“I become a hermit in front of people. I feel like an imposter,” Sindy said to me yesterday.
“What thoughts go through your mind when you start to experience imposter syndrome?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She paused a little and then spoke again. “Like, shit, what do I say? Am I going to be wrong? Am I going to look stupid?”
“So what? if you look stupid?” I asked.
“In my mind, I know I’m gonna be okay.”
“When you had those thoughts, then what happened?” I asked again.
“When I managed to speak up, I felt like I didn’t know what I was saying. But as I finished, my coworker messaged me saying that I nailed it.”
“So you are 100% right!” I said.
“What do you mean?” She asked.
“When you said you don’t know where your imposter syndrome came from, you got it 100% because it’s NOTHING. It’s not even real. Imposter syndrome is a story that you make up!” I responded.
She seemed surprised by the comment but stayed quiet for a little while, feeling the shift in her body.
I love the hermit analogy that she referenced as I learn more about hermit crabs:
“The hermit crab is a creature of constant change: as they grow larger, they must seek out new shells that better fit their expanded selves.
When a new shell appears, they have been observed to line up from biggest to smallest and pass the new home along to see whom it fits best.
Of course, this process is not without risk. Growth rarely is. To change shells, hermit crabs must make themselves vulnerable.
Hermit crabs remind us that growth is as much about what we’re giving away as it is about what we’re getting.” ~ WILLOW DEFEBAUGH
What does it look like if we learn from the wisdom of hermit crabs when we expand?
What might we do differently if we never doubted that we are enough to get a bigger shell?
How might we take risks to experiment and create a bigger space for ourselves?
Love, Wen