So I did what I think a lot of women do. I came up with this "You Don't Belong" checklist. Now, it wasn't a real checklist, right, but it was something that I did, and I just, it went back, every time I got into a situation, I knew I could go back to this checklist.

Among the things was work twice as hard to be twice as good. How many times have you heard that? How about never hint that you have any challenges at home. Work stayed work, and home stayed home.

I didn't talk about anything that was happening in my home life. I know a lot of women are like that. You never talk about having childcare issues, even though those are real problem. That's a real problem for a lot of women.

I never showed that I had too many balls up in the air, right? I never showed that there were too many projects coming at me.

I don't know if any of you remember that commercial, and it was in the 70s, maybe 80s when women were just really getting into the workforce, and it was like, "I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, and never let you forget you're a man, because I'm a woman."

I mean, if we saw that commercial today, we would be appalled, but at the time, that was a commercial that ran and it said everything. It was that women had to take care of everything at home if you wanted to be in the workforce as well, and if you had any problems, you keep it to yourself.

Keep it to yourself, and keep it moving. That was the message. That was on my checklist. Have a bulletproof exterior. Don't have anything that anybody could question.

Although I had a huge afro in college, my hair was straighter than straight, and my outfits mimic what white women wore and their outfits mimic what white men wore, right? Remember those big shoulder pads and those big double breasted jackets?

I scrubbed away every trace of the authentic Constance just to fit in. Have you ever tucked away something just to fit in? Have you changed something about yourself just because you want to go along to get along? Well, that was me.

Most of this, a lot of this is a result of the Imposter Syndrome. The Imposter Syndrome makes you wonder, "Am I enough? Am I in this right position? Do I have the skills that I think I have or that other people have?"

And in your heart of hearts, despite all the success that you have, you don't think you're enough, and you think, "Somebody else is going to recognise that I'm all that and they're going to expose me as a fraud or an imposter."

I don't know if you remember the author Maya Angelou. She wrote her recent poem was "The Phenomenal Woman". But she wrote 11 books, and she said, every time she sat down to write a book, she felt like a fraud.

She said, "I have 11 books, but each time I think, 'Uh oh, they're going to find me out.'" They're going to find out that I ran a game on everybody and they're going to expose me in other words.

Let's talk about the Imposter Syndrome a little bit. Women have imposter behaviours more than men, because we're constantly told, "You don't belong in these positions. This is a man's position."

I bet some of you have heard that before in your career. For me, it was always, "You're an affirmative hire. You're an affirmative action hire." It may not be that explicit these days, but you could walk in a room and know, like I said earlier, that you're the only one.

The Imposter Syndrome Gender Gap (with Stats!)

The first studies on the Imposter Syndrome happened in the late 1970s. It was 1978, and it showed that 70% of all of us will experience the Imposter Syndrome. That's everybody, but that number shoots up to 82% when you talk about women.

These early studies were criticized because they focused only on women, but the takeaway is that men have the Imposter Syndrome as well, but women have it more.

Tom Hanks, we all love Tom Hanks. He once said, "No matter what we've done, there comes a point where you think, 'How did I get here, and when are they going to discover that I am, in fact, a fraud and take it all away?'"

So, men have it as well, but they handle it differently than women, and I want you to think about the men in your life, and see if this resonates with you. Men will say, when they have a successful outcome, "Yeah, I'm good. I knew I was good all along, right? I'm the bomb."

But women, women will say, "Wow, I fooled them again. I got by just by the skin of my teeth." And it doesn't matter how high up the ladder you go, that feeling still prevails.

The 5 Imposter Syndrome Behaviour Types

Now we usually handle our Imposter Syndrome by five distinct behaviours. Some people call these coping mechanisms, but I'm going to call them behaviours for our discussion. You are probably going to see yourself in one of these five behaviours, and you may see yourself in more than a couple of them.

Without explaining them, I'm just going to give them to you first, and you think about it.

Perfectionist, that's one of the behaviours. Think about your pattern. Are you a Perfectionist?

A Superwoman? I know there has to be somebody here with a blue or red cape, because that's just the way it is in our lives, right?

The Expert, AKA, the know-it-all.

The Solo Actor.

The Procrastinator.

Which one, without explanation sounds a little bit like you, or a lot like you?

Breaking Down the Behaviours – The Perfectionist (with Examples!)

Let's start with the Perfectionist. You'll spend hours preparing, obsessing over the smallest detail. Nothing is left unchecked. Nothing is ever good enough.

