Ditching Imposter Syndrome: Why Did I Write The Book? And Some Surprising Things I Learned Along The Way [Episode 65]

Welcome to episode 65 of the Ditching Imposter Syndrome podcast. And today we are talking about why did I write the book, Ditching Imposter Syndrome. How has it helped people, how it might help you, and why I am pretty much giving away 200 copies to celebrate its fifth anniversary, which is happening this week. So if you'd like to find out a bit of behind the scenes of why the book is the way it is, how it's helped people, and how you can get your copy if you already have it, pretty much as my gift, I'm just asking for £1 because frankly, you have to have some skin in the game, today's episode is for you. Confession time. It is nearly 10 years since I promised my mastermind colleagues that I would write Ditching Imposter Syndrome. So it was five years before the book was actually published that I agreed to write it. They'd been nagging me, hustling me. They were telling me, what we all know even more now is there is so much total bunker. I'm being polite out there on the Internet about how to cope with imposter syndrome, how to handle it, how to put up with it, how to reframe it is a good thing.

Next week's episode is about why that's effectively gaslighting and we just need to stop reframing imposter syndrome. And there was nobody out there sharing how to truly set yourself free from it. But the thing is, at that point, although I had done my research, I'd already spent over a decade specialising imposter syndrome by then. I'd already helped tens of thousands of people to set themselves free from it. My approach was very much more bespoke. Actually, to turn something that you do intuitively into something that I call pyjama ready, which is where it doesn't matter if you're tired at the end of the day and you're reading the book in bed in your PJs, it is still going to work for you. Takes a phenomenal amount of work. So soapbox time. When I hear people say, I did a book in a weekend and I just blitzed 30,000 words and now it's out there for the world. My heart cries. There are the occasional geniuses who can decode what they did, who can help to explain it for people in ways that mean it will make sense for them wherever they are, whatever their culture is, whatever their background is, however they're experiencing that problem.

But very few people can actually do that in a weekend. To be able to write Ditching Imposter Syndrome, I first needed to pyjama-ready my processes. So I put my inner engineer to work. You might know that I was formerly a Six Sigma engineer specialising in process improvement, Kaizen, so just-in-time manufacturing, lean manufacturing. And I specialised in diesel engine automotive engineering, both design and manufacture. And that process improvement, taking out the fluff, is hardwired into my brain. It took me a couple of years of testing, trial and error, feedback, experimenting, to be able to work out what it was people really, really needed. What were the key points in the process that meant that ditching imposter syndrome could have a hugely positive impact for any reader, any time, any place, fluff free, without all the distractions and side alleys. And also, the other thing the book brings you is research, science, engineering-approved, processes, methods, practical strategies, self-mentoring exercises, light bulbs and insights that will change your life just by reading them. It also brings you a generous dollup of demystified ancient wisdom. You see, I'm also a meditation and a yoga teacher. I've certified in both over a decade ago.

And what I wanted to do was bring you something that moved beyond what most people are teaching, which is that imposter syndrome is a thinking thing and you can think your way out of it. It's just a mindset thing to actually share what was the missing link, the bits that nobody's talking about, the secret source that actually makes the difference so that you can set yourself free from imposter syndrome once and for all. And also Now, I already knew from my 20 odd years in this field that imposter syndrome isn't about our thoughts. They're just one component. And if our focus is on our thoughts, on our cognitive processes, on the mindset, then that's going to help with the symptoms. But my inner Six Sigma engineer wanted to give you the tools to really get in there to tackle the root causes. So that journey started 10 years ago. By two years point, I had formalised the process that I was going to be teaching. And then I needed to prove to myself and everybody else that it was actually going to work. Because there is a world of difference between somebody who's an expert in something and somebody who knows how to decode and deconstruct their processes to be able to teach them to others.

ack in 2009-2010, when I first started thinking about writing Ditching Imposter Syndrome, almost all of my work was either corporate training or one-to-one coaching. And I wanted to be able to write a book that would help people get quite similar results to those that they would get at that foundation level of working with me. There's obviously stuff I couldn't include in the book because it is the really deep identity stuff. And it's totally not okay to be sharing things that create that shift for somebody to do on a self-study basis. And that drove me to what I then did next, was to start creating and designing and getting approved certification programmes for other people to become practitioners and master coaches in this work. Because I knew that if I put the book out there, I would be creating a demand for more people to want coaching, and it would be more than I could deliver on my own. Throughout this process, my big focus was, how can I make this fast, fun, and effective and also safe, and have those next steps and the additional resources and support there for people if they decided they needed them.

