Imposter Syndrome Side Effects: Why You Feel Like A Spectator in Your Own Life | E94

Gino Cordone [00:00:13]:
Welcome to episode 94 of Working towards our purpose. Today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the side effects of imposter syndrome. But before we get into it, we’re going to take a moment to slow down and check in with ourselves. All right. Hopefully you got to see feel where you’re at today. Right now, for me, I’m in a pretty good mood. It’s a beautiful day out. I’m gonna go outside after recording this, so I’m excited about that.

Gino Cordone [00:00:51]:
I’ve also had my second cup of coffee, so perhaps a little over caffeinated, but excited to talk about today’s episode, imposter syndrome, which I did an episode on before imposter syndrome, and it was one of the most popular episodes and I feel like I got something new to say about it. So excited, excited to jump into it because, yeah, imposter syndrome, I feel like, is just one of those things that is such a. It’s so common. Like so many of us feel it and yeah, we don’t want it to let it stop us. So. Yeah. So what is imposter syndrome? You know, from a start, it’s the feeling that you are inadequate or not good enough or maybe you don’t know whatever it is you’re doing enough. Maybe you’re newer.

Gino Cordone [00:01:44]:
Maybe, um, it’s the feeling that somebody else is, is better suited to do it than you are. And yeah, I think when it comes down to it, it’s just lack of self belief. But specifically when you are trying to like do something new or trying to reach for something, usually that’s when it pops up and, and yeah, I mean it’s, it’s such a real feeling. It feels so real when you’re, when your brain is telling you like you’re not good enough at this, you can’t do this yet, or somebody is way better than this. Why, why are you doing this? When there’s other more qualified people out there, you know, it feels, feels very real. And I think a lot of times with imposter syndrome, it’s, it’s often telling the people that do have something to say or they do have something to say about the topic. It’s not like the lack of experience, it’s just the lack of confidence in yourself and your self belief. So I think that’s kind of interesting.

Gino Cordone [00:02:56]:
But yeah, so the side effects of imposter syndrome, like what happens when you give in to imposter syndrome and when you let imposter syndrome win. For me, I have a specific story about this so back when I was still in my corporate career and I was looking for a way to get out of it, I was looking to utilize skills that I had that I could make money at in a different career. And the only thing that I knew how to do other than the engineering degree that I had, was audio engineering, which is a completely different type of engineering. I know they’re both engineers, but audio engineering is way different than mechanical engineering. But I knew how to record audio. I was really into music. I loved playing music throughout high school, and I knew how to record a good amount. But when I was thinking about what can I do to leave this corporate job, I thought about recording musicians and recording bands and.

Gino Cordone [00:04:02]:
And I wanted to do that, but I felt like I didn’t know enough yet. And there may have been some truth to that, but I also felt an immense amount of imposter syndrome. Like, I thought about me sitting down and recording bands and being like, how could I do that? I don’t read music. I don’t know theory. I don’t know so many different things about music that I should if I’m going to record bands. I’ve never really done it that much. And yeah, just all kinds of excuses from the software that I use. It’s not the industry standard pro tools, like, you got to learn that before you can do it.

Gino Cordone [00:04:43]:
And just all these excuses because I felt like I wasn’t good enough to do it. So as I was thinking about leaving this corporate job, I thought about it for a second, about recording music, but I’m like, no, that’s not going to work, and you’ll have to find something else. And then that’s when I kind of stumbled upon podcasting. And I was listening to a podcast one day coming home from work, and I was really into listening to podcasts because I had a long commute at the time. And I found this cool new podcast that was super specific niche, and the content was great, but the audio quality was not great. It was really bad. And I remember being on the highway, turning my volume up all the way. I could hardly hear it.

Gino Cordone [00:05:28]:
It was really noisy. And that’s when I thought to myself, oh, if I had that audio file, I can make it sound better, I can level it, I can remove the noise. Doing that’s easy. Then I thought about it and I was like, oh, maybe that’s a business idea, and maybe I can do that. I’m not good enough at music with audio, but I can certainly do spoken word, like one vocal. I was confident enough in that. So that sent me down this whole path of getting into podcasting and doing podcast editing. And for some reason, I was confident enough in that because it wasn’t all the way to music.

Gino Cordone [00:06:09]:
It was just a little piece of it. So it was a trick for me that I didn’t feel imposter syndrome with podcasting, but I did for music. And yeah, it sent me down this whole path. And I had this side business for a while, and then I opened up a podcast studio and I started working with clients more and more and really getting into podcast development and social media clips and all this stuff that surrounded podcasting. And then I kind of realized a few years into this, I quit my corporate job. I was trying to make that podcasting business work full time. And then after a few years of doing that, I was like, why am I doing this? Where did podcasting come from? And then I kind of had to think back and I was like, oh, yeah, I did podcasting because I didn’t think I was good enough at music. And the original plan was to make enough money with podcasting and then you can do music for fun and there won’t be any pressure on it.

