and that's something I would encourage you as well to start doing is to get better inputs.

And so start listening to these amazing podcasts. And share them with others. Make sure you share, consider investing in monthly programs as well. There's a lot of things out there already. And I think, like I said before, I think this is something that I'm looking very seriously at doing as well, but a lot of these are just monthly.

So if it doesn't work out for you, just cancel. But a lot of them I've been part of some monthly programs for going on. Gosh, one of them, I think [00:33:00] is almost like four years now. It's adding value to me. It helps to have other people that are in my same spaces, doing the same kind of things I'm doing, but it also has to have people that are just encouraging and being part of that and also equipping me with new things I didn't know.

That's what I think. So there's a lot of opportunities for that. So I do invest in yourself. So, like I said, I was challenged years ago to invest between one and 3 percent of my annual income back into myself. In these ways, outside of technology, outside of the things I'm learning at work. So I encourage you to do that.

The other thing is to mentor someone else. You always have someone, like I said before, that is a little behind where you are now. And so what you can do is you can practice how you want to be treated with them by mentoring someone else. So in other words you practice how you think you'd want to be treated by being that person.

It sounds weird to say but if you [00:34:00] realize that very quickly, when you're mentoring, you realize that you are able to see what it feels like on the other side, as well as what it would feel like from theirs and that sort of thing. And so you recognize how it would be and treat them how you'd want to be treated, basically that whole golden rule thing.

And if you are dealing with some PTSD like I am and have been, then frankly, what I'm going to recommend to you is probably beyond these things. And it is getting into things like counseling and therapy. And so I just, yeah it's hard to say that but it is actually true that if you really want to get past some of these things, sometimes it does take a bit of help and it's not like you're going to be committed to the nutty house here.

You know, however, they said that, and I have to tell you that I do have a background in psychology. I have a degree in psychology. So there is a lot of that, but I haven't ever practiced psychology. I'm not a psychologist. And so really there's tools and nuances to your [00:35:00] experiences that really sometimes need to be dove into more deeply and your peers aren't equipped to handle this They're just not.

And so if you're only venting to your peers, that's something that, that is not healthy. That's not going to really help you at all. You know, all it's doing is, you know, continuing the cycle. So my advice is to look into things like I used better help. That's not a, an endorsement necessarily. It's just saying that I used them and I was happy with the results of finding a good match on there as a, for a therapist on better help.

So I recommend that or whatever resource works for you. Honestly just look into it. That's the most important thing. So my, one of my therapies experiences, actually this goes back to 2004 when I was in therapy for some other things that were going on in my life. She had me walk through a thing that I think is really key for this, and that is to recognize negative feelings as signals.

So think of it this way, and I'm going to go back to my generation again. We were the generation of [00:36:00] cassette tapes and VHS tapes, right? So when we. saw something we would rewind and we kind of see it going backwards and then we play it forward again and see it going backwards and play it forward again and we can look back and see what was going on and we can see the pattern emerge and say okay if we felt this way at point a and then we had this result at point c b and then what we could expect at point c We know that if we're feeling a trigger at point A, we know what the rest of the progression looks like.

And we can now look at those as signals to make a change in your mindset.

So what I'm going to be encouraging you to do here is to be the buffalo. Sounds weird, but consider this.

There are storms that happen in Colorado where I'm from and all across. The nation and other places in the world as well. And when these storms come, these snow storms and whatever kind of storms they are, [00:37:00] what you'll see happening is that the cows will run away from the storm as fast as they can and get up to the very fences and not be able to go any further.

And then the storm eventually hits them and they are just stuck in the storm. Buffalo, however, have a fascinating aspect to them where they run into the storm. They run into the storm so that they experience less of the storm. It's absolutely fascinating. And it's just one of those things was it is always fascinating to me that they could be running away.

They're faster than cows way faster, right? They don't, they run into the storm. So that's what I want you to do. I want you to be the Buffalo. I want you to run into the storm. So when you feel like you aren't enough, that's your signal to be the Buffalo. When you get negative feedback or a thumbs down. Be the buffalo.[00:38:00]

When you feel like you're all alone, nobody else gets you. Be the buffalo. When you feel like what you do doesn't matter, be the buffalo. When you feel inadequate, consult your list. Look at the things we've talked about before your physical written down list of affirm affirmations and things that people have said about you.

When you feel inadequate, be the Buffalo. By now, when you're one of the few that have heard this. By now, others have tuned out, they've stopped paying attention, but most haven't heard this at all. Most still struggle with this and have no idea that they aren't alone. I say that because I've been hearing that more and more.

So I want you to do something today. Take a risk. Take a chance on [00:39:00] me, help others with their feelings of inadequacy today. Sometimes it's hard to do that on your own. And I encourage you to try because that really does help the most. What I want you to do is if you have people that you're working with or whatever that looks like, share this with them.

I can't do this alone. So if this message mattered to you, you may literally save someone's life by sharing with them. So I encourage you to take the two minutes out of your day and share this episode with them. You can find an easy way to do that at thrive dash it. com slash imposter. That's thrive dash it.

com slash imposter. So what I want you to do. Is before this goes on to the next thing, I want you to stop this right now and do that. Stop this. You're still listening. I want you to stop.[00:40:00]

No, I'm serious. I want you to stop.

Thanks everybody for being here. I appreciate your time and I appreciate you listening and I'm not trying to change the world. In big ways here. I really am after just small little impacts. And so that's why I'm starting this show is to get that out there. So thanks for being here and welcome again to the how to thrive in it show.

It's some great stuff coming for you. Stay tuned.