Michelle Gomez on Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
/Michelle Gomez is an accomplished business executive, with nearly 2 decades worth of experience in the male-dominated transportation and logistics industry. She has been a strong advocate for women in the workforce; mentoring dozens of women to personal and professional success. A self-proclaimed reformed Corporate Burnout, Michelle managed to find a slower pace of career that allowed her time and space to address the Impostor Syndrome in her own life. Michelle then turned her attention to helping other high achievers recognize and overcome their own Imposter Syndrome struggles, writing a book about her own journey. Now she’s bringing her story and experience to others, helping high achievers overcome Imposter Syndrome for their own career success.
Here are a few of the big topics we talked about:
The Imposter Syndrome is a behavioral phenomenon of highly competent individuals who dismiss their accomplishments, attribute success to outside forces, and fear being revealed as a fraud or imposter.
Sufferers of the Imposter Syndrome have difficulty internalizing success.
Michelle is a former corporate high achiever and author of “Own Your Brilliance”
Exhausted by giving all of herself to those around her and sensing the overwhelm of stress from her corporate job, she manifested an opportunity of working from home.
She developed inner fortitude by morning devotional time, reading, and journaling.
The five competency tendencies:
Perfectionist - extremely high expectations, harsh inner criticism and shame
Natural genius - assuming you have no natural inclination if a task isn’t easy
Expert - needing to become more and more of an expert through credentials, certifications, and mastery, but always striving never thriving
Rugged individualist, the soloist - believes true competence is achieving task on their own; asking for help solidifies that they’re a phony, then shame is felt
Super human - grad students are heavy sufferers; all duties should be fulfilled masterfully; to be perfect in every role; to juggle it all and make it look easy;
She still practices, reviews, and reminds herself of what triggers imposter thoughts
Michelle has an ability to see through difficult behaviors of others as how they’re dealing with hurt and she gives people a space to share their brokenness. Her empathy and love helps them change their lives.
Show up, play big, play brightly. No more holding back on true gifts! That goes for everybody. It’s about living through to our inspired potential.
In Michelle’s Voice:
“It’s a behavioral phenomenon experienced by highly competent individuals, where they have a difficulty internalizing their success.”
“It’s a matter of changing your agreements with yourself and the outside world to reduce the amount of suffering from things like overthinking, making assumptions, and being easily offended.”
“I’m going to continue to create a space for people to dream bigger than they have been up to this point and eliminating fear as part of their experience.”
“I had tapped into the reality of living as a corporate burnout. My mind was at work, my heart was at work. I had given so much of my identity to my career.”
“The competency types of the imposter syndrome all lead to a fearful shame.”