I didn't want people to read the book and go, great, now I need help. And I'm sorry, Clare's too busy. They need people they can work with who've become experts in this work who've cleared out imposter syndrome for themselves. That's absolutely vital. If you're working with a coach and they say they're going to help you with imposter syndrome, ask them what they've done to clear their own first. You wouldn't go to a dentist who had rotten teeth, yeah? I wanted to make sure my readers felt fully supported at every stage of the journey, including whatever the journey was that they decided to take after reading the book. And one of the things that I've absolutely loved is hearing from readers telling me from all the way around the world, Ditching Imposter Syndrome has had thousands of readers and listeners now to the audiobook from over 50 countries. And when people contact me and tell me about the breakthroughs they've created with the book, I simply gave them the tools. It's you putting the book into action that makes the difference. It just blows my mind. It makes me happy cry. It gets me dancing. It's an antidote to everything else that we can see in the media, on social media, and in our inbox.

To create something can positively impact lives of people who you will never meet and never even hear of. It's just mind-blowing, and it's such an honour and a privilege. One of the first things I did once I was actually starting to put the book's manuscript and flow together was I looked at the internet at what else was out there and realised I actually needed to undo a lot of the accidental harm that's caused by the things that you find in a Google search. Almost everything out there on the web about imposter syndrome is about how to handle it, how to cope with it, how to put up with it, how to succeed despite it, how to reframe imposter syndrome to be an alleged superpower. It was all about this thing's incurable and here's how to live with it just not being quite such a negative impact in your life. And that wasn't what I wanted. You see, I'm on a mission to free the world from imposter syndrome, one reader, listener, app user, coach training graduate at a time. Because you don't have to be stuck with it. When people tell you that it's inevitable or even that it's a good thing, what it actually means is they don't have the tools and suggestions to offer you to help you to truly clear it.

So I started out with some of my research. We've done three landmark research studies now into imposter syndrome over the years, international research studies, interviewing thousands of people. So this isn't just stuff I've made up down the pub on the back of a beer mat based on a few people I've coached This is a proper high standard research study. And I thought for a lot of people, they actually need to know a bit about what imposter syndrome is, what it isn't, some of the statistics. And I wanted to help give them the light bulb of you are not alone. That is one of the most important things that I do. If I'm giving a keynote at a conference or for a company at an in-house event on imposter syndrome, my first goal is to give people that sense of relief of, You are not alone. Because back in 2001, when I quit the engineering career I loved due to something I didn't even know was called imposter syndrome, I genuinely thought I was the only one and everybody else had to act together. Then I thought it was important to tell people about what it's costing us, both as individuals, as organisations, and also as wider communities and even nations.

Because once people can see the impact of something, it helps give us the why. Yeah, Simon Sinek famously had that book Start with Why. It gives us the why for why he put the time and effort into dealing with this? And also when you see what it's costing others and you realise that actually you can recognise yourself in that, then it gives you hope that this isn't something that means you're especially broken or it's going to be impossible to fix. It means what you're experiencing is actually pretty common and there are things you can do about it. Then I did quite a lot of research into dark imposter syndrome rabbit holes on the Internet, lots of expert alleged interviews. To uncover the myths, the things that people are presenting as fact about imposter syndrome from the heart, well meaning, well intention that are accidentally keeping everybody stuck and holding them back. So that was then the next section of the book is the The myths, the good, the dodgy, and the downright ugly. Because the unconscious mind won't let you make a change it thinks is impossible. So first, I had to help people let go of, I'm going to call them myths, I'm being polite, because they are actually blatant, not true things about imposter syndrome that they will have read from sources they might well trust.

