Surprisingly simple reason you have impostor syndrome - despite being successful- and struggle to pursue a new, more challenging career chapter.

Buckle up, because once you read this post, I hope you’ll see this whole issue with more lightness and clarity instead of believing you’ve got an impostor syndrome stemming from your feelings of unworthiness caused by some childhood trauma…

Or even worse: believing that you’re ACTUALLY not good enough.

Let’s dive right into it.

First, I need to state the obvious: 

We are great at what we do mainly for 2 reasons —we either use a lot of our natural strengths or we rely on our acquired skills (I call it learned competence). Or both.

(Obviously, the worst case scenario is when you’ve got neither. But that’s probably not your case. And just as obviously, the best case scenario is when you’ve got both, which makes you a master. Also probably not your case or else you wouldn’t be reading this 😉)

I wanna talk about the second worst case scenario — which is quite common and in my opinion, a much more likely candidate for your impostor syndrome and the lack of confidence and courage to go after your dream job — and it’s this: 

You have a lot of learned competence — the knowledge and skills you’ve acquired over the years of experience.

But the problem is, you don’t get to use many of your greatest strengths and talents, i.e. the traits you are naturally good at. 

And because you don’t get to use your strengths, you don’t fully enjoy your work (we love doing things that come to us naturally, and dislike doing those that don’t). And even though you get great results, you struggle along the way. 

Hence, you feel like your success isn’t deserved. On the outside you look like an expert, but on the inside, you feel like you’re not.

(Contrast that with the scenario where you operate inside your zone of genius, meaning you get to use a lot of your natural strengths. You feel like a fish in the water. You intuitively grasp what needs to be done.

Things just flow. It doesn’t mean the work is never difficult. But it’s a different kind of “difficult”: the kind that stretches you in a direction that you naturally wanna grow. What a great feeling, right?)

Now, what happens next, is that because your success primarily comes from learned competence, you know that it’s dependent on your particular work environment and/or your particular role.

Meaning, you have DOMAIN knowledge, which is the understanding of how your field or industry works. And if you’ve been at the same company for long, you also have a deep understanding of how that ENVIRONMENT works: the people, the expectations, the unwritten rules.

So you know what to do to succeed in THAT particular role or in THAT particular company. 

But will you know how to succeed somewhere else — in a different environment with different people and ways of operating? 

In a different role where you don’t have domain knowledge? 

You doubt so.

Thus you find yourself in a paradox: clinging to your position which you don’t really enjoy while at the same time craving change.

(And even if you do change something, like pursue a new job, you’re likely to only consider positions in your domain (your field/industry) because that’s familiar and that’s where you’re confident. 

Which means you’ll end up in the same position: successful, but not fulfilled and not confident in your abilities to succeed in something new.)

So how to break that paradox?

The way to break out of that paradox is to dive deep into your natural strengths and your acquired skills and learn to see the difference between the two. 

Right now, it’s all probably a big tangle. And tangles need to be untangled ;)

And it’s one of the first things I do with my clients in my Firefly Career Reinvention program.

• We analyze your life story and your career journey and look for your natural strengths. Because you’ve carried your strengths all your life and you will continue to carry them wherever you go, because nobody can take them away from you.

• And then we look into your professional skills and find those that are separate from your domain or work environment and therefore can be transferred to any work environment, even something you’ve never tried before.

• Then we also detect which ones are your favorite — because your ideal job or business (if that’s what you wanna try next) will likely include both your greatest strengths and your favorite skills).

Of course, this is just a part of what I do with my clients.

But can you see how a process like that could easily dismantle your “I’m not good enough” self-talk?

And how it could make it much more believable that you ARE good enough to aim for a new challenge in your career — a bigger step, a more aligned, more enjoyable path…or a completely different path than the one you’ve walked on so far?

And I’m not saying it’s impossible you have some of that unworthiness-impostor syndrome stuff going on…

All I'm saying is sometimes the reason why we feel the way we feel isn’t so deep and complicated. It can be as simple as not seeing yourself clearly for who you are, because you can’t read the label from inside the jar. 

If you want to know more about how I can help you navigate your career change so that you can find work that feels better, aligns better with what you enjoy and are good at, while giving you what you need to live the lifestyle you desire…

…you should know there are 2 ways to work with me:

1. First is my signature program Firefly Career Reinvention. It’s designed for high-achieving, successful folks who are ready to step into a bigger role, or start their own business or even try something completely new, but not at any cost. 

Their career needs to fully match who they are: it needs to be an extension of them, and it needs to give them a chance to use their greatest gifts so they could make an impact they deeply care about. 

And what they need is someone to accompany them on that life-changing journey — someone to guide them and help them figure out the answers they need. 

You can read more about it here.

2. The second way of working with me is a shorter version of that, and it’s for folks who already have a lot of clarity on what they want and need, but are just missing that one piece of the puzzle. 

And it’s also great for folks who are in the early stages of exploring their next career step, but are not sure what they are even looking for. There may be a dilemma, or multiple dilemmas to resolve, or something that’s blocking them from clarity on what they want…and they can’t (or don’t want to) figure that out on their own.

It's called Career Direction Assessment and you can read more about it here.

Whichever option resonates with you, the best is to send me a DM and ask what you wanna know. I’ll be happy to answer your questions. We’ll have a quick chat about which program is right for you now (if any). 

I’ll ask you a series of questions to help both of us determine that, and if we agree, we can start right away as I have room for a couple of more clients right now.

There’s also an option to hop on a quick call, if that’s what we both need to better understand if the program is right for you.

And if I think I can’t help you, I’ll do my best to point you in a direction that might serve you better.