You keep tweaking and changing, and tweaking and changing, right, all the way up until the last minute. You are almost paralyzed in moving forward.

This is my behaviour. I'm a Perfectionist. Now, I didn't wake up and say, "Hello everybody. I would like to be a Perfectionist." It doesn't go like that, right?

There's always something that happens that kind of makes you think, "Okay, this is the way it should be." For me, it started early in my career, my mentor, a mentor, suggested I apply for this affirmative action program with the Gannett Corporation.

You probably may not have heard of the Gannett Corporation, but at the time, the jewel in their crown was "USA Today".

That's the company that started "USA Today", and they had other TV stations, and they had this program where they were going to teach minority journalists how to actually produce the newscast, and she said it was in Minneapolis.

I knew I wasn't going to Minneapolis, right, but there was just no way I could turn it down. She made the suggestion and I thought, "Go check it out, and then find some way to say no."

And so I went to Minneapolis in the winter when they were having a hellacious storm. I mean snow was coming down, snow was coming up, snow was coming sideways, it was coming all over.

I mean, I had never seen snow like that, and I'm a New Yorker, an upstate New Yorker, but there I am in the newsroom, and it took a while to get there, and I finally got there, and they pushed me from one side to the other because they were all busy.

Even for them it was a crazy snowstorm, and so finally the News Director said, "Why don't you just go to the hotel and then come back tomorrow, and we'll do the interview?" And I thought, "Okay, that's a good idea, whatever."

Again, I'm thinking, "This ain't for me." So I go to the hotel. First I said, "What time do you want me to be back here?" He says, "Oh, in the morning."

Now, of course, I wasn't so naive that I didn't know that I should be there by nine o'clock, even though he said in the morning, but it was really a hellacious storm, and trying to get a ride to the station was just very difficult.

There was no Lyft and no Uber. You either took a taxi or you bummed a ride with somebody, and I didn't know anybody, and I called taxis, and so there was always a delay and that sort of thing.

But I got to the station, I did the interview, I did the writing test, and I went back to New York. Okay, my mentor said, "How'd it go?" And I said, "Well, I think it went well." And I started to go into this explanation about what happened.

And she just was like, "Stop right there." And she said, "You were late." I got to the station probably around 10 o'clock, and I tried to explain about the snowstorm, and I was just (Constance stutters), but she was like, "Stop right there."

She said, "If they tell you to be there at nine, you be there at eight. If they tell you to be there at eight, you be there at seven. There's no wiggle room, and there's no grace for you." "Got it. Be perfect. Make sure everything is perfect."

Does something like that happen to you? Think about if you're a Perfectionist, what was the tipping point where you thought, "This is the behaviour pattern that will help me move forward?"

Breaking Down the Behaviours – The Superwoman (with Examples!)

Maybe you are the Superwoman. I don't really need to explain this one, but the Superwoman does everything for everyone else. Professionally and personally, she does everything for other people, but not for herself.

You take on way too many projects. You struggle with setting boundaries and saying no. That's a hard thing for a Superwoman.

I learned this in Washington D.C., my last job. I took the job because I wanted to be closer to my family, and at the time, I was working in Rochester, and so I wanted to come to Washington D.C., and so they had a position, the NBC station had a position for an Executive Producer for the morning day part.

Now, the morning day part is that show from 4:00 AM until 7:00 AM. It's that show before the networks take over, and it's really a critical day part because it's the most profitable time of the day for TV news, because nobody is staying up late to watch news.

They're getting up earlier, so they charge more for the ad time, so it's really an important day part. And so when I did the interview, then the news director said, "Oh, you get in about three o'clock in the morning."

Okay, well, I knew that wasn't true. Who gets in at three o'clock and the show goes on at four? But you know what, I wanted the job, and so I ignored the red flag. And so when I got here, I realized that I really had to get into the station at one o'clock in order to be able to really craft a show and make sure that everybody was where they needed to be, and the stories we needed to cover were being covered.

So that meant that I had to start my day 10 o'clock the night before. So 10 o'clock I'd get up, I do my prayer and meditation, and 11 o'clock watch the news, 12 o'clock, get in the car, one o'clock, get to the station. The show goes off at seven.

I start working on the next day. My boss would come in, and all the other dayside managers would come in at nine o'clock and they would be fresh to start their day. And if I wanted to move up in the system, I had to be fresh to start the day again, right?

