For women who deal with Imposter Syndrome, much of the pain we experience in our daily lives exists because we aren’t living in alignment with our values. For example, if you value honesty or truthfulness as one of your core beliefs, but you hold your own truth quietly inside because you are afraid to proclaim it, you are going to feel guilt and shame and regret about holding back that truth when the opportunity to speak it is offered.
In fact, often holding back our values isn’t only painful, but it’s also exhausting! It takes an enormous amount of mental energy to hold back our values because it requires an internal dialog of something like: “I should speak out about this issue because …” but then our brains respond with, “No! No one wants to hear your opinion. Keep quiet. You’ll sound ridiculous!” and so forth. Sound familiar?
Learning to live in alignment with our values means living into our true selves. It is freeing and energizing to give our power to our values. So how do we do it when our brain is screaming, “STOP!”?
The first step of living in alignment is knowing what our core values are. If you need help with this, you can Google “examples of core values”. Brene Brown, author of Dare to Lead and many other books, has a great list of values on her Dare to Lead website. Find about 8-10 values that really resonate with you and then try to cut them in half to dig into your core values.
Now, you have awesome prompts for your journaling! Ask yourself questions such as, “How am I living in integrity with my value of _______, and how am I not?” Once you’ve journaled on each of these values, you can decide the things you’re doing well and the things you’re ready to change. If you value connection, but you are hiding from others and staying small, then you can examine what connection would look like if you were living in integrity with it.
WARNING: This is the point where all of your imposter syndrome doubts and insecurities will come flooding into your brain!
Our brains are comfortable with the familiar, but don’t forget that they offer a false sense of comfort to lull us into staying in our routine. As I said in the beginning, any time we aren’t living in integrity with ourselves, we are uncomfortable and exhausted with trying to hold ourselves back.
The moral of the story is that discomfort is going to happen either way, but we get to choose the discomfort. Why not choose the one that will energize us and increase our sense of self-worth and self-love instead of the one that keeps us in all of our old patterns? At least give this discomfort a try! You can open an amazing world up for yourself, so give it a shot!
If you would like to talk with me more about living in integrity with yourself, schedule a free session at sonyagreencoaching.com. Until then, much love!
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