As I say, people with the best of intentions, but who simply didn't have the latest research and who were stuck in our past understanding of imposter syndrome, which was that there was nothing you could do about it. It was just a fact of life and you had to learn to cope with it. And as I started to write the main core of the book, it was based on my natural resilience method. This is about how to get back out of fighting and interflow, how to turn off hypervigilance, stress, chronic stress, burnout, the fight, flight, freeze response. And I needed to translate that into a format that meant people could do it at home on their own, even if they were feeling tired and only paying half attention. So one of the hardest things is actually knowing what to leave out from a book like Ditching Imposter Syndrome. It's nearly 300 pages in the print version. It is packed and brimming with something that will help you whatever your journey has been and whatever it is you want to do with Ditching Imposter Syndrome. But it was really hard to leave things out. And some of what I needed to leave out was actually that work that will help you to reset the hypervigilance response because that is so much safer and effective done with the support of a properly trained and certified imposter syndrome practitioner or master coach.

The reason behind that is when you're doing the deeper work to reset the body stress response, to reset that hypervigilance, that's where you're hardwired out looking for threats. When you're doing that, it's often linked to suppress trauma. And the last thing in the world you want to do with a is open up Pandora's box and have the ills of the world, everything a person has pushed down, suddenly come out to play. So there are techniques that I teach my imposter syndrome practitioners and my imposter syndrome master coaches to allow them to do that deeper work in ways that are safe and effective and actually incredibly powerful and surprisingly fast. And I included foundation level techniques in the book, but it was really hard to miss out the ones that worked deeply, but I knew it wouldn't be safe. Instead, you need to work with a coach who's been properly trained in these methods. And both of my coaching certification programmes, both a practitioner and imposter syndrome master coach, are trauma informed. And then in the book, we move on to the mindset stuff. But it's not just mindset. You're also working with the body, but without me shouting about it, okay?

Because the thoughts we think play a role in imposter syndrome, but they're actually the surface-level symptoms. And if that If it's the only work that you're doing, then you're setting up an inner conflict. Your body is thinking one thing and your brain is thinking another. You're trying to rewire the brain to be this epitome of positive thinking and the body is sat there in stress and trauma, going I don't think so. That doesn't feel safe. So although step two is to call taming your inner critic, we're actually doing a lot of work to ground the stress, the worrying, the what-if-ing, the catastrophizing. We're using the thoughts, but also working with the body on really subtle and profound and deep levels so that when you're making changes in your thoughts, you're also creating shifts in how it feels physically and emotionally. Because one of the biggest issues with imposter syndrome is people telling you to push on through the fear. You push the fear down, it causes all sorts of problems. I talk about it a lot in the book. I've got podcast episodes on it. I'll link to them below this episode. And it's always a bad idea.

Step three, we move the sticky stuff, clearing out hidden blocks and fears and excuses. Again, this can be really profound, but what's in the book is what was safe to share on a self-study basis. So if you've gone through the book and you found that you've got some limiting beliefs, some fears, some excuses, dare I call them that, and you'd like to go more deeply on those, please do get in touch. I'll make sure there's a link to my team's Contact Us page below this episode in the show notes. Get in touch, and we can recommend a practitioner or an imposter syndrome master coach for you to work with with the deeper techniques that it was not appropriate to ask people to use on a self-study basis. Step four is where we get into the meaty stuff of starting the identity level change work. Again, these techniques are really powerful, but they are the ones that it was safe to give you to use at home on your own, that pyjama ready. Then we wrap up with consciously creating your future and becoming the real you. You see, imposter syndrome is an identity level issue.

It is different to self doubt. If that is a new concept to you, there is a link to a podcast episode I've done on this below this one in the show notes. And one of the things that people often find a bit strange is I do the whole, well, who are you and what do you want? And what do you want to achieve? What are your objectives and goals at the end of the book, at the end of the natural resilience method. And there is method to my madness. If you ask somebody when they're still running screaming, raging imposter syndrome, syndrome, what they want to achieve, which version of them they want to become, what impact they want to have, the box within which their answer fits is going to be really small because there's going to be an awful lot of fear-based restrictions running there. When they have cleared imposter syndrome and they are free from it, then their dreams get bigger. They share their ideas with courage and confidence and passion. They have more impact, and they actually need to learn a new way being, creating their future and communicating and influencing. And that is really what we touch on in step five in my Stepping Up To Lead programme, which is for people who want to start moving into leadership roles and organisations.