Even though I had already worked a day, I would continue to work and there would be meetings at 10:30, 11:00, and I'd participate in those meetings because the culture of the station is that if you want to move ahead, you volunteer for other projects and you participate in what's happening in other day parts.

There'd be days when I start my day at 10 o'clock the night before, but I wouldn't end my day until one o'clock the next day, one o'clock in the afternoon. It never occurred to me to say, "This is crazy", even though it was crazy, right?

Just listening to it sounds crazy now to me, and I think, "What was I thinking?" But I would never say no, because I didn't want them to think that I was anything but a hard worker and a team player. That's my version of being the Superwoman.

Breaking Down the Behaviours – The Expert on Everything (with Examples!)

The Expert on everything, AKA, the Know-It-All. You try to be the person with all the answers. You beat yourself up if you are confronted with a question that you can't explain. You won't start a new project, you won't go for a new promotion or any of that stuff until you know that you are an expert in the field.

One thing I want you to notice in all of these is that they bleed over into each other. No one is just cut and dry. There's a little bit that goes with each one.

For the Expert on everything, I’ve got to tell you, I'd bribe members of my inner circle to come over and pepper me with questions anytime I was faced with like a big project or report that had to be done.

They had to ask me various questions about what was going on in the news and in the industry and that sort of thing.

What were the trends and that sort of thing, because I never wanted to be caught off guard. Now, if I didn't have the answer, we would come up with some way to pivot, but God forbid I'd be in that meeting and I didn't have an answer for something that came up. I would just beat myself up over it.

First of all, little Connie on my shoulder would appear, you know how they pop up? Have you ever? You'd see those cartoons where something just kind of pop up and little Connie would pop up and say, "Boy, you blew that one, didn't you? Your career is in jeopardy."

It was never in jeopardy, but in my mind, this became like that. So I did whatever I had to do to make sure that I was the Expert on most, if not everything that I thought would possibly come up.

Do you try to do that? Are there times when you've been in a meeting and you just think, "Oh my gosh, somebody's going to ask something and I'm not going to be able to answer it." That is just a horrible feeling. So I tried to be the Expert on everything.

Breaking Down the Behaviours – The Solo Actor (with Examples!)

Solo actor, you refuse to ask for help no matter what the cost. You need to be completely in control, and you do everything yourself.

I was that person, and I bet some of you work for that kind of person where they never allow you to do anything. I remember I was going for a retreat, and so it required me to be away from the newsroom, and my big panic was that something would happen and the team would not be able to handle it.

What I did was I came in and I put all the newscasts together, and so all they had to do was insert whatever happened, whatever story they just insert it there. My fear was that they wouldn't be able to handle it, and it would make me, me the manager, look bad, right?

But I never stopped to think that I wasn't giving my team an opportunity to stretch their wings and become stronger. It was all about what would happen if somebody discovered I wasn't as good as I thought I was, or said I was.

Breaking Down the Behaviours – The Procrastinator (with Examples!)

The Procrastinator. You wait until the last moment to get anything done. You avoid making clear, decisive decisions. You do a whole lot of busy work that doesn't really get you closer to your goal. You're paralyzed almost to the point where you jeopardize the report or the project.

Now, earlier I said I had the cleanest closets in Maryland at one point, and that's because, when Holly said, "Oh, you're going to get this opportunity to talk to the group,"

I was so excited. I started thinking about all the things that I could talk about and all the things that we could do, and I wanted to be fully prepared.

And the first thing I thought about doing was I had to clean my closet, that I had to clean the closet. I couldn't start unless that closet was clean. Don't ask me why, but everything came out and I colour coded.

Shirts went here, boots here, heels here. I mean, I was in the throes of an Imposter Syndrome moment, and I looked around and all this crap was all over the floor, and I thought, "What are you doing? You've lost your mind."

And I did for a second lose my mind, but that was because I was just almost paralyzed, and the opportunity seemed so overwhelming, and I just didn't want to face it. I thought the closet would be a better option for me.

That's what a Procrastinator does.

Which of the 5 Imposter Behaviours Are You?

There you have it. You have the five distinct behaviours, the Perfectionist, the Superwoman, the Expert AKA Know-It-All, the Solo Actor, and the Procrastinator. Which one are you?

Now, remember I said they bleed over into each other, so you may have a little bit of all of them. You may have done a little bit of each one of these, but there's always one driver.

Solo Exercise: What Are Your Imposter Behaviour Drivers?

