Have you ever heard the phrase, “Who do you think you are?” Today we’re going to talk about imposter syndrome, what it is, how to tackle it, and how to overcome it.

What is Imposter Syndrome?

If you’re not familiar with what imposter syndrome is, more or less it is a little tiny voice in your head that says you’re NOT GOOD ENOUGH. It can sound like- “Who are you to be doing this?” or “Nobody’s gonna listen to you”.  “You’re not licensed enough. You’re not certified enough. You’re not qualified enough.” All of those voices say- here’s a big dream you have but you’re not going to get there because you’re not the savvy, knowledgeable, educated expert you claim to be. 

That’s imposter syndrome. 

Now a lot of people don’t like the discomfort that comes with these thoughts and these feelings of imposter syndrome, so to avoid them, they play it safe in their “comfort zone” and just don’t reach for big dreams, and often times, they don’t even dare to dream at all.

Playing to win vs. playing not to lose.

“ In your business you’re either going to play to WIN or play NOT TO LOSE.”

Lash business owners tend to play small within their comfort zone. They’re okay with helping a few people, but are afraid that if they put too much out there or grow a big following or spend a lot of money on ads and get a lot of attention, that somebody will point something out in them that’s like…

”Who are you or why are you doing this?” 

And so this whole concept of playing not to lose versus playing to win can really help you pivot your thinking when it comes to imposter syndrome.  

You have to make a choice in whether you are playing not to lose: 

• stay in your little bubble
• don’t ruffle too many feathers
• make everybody like you

 or do you want to play to win:

• have a major impact in women’s lives (which really is the motivating drive for most lash business owners).  

How to stop imposter syndrome in its tracks.

 If you struggle with imposter syndrome or if you have some big goals or big dreams, but you just feel like you’re not qualified enough or you’re not certified enough or not educated enough-shift the focus from you onto who you can serve. 

Who CAN you help?

Cause look, you can’t help everyone and it would be far too overwhelming to even try to help everyone. Instead, focus on helping just one person with what you offer. 

When you’re talking about your services or courses, talk about one person’s transformation. Talk about how what you offer made a difference in one individual’s life. Focus on who you CAN serve, and let go of all of the other noise that’s going to be going on as you step into this bigger game that you want to play because you’re not meant to help everyone!

Don’t undervalue yourself because you are not the most educated person in the world.  You want to make sure that when you are showing up for that one person that you can help that you’re serving them to the best of YOUR ability not the best of whoever abilities you follow and try to copy. 

There are plenty of larger brands with educators and influencers with big names. 

But guess what? 

They didn’t know what they were doing when they started – myself included! We’re all just making it up! Every single one of us- there is no standard. 

Just because a lash artist or educator or brand is successful does not mean that there’s less success available for you. 

Same thing for you if you see somebody who’s killing it as an educator. There’s so many educators, everybody’s an educator, but what you bring to the table does not exist yet. If you look at what other educators are doing, they have many different influences that have created their specific methodology of how they teach. Even if you and another educator took the exact same certification courses, the exact same training, followed the exact same people-the way that that knowledge comes into your head and gets blended together based on your life and your experiences will make your interpretation come out differently. Because you’re all unique. 

I’m going to give you some tough love…You worrying about imposter syndrome, worrying about some troll on the internet (who’s never going to be a customer of yours) is actually hurting that one person you could be helping because they’re staying in a pain point and a struggle and their life can’t move forward until you step up into what you are called to do. 

SO GET OVER YOURSELF. 

It’s not about you-even if your name is on it. It’s really about who you help and who you can serve. Start helping anytime that you worry about not being good enough. Take the focus off of you and focus on helping just one person today. 

Business is tough no matter what level you are at. As I like to say, “new level, new devil”-as you grow and as you scale, you will still continue to face struggles. They get easier to deal with and you kind of challenge yourself and you grow and evolve. But when you step up to play a bigger game, you can help a lot more people. 90% of us get into the beauty industry because we want to help women, or we want to help people feel better about themselves or we’ve had some amazing transformational experience by the services that we’ve received that we love. 

We make people feel much better about themselves by what we can impact on the outside. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there because your work isn’t “good enough”.  There’s somebody that’s gonna look at your work and go, “She’s freaking amazing! I can’t wait to book with her.  How do I get in with her?” They’re not looking at the same 40 or 50 lash artists that you follow on social media, they don’t see that. What they see is the transformation that you did on your mom and how great she looks. It’s just one small step of how can I help one person today? 

So to sum up, your brain is going to try and keep you safe. It’s going to tell you things that try to keep you safe. Putting yourself out there in ways that you’re not comfortable with means that there’s a lot of unknown and the brain doesn’t like the unknown. The known is safe-even if the known is UNCOMFORTABLE. Helping others is the dream, but you’re so afraid of putting yourself out there more, marketing yourself, and whatever else it’s going to take to get you from point A to point B. I can promise you, you are equipped enough to handle the first few steps and then you just do the next few steps. So commit to yourself that you’re going to play to win versus playing not to lose.

 If you have any questions about being an educator or marketing your business or how you can show up more in your business, send me a DM at www.instagram.com/thelashpreneur  That’s where I can help you with whatever knowledge is in my head that might be of service to you.