We go into that in much more detail, but those foundation level techniques for that are already there for you in the book. So Ditching Imposter Syndrome, that book is there for you as a resource. It is stand-alone. It has changed countless lives. People who have used it to set themselves me from imposter syndrome that they had been running for decades. But there has been a problem with it. I had to make a decision really early on when I was writing it about how much I was going to share. And in fact, my husband was pretty grumpy when I said, You know what? I'm going all in. I'm going to teach people how to do this. It's not going to be one of those books they read that's all about the what and the why and doesn't actually give you the how, and you've got to pay thousands of pounds for that course. I didn't want it to be that book. My husband's concern was, Well, what if people copy you? What if coaches and trainers decide to use your book and set up their own businesses? What if they share your ideas as their own?

Because the book includes a number of my coaching models. My husband wanted me to cut out of the book any Anything that people could actually use that I might prefer them to have actually trained with me to use. Actually, it's not just a case of preferring. If you've got a coach and their sole training in imposter syndrome is stuff they found on the internet, this podcast and the Ditching Imposter Syndrome book, please don't work with them. There is a world of difference between knowing how to do a self-coaching exercise for yourself and being safe to use it effectively with clients. And it doesn't matter that there are loads of disclaimers in the book saying, hey, if you're a coach or a trainer or you're in-house working in learning and development, please do not just go and teach these concepts you're not qualified to, you're not insured to. I haven't taught you in the book how to do it because that's not the purpose of the book. Despite that, it still happens every single week. And it's really not okay. And it's one of my few regrets about writing the book is knowing there are people out there using this stuff when they haven't actually been properly trained in it, even marketing themselves as imposter syndrome coaches on the back of having red-ditching imposter syndrome.

So I now have resources for questions that you can ask an imposter syndrome coach before you work with them. I will put a link to that worksheet. It's a little workbook for you, 10 to ask below the show notes here. And it's why I also run my imposter syndrome practitioner and imposter syndrome master coach programmes. And in fact, the vast majority of the students who I absolutely love, they're fantastic, who come and worked with me on that programme, do so because they read Ditching Imposter Syndrome. It worked for them, and they felt hungry to learn how to use it to help and support others. But over the last five years, there's been a common theme that I I've seen a difference between those who get life-changing breakthrough results with a ditching imposter syndrome and those who don't. Those who love it, but it doesn't quite work as deeply for them as it could. Those who get the most fantastic results are those people who are really easily self-motivated. They hold their head underwater to do the exercises properly. They keep going through the book, even if they've hit a bit of resistance and they might not be in the mood.

They apply the strategies the insights, the light bulbs, and they create breakthroughs that usually they wish they'd done 20 years before. Yeah, but thank goodness they did them today. As the ancient saying says, the second best time to plant an oak tree is today. We're There's those people who are getting good results, but maybe it's not going quite as deeply as it could, are those who read a bit of the book, put it to one side, forget about it for a few months, maybe come back to it with the best of intentions, going through it, looking at the exercises, skimming them, promising themselves. We'll do them tomorrow, and we all know when tomorrow comes. When it's that thing, we've all been there. And they're not actually applying what they're learning in the book. They're treating it as inspirational information rather than implementing it to actually create change. And I get it when you're guiding yourself through a 10-step exercise and you're trying to also think about what your answers would be and pay attention to your body and everything else, it's tricky, yeah, to be able to multitask at that level. So what I've done is I've I've created something for you that I'm calling the Ditching Imposter Syndrome Accelerator.

If you're one of those people that love self-study and you know you can just plough through a book and get great results and you don't need support, accountability, virtual cheerleading, celebrating your successes, and you want to ask Questions? Great. Keep going with the book. You be you. Let me know how you get on. I can't wait to hear your results. But if you're somebody who knows that actually, if you have my voice guiding you through each exercise on an audio, on your phone, if you had a private area of a virtual journal to be able to make notes from those exercises so that you can celebrate each time you've had a breakthrough, you can track your progress, you can see the journey, you can measure your results, you can pop into an app every day, practise a do one thing to start actually turning the book into life-changing habits, build up streaks, have a private discussion for it, to share the journey with fellow readers and with me and my master coaches. To have twice monthly livestream Q&A, Pick Clare's Brain, Ask the Author sessions, where you can submit a question about the book and I will answer it for you.