For me, it was being a Perfectionist. That was the driver, but at any given moment, that Procrastinator would pop up as it did with my closet, right?

I want you to think about your patterns. What are your behaviour patterns? Are you a Perfectionist? Are you a Superwoman? Are you the Solo Actor, the Expert, the Procrastinator? What is it that you do? I want you to just jot that down.

What is your imposter behaviour? Which behaviour is the driver for you?

Like I said, I did a little bit of all of them, but my consistent one was being a Perfectionist, and for decades I watched over everything and there was no detail that was too small, that didn't require hours of debate.

So why do we do these things? We do them because they work. Every time you have a project or a report that goes well, in your mind you're thinking, "Well, it worked.

All that hard work that I did paid off, right, so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. I'm just going to rinse and repeat. I'm going to keep this going, right?"

My perfectionism worked because my male colleagues, they barely showed up let alone be prepared, so in my mind, I won. Anytime it went well, I clocked up another win.

What is the Price You’re Paying for Success?

But really, I was the biggest loser at the table because of the price I paid for that success. And the price you may be paying may be too high as well, right? You have to think about that.

What is the price you are paying for your success? What's happening? Increased workload. I should have put excessive workload, because that's one of the downsides of being a Perfectionist, a Solo Actor, a Procrastinator, a Superwoman, the Expert, right?

The excessive workload, I'm reminded of that I don't know whether it's a joke or what, but it's like, "What does the person get who wins the pie eating contest? Well, they get more pie."

Do you ever feel like you had success, and then what did you get? You got more work. They gave you another project. Woo-hoo! You get to do another project.

You're always looking over your shoulder. "Who's behind me? Who's coming up behind me? Who's threatening my position?" Exhaustion, depression.

I can't tell you how exhausted I was. I was just operating on fumes, and I'm sure I was probably depressed, but I was too tired to know, so I just kept going. Low self-esteem, nightly drinking of several glasses of wine.

I had a friend, and I looked at her Facebook posts and her LinkedIn posts, and she was on top of the world. She was just on top of the world, and I called her up and I said, "Hey, you are really doing a great job."

And the conversation just stopped, and she said, "I'm a hot mess. That's social media. I'm a hot mess, Connie." And she also shared with me that she was self-medicating herself. Every night she'd have a couple of glasses of wine, and she felt like it had gotten out of hand.

Not exercising or eating well, not taking care of yourself. You usually don't have time to take care of yourself because you're busy making sure that you're researching something or you're tweaking something, or you're taking care of something for somebody else.

There's no time to take care of you. That's the price that you're paying. What are your imposter behaviours costing you? What is the cost you're paying for the Imposter Syndrome.

Relationships, yes. Yes, losing relationships, absolutely. I felt like, you know, by the time I left TV news, I felt like, "What happened to all the single men? Where did they go? And how did I miss out on that?"

"I think it held me back from professional development. I couldn't admit I didn't know it already, so I never asked to learn." Yeah, that's a tough one.

"Actually living and enjoying life." Oh my gosh, that is so true. Yes, that's the cost that you're paying for the Imposter Syndrome.

Thank you for sharing that with me. I know that it's not easy to say that you missed out on relationships or actually enjoying your life.

When the Price You’re Paying Shifts to Sacrificing What Really Matters

That's the price that you pay, and here's the deal. At some point you may think, "Well, this is the price I have to pay to be in the game."

I certainly thought that, but there comes a point where the price you pay suddenly becomes a sacrifice, right? You are now sacrificing things that you are never going to be able to capture or replace.

For me, I sacrificed my authentic identity. I had no idea who I was. I was just the title, I was the news director or the news producer. That was all I knew, and 12, 14 hour days, that seemed normal to me.

I sacrificed family time and memorable moments with my family, just like what one of you said, time with your family.

I remember a conversation I had with my young nephew, and he was all of seven, I think, and you know you get pearls of wisdom from a 7-year-old, but he said, "When I grow up, I'm going to have a good job."

And I thought, "Okay, well, you don't think I have a good job?" And he said, "No, because you're always tired and you never go any place because you're tired."

He could tell that I wasn't fully present, and that was like a gut punch for me because I thought I was setting such a great example for him about hard work and about sticking to a job, and doing a good job, but that's not what mattered to him.

Didn't matter that I was the first, or among the first, or I got this Emmy or that Emmy. That didn't matter to him.

