In this video, I want to talk to you about something all entrepreneurs and ambitious people deal with, and that is imposter syndrome. In order to tackle these limiting beliefs, we’re going to use the N.A.M.E. process. Name stands for: N, name; A, acknowledge; M, morph; and E, experiment. This is the exact process I use to tackle my limiting beliefs, which come up every single day.

First of all, let’s talk about some signs that you might be dealing with imposter syndrome: not having any professional or certification in your industry, not having experience in doing what you do, having a small email list or small following on social media, constantly comparing yourself to someone else’s highlight reel or success, having friends and family who totally don’t get your business streams, and finally, another great one that comes up a lot is feeling too young or even too old to be doing what you do or starting your business.

Let’s talk about how to overcome imposter syndrome, how to stop feeling like a fraud, and start taking those key actions you know you need to take, but you keep procrastinating, putting off, binging new series on Netflix. You know what I’m talking about.

N: Name it. What is the limiting belief holding you back?

The first step, N, is to name what the limiting belief is. What is the belief that you are hearing that you believe to be true? Oftentimes, your limiting beliefs are things that you absolutely think are fact, and so you want to examine just basically any type of thing that might be holding you back: too young, too old, not having certification, not having enough experience. These are the types of things that qualify as limiting beliefs.

Bonus tip!

As you name that belief, a bonus tip for you if you want some extra credit points, really think about how is this limiting belief holding you back. What are the consequences of holding this belief, because if you don’t believe that this belief is holding you back, you’re not going to be very motivated to change it. We’ll get to that a little bit more in the rest of this formula.

A: Acknowledge. This belief isn’t “yours”. It’s your lizard brain.

That brings me to A, which stands for acknowledge. What we want to do here is acknowledge the fact that everyone else has these limiting beliefs as well. You’re not alone in this. It doesn’t mean that you can’t move forward, and knowing that everyone else is suffering internally with the same anxieties, or most people are, can be really reassuring. Know that all the successful people you admire and look up are people who also struggle with similar limiting beliefs to you. Having these beliefs doesn’t mean that it’s absolute fact that you can’t be successful or move forward or reach your goals. It just means that’s something you’re going to have to manage.

M: Morph. Re-write the limiting belief as an empowering one.

Now that we’ve named and acknowledged our limiting beliefs, let’s move on to M, which is to morph it. In order to start to overcome the limiting belief, you’ve gotta turn it into a more empowering belief that’s going to help you to move forward. This more empowering belief is something that you are going to have to integrate into your daily life. It might not be something that you believe off the bat, but just coming up with a way to morph that belief will show you what you need to believe to be true instead if you want to reach your goals.

Let’s take “I feel too young.” This is one I dealt with when I started my business at age 22, 23 and had no experience. I had all of the limiting beliefs, but being too young was a big one for me. Instead of looking at being youthful as a downside, I needed to morph that belief to be a positive. There’s a lot of benefits to being young. I had more energy. I wasn’t jaded by my work or my industry. I was willing to put in crazy amounts of hours and time because I didn’t really have any responsibilities, which also allowed me to invest basically all of my income back into my business.

You can morph any limiting belief that you have. This is the place where you get to be creative and really try to find what is the silver lining, what is the positive side of this fact. The fact is, I’m young. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. It means it could be a good thing, and I choose to look at the good side of that.

E: Experiment. Take action to integrate this new belief into your psyche.

Once you’ve morphed your belief, it’s time to integrate it into your experience and start to believe it to be true. That brings us to E, which is experiment. What you want to do is write down all of the little micro actions you could take as somebody who has this belief. If you were someone who had the positive belief about youthfulness being a benefit to starting a business, write down what are all the actions somebody who believed that to be true would take. It might be things like taking more risks in your business. It might be putting your youthfulness out there as a positive and reaching out to more people your own age to inspire them.

What are 3 actions you can take this week?

My challenge for you is to come up with three actions you can take this week that will start to integrate your new empowering belief into your psyche. The question to consider here is, how would you show in the world if you believed these things to be true about yourself? Guess what? It’s okay if it takes time to integrate your new beliefs into your psyche. You just need to fake it until you make it. I know that’s controversial advice. Not everybody’s going to take it, but it’s what I’ve always done to really step into the person I know I need to be. I ask myself, what would that person do, and then I just do that.

What I actually want to know in the comments below is what is your new empowering belief? What is the belief that you are integrating into your psyche because putting it in a comment below is going to be one action you can take in order to start behaving that way. There. I just gave one of those actions to you. You only need to come up with two more in order to complete the challenge.