And monthly Q&A calls Hot Seat Coaching on Zoom, where you can join me and fellow readers, and I can actually give you hot seat coaching on the spot. If you know that that plus deep dive video trainings, because not everybody learns from a book from reading, and cheat sheets and downloads at the way that it would work best for you, then the Ditching Imposter Syndrome Accelerator is for you. It brings your Ditching Imposter Syndrome book to life. It's totally interactive. It's multisensory. So as I say, you've got the videos, the cheat sheets, you've got the audios, you've got downloads, and you've got that support, accountability, virtual cheerleading, celebrating, learn from others' experiences, getting answers to your questions and everything else that comes from having a private community of people who are on a fellow like-minded journey. And it's all based around the book. That book that we already know and love and we know gets results. And this just takes it to that next level, making it easier, quicker, more fun. And less on your own because you would be fully supported, then the Ditching Imposter Syndrome Accelerator is for you. I am giving everybody who's listening to this podcast episode the chance to join us for just £1 for your first 30 days.

It's hosted inside My Imposter Syndrome Hacks app, so it's there for you on your phone. Just download the app, follow the link that's in the show notes here. Your Accelerator membership will automatically be added to your app account. Or if you're not into apps, you don't want to download it on your phone, there's a web app that you can access online and your information syncs across your devices. So if there's something that you're doing on your computer and then you pick it up next time on your phone, progress automatically maps across and you can pick up easily where you left off. So I'm not just giving you the Ditching Imposter Syndrome Accelerator for £1 for your first 30 days. Inside that, I'm also giving you, for as long as you want to stay a member, the Ditching Imposter Syndrome book, both in e-book form and the audio book. So it's already there for you on your phone, whether you've already got it on your Kindle, on Audible or in a print version. It is also going to be there waiting for you inside the app. After your first 30 days, it's It's entirely up to you if you want to keep going because you're actually going to be getting Courage Club membership of the imposter syndrome hacks app.

So that means in addition to the Ditching imposter syndrome accelerator, that is just one element of what's waiting for you inside the app. You get monthly hacks trainings on how to apply the things I teach in Ditching Imposter Syndrome to any area of your life. We're going to be looking at things like how to set yourself free from shuditus. There's already stuff in there like my 60 second Courage Creator. We're We're about to have an inner critic timeout course. You've got a training on my inner critic to cheerleader formula. There are so many different courses in there that you can take that you can totally tailor your journey to what matters for you most. You can dive in more deeply where you want to clear things out more deeply. And you can browse Netflix style, which training, which bit of your personal development you'd like to work on next. All of that is there on waiting for you. But the first step is the Ditching Imposter Syndrome Accelerator, making the most of the book, bringing it to life, helping you to create those breakthroughs as quickly and easily as I possibly can. So it feels like I am walking by your side, guiding you through this journey.

You are fully supported by a group of people who totally get it because they're doing it, too. That's resonating with you and you would like to dive in and get started in the next five minutes. Go to ditchingimpostersyndrome.Com/ today. So that's ditchingimpostersyndrome.Com forward slash today, because my biggest prayer is that today is the day you say yes to the changes that the future you has been dreaming of. I would love to get to walk by your side. It would be an honour to get to help you with this next stage of your journey. At ditchingimpostersyndrome.com forward slash today. And I'm going to ask you for a favour, please, if I may. I know that a lot of people who listen to the Ditching Imposter Syndrome podcast have already read the book and they've already implemented it to create changes in their lives. Perhaps you could reach out to me on LinkedIn or Instagram. I'm at Clare Yosa on both. I'll put a link to my profile in the show notes. Send me a DM and let me know, how has the book helped you? Because this is a really scary thing that happens when you publish a book.

It's like sending it out into the world, but then it disappears into a black hole. And you are constantly unaware of how many people are reading it, who's reading it, what impact it's having for them, unless somebody contacts you. And it can feel a bit like getting a call from the headmaster back at school and you don't know whether you're going to go in there to be totally told off or praised for doing something well. So if ditching imposter syndrome has helped you in any way, please get in touch. Let me know via LinkedIn or Instagram message. It would make my day to hear from you. And if you haven't read it yet, it's waiting for you as close as I can make it to a gift because you do need a tiny bit of skin in the game. If you're actually going to get results from this work at ditchingimpostersyndrome.Com/today. And I can't wait to see you in the Ditching Imposter Syndrome Accelerator.