Gino Cordone [00:07:05]:
And that kind of never really happened. And then that’s when I started making a switch of focusing more on actual music instead of podcasting. So anyways, long story short or no, that was a long story long of explaining the side effects of imposter syndrome. Now I’m doing music. Now I’m recording music and bands and artists, and I’m doing what I want to be doing and what I’ve wanted to be doing. But because I had imposter syndrome with recording music, I. I didn’t allow myself to do it. So the side effect is that my path kind of got derailed or I took a longer way to get there.

Gino Cordone [00:07:47]:
And I’ll say that in a regret for a way, because I think I learned things that I needed to. And this podcast exists because of my path down podcasting. So that’s been something that’s been fulfilling for me and I wouldn’t change it. But it’s interesting now how I can look back and look at the side effects, side effects of imposter syndrome. It led me down this path that was trying to walk adjacent to the one that I wanted to do but didn’t believe in myself enough to. So, yeah, moving on from the story, recently, this past weekend, I went for a walk with a dear friend and this kind of came up and I was kind of describing how what I just did the story of not doing music for so long. And then my friend was describing how they wanted to take another class in their area of expertise and how if they took this next class, then they would feel good enough or certified enough to do what it is they want to do. And I don’t know, we had this moment where we kind of both saw that we were doing similar things.

Gino Cordone [00:09:00]:
We were both looking at finding something to tell us that it’s okay for us to pursue the thing that we really want, when in reality, we were just looking for our own permission to do the thing that we want to do. We’re plenty qualified. In wasn’t a lack of knowledge, but a lack of feeling like you’re good enough to do it, which is imposter syndrome, the feeling that you’re an imposter. So, yeah, it was really quite interesting. And if you’re struggling with imposter syndrome, I feel like things that. What’s helped me in the past is vocalizing it and saying it out loud. So me going for a walk with a friend, a close friend, and vocalizing it, that’s helpful because then you can kind of point. Point the mirror.

Gino Cordone [00:09:57]:
You can be mirrored to your. What am I trying to say? Your friend can mirror you and you can see, like, oh, I’m just afraid of this. I’m not actually not good enough. And I’ve been fortunate to have friends in the past who have done that for me, and I’m definitely grateful for that. So if you do struggle with imposter syndrome, I feel like finding community in what it is that you’re doing. If it’s music or art or writing a novel, whatever it is. Finding community where you can talk about your imposter syndrome and get it out in the open, and then you can all be like, oh, wow, yeah, I struggle with that too. Or I struggle with that too.

Gino Cordone [00:10:38]:
You’re really good. Why do you struggle with that? I’m not good. And you can kind of get it out of your head, and then it becomes less real and it has less weight over you. So. So that’s kind of one takeaway, I think, if you’re struggling with imposter syndrome. But then I also kind of wrote myself a little note while I was planning for this episode, and it’s kind of like something that I would tell my younger self myself when I was quitting corporate, and I didn’t think I was good enough to record music or to work in music. So then I went. I went down the podcasting route.

Gino Cordone [00:11:16]:
I would tell myself this that what’s most important isn’t the things that you know, but how much you care about it. You can always learn more skills, but you can’t replace the drive that you have for something. And I think that that is so important because you can always learn things, but you have to have the drive to want to learn them. So what’s important isn’t how much I know about audio recording or music or guitars or music theory. It’s the drive that I have to want to make music and to want to create. And that’s the most important thing. So if you’re struggling with imposter syndrome, maybe you can try to think of it in that way. Is it the lack of skills that’s holding me back or is it the passion for it that’s holding me back? And maybe that’s helpful.

Gino Cordone [00:12:10]:
I don’t know. But for me, I felt like that would be a helpful thing to tell my old self. So. Yeah. And then I also want to leave you with one question. In talking about imposter syndrome and feeling like you’re not good enough, what would it feel like if you believed in yourself? Or how would things look different if you believed in your own abilities? And yeah, I don’t know. Just maybe ask yourself that question because I think it’s important to believe in yourself for sure. I know it’s really hard to do that.

Gino Cordone [00:12:53]:
But just imagine, even if you don’t believe in yourself, what would it look like if you did believe in yourself? And yeah, maybe think about that for a minute if you want to. But that’s all I have for you today. I’m imposter syndrome. Hopefully this was helpful if you struggle with your inner critic. I have a 7 day free guide of softening your inner critic because I think imposter syndrome and inner critic go hand in hand. I actually have. So it’s a seven day free guide and one of the days specifically talks about imposter syndrome and how to how to move through imposter syndrome. So if you struggle with imposter syndrome, this guide might be helpful.

Gino Cordone [00:13:35]:
It’s free. It’s a PDF download that you can find anywhere. It’s called Softening youg Inner Critic. It’s in the show notes, it’s in all the links. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. I appreciate all of you and I’ll see you on another episode real soon. Take care.