Imposter Syndrome..

Hey everybody, it's been a whole week since I posted! But I have been checking in with you...

I've been busy. I have recorded videos for my online course, I did my first ever LIVE webinar - eek, scary! and have been marketing, emailing, and generally taking care of business....

What a change. Five months ago exactly, business was looking pretty dire.

Lack of productivity, procrastination, below par service to long suffering clients - all by-products of dancing with the Wine Witch.....and one other that I haven't been able to articulate until this week....imposter syndrome.

Imposter Syndrome is defined as ...."a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist even in face of information that indicates that the opposite is true. It is experienced internally as chronic self-doubt, and feelings of intellectual fraudulence"

Every time I tried to give advice, help, teach or guide.....although I was (am) perfectly well qualified, inside of me, a voice was screaming to the client..

"don't take advice from her! She's a drunk! You should see the pile of crap on her desk that she hasn't dealt with.....her? lecturing about organization? That's funny, the only thing she COULD organize is a piss up in a brewery..."

It's tough to give business advice that you're not taking yourself. Hell, any advice.

I was terrified that if I marketed myself, in public....someone would call me out. Someone would post on my facebook page, or tweet, or complain to the newspaper, the Better Business Bureau .......don't work with her! She drinks!

Easier not to take the call. Easier not to reach out to new clients today. Easier to pour a glass of wine..

The road back hasn't been easy. I have had to deal with the pile of crap on my desk. Start marketing, prospecting, advertising, writing.....all from scratch. It wasn't easy......until it was.

In the same way that sobriety gets a little easier, bit by bit...so does business. Life. Parenting (as I discovered from Sober Mummy today, see her blog here)

 Socializing. Exercising. Family Gathering. Dealing with Government Agencies. Getting the car fixed.  ALL EASIER. Far easier than reaching for the bottle of wine.

And that nagging feeling of fraudulence? The fear of being "discovered"?

Gone.