I realized I had moved around so much job hunting, not job hunting, but job hopping that I never had time to really commit to anybody or anything.

I think for a lot of you, you’re probably thinking, "Well, she had a miserable career." No, I had a really good career, and I liked the job that I did. I was a small-town kid from upstate New York. TV news opened doors that I could never imagine, right?

It took me places that I could never imagine, right? So I'm really grateful that I had that kind of career, but at the same time, it took a toll and there was a lot of sacrificing that I did. I don't have any regrets, but I would have done it differently, and that's why I'm so glad that we are talking about the Imposter Syndrome.

If you can recognize the price you're paying and the sacrifices that you make, you have the choice to say, "Hmm, I think that's too much, and I don't want to make that sacrifice anymore."

Mary says, "Sometimes you're sacrificing, but you're not realizing it." Absolutely. I sacrificed for a long time, and I had no idea of what I was giving up. I thought I was really creating a great career.

So I appreciate you sharing in the chat some of the things that you've sacrificed. "Quality of time for myself and my family, lots of stress." What else have you sacrificed?

Let's see, Kelly says, "Definitely my health." Absolutely. "My time, my youth, my health, opportunities." Those are all sacrifices that you can't get back, right?

"My authentic self, peace of mind, and you have increased anxiety." Those are some tough sacrifices, so I appreciate you sharing.

When I first realized that I had given up a lot, I felt like I had been duped. I felt like the contract I made was that I would work hard, and I would move up, and I would have a good life, right?

But, I realized that it didn't quite work out like that. The one thing I realized was that I had the power to change, right? The power started with me. I had the power to turn it all around, and it started with how I saw myself and how I talked to myself.

Limiting Beliefs – What Are They and How They Affect You

Psychologists say that we have between 50 and 70,000 thoughts a day. I've seen that number up, down. 80% of them are negative against yourself, and 90% of that 80% are the same thoughts you had yesterday and the day before.

So, it's just this toxic loop that keeps going on and on and on in your mind. And the Imposter Syndrome tells you who you are not and what you can't do. It's part of that negative loop, and eventually those thoughts that you have turn into your beliefs, and you create these limiting beliefs.

Limiting beliefs are what you believe about yourself that stops you from reaching your full potential. They tell you things like, "No, no, no, don't go that far. That's not you."

Think about it in your life. What is the belief that you have about yourself, that stops you from moving forward?

It keeps you being a Perfectionist, a Procrastinator, a Solo Actor, an Expert, a Superwoman, right? It keeps you in that mold.

For me, one of my limiting beliefs was that people like me don't hold positions I had. Remember I started my career when there were not many African Americans in TV in front of the screen or behind the scenes, but I had some more limiting beliefs.

I also believed that I didn't go to the right schools. Remember, I went to a state university of New York, right, one of the 64 campuses, right? I also said, "I'm not quick witted." Like I didn't even know at the time what quick witted mean, but it wasn't me.

And I thought, okay, I'm not as talented. And the one that kills me the most is I said to myself, I'm not a good writer. I think about that now because it's crazy, because I built a career on writing, but I told myself I wasn't a good writer.

Now, let me say that your limiting belief doesn't have to make sense. You just have to believe it. You just have to tell yourself it over and over, and you just have to believe it.

So, I had this limiting belief that I was a poor writer, and whatever your limiting belief is, you have a story around that belief. You have a narrative that you tell yourself that supports that limiting belief. It supports the idea of whatever.

For example, my story, I told myself that I was not a good writer. The story I told myself was that it takes me forever to get started. I always have to tweak and change my writing, and I had to go through several drafts, right?

But good writers, if I was a good writer, I could just sit down and I'd have pearls of wisdom. And everybody would be like, "Oh my gosh, did you see what she wrote?" And that didn't happen.

But of course, that's not the truth, is it? That's not how writing is. But I told myself that story for decades that I wasn't a good writer.

But here's the truth, the truth is, I built a career on writing. I won awards on writing, that all writers go through drafts, tweaks, and they have proofreaders and copy editors to help them. Nobody sits down and bangs out pearls of wisdom, the first time out.

Solo Exercise: Write Down Your Limiting Beliefs, The Stories You Tell Yourself, & the Truth

My question for you is, what is a limiting belief you have about yourself? And what is the story that you are telling yourself that supports that limiting belief, I should say, supports that lie. And finally, what is the truth?

I want you to take a few minutes and just think about that. Write down what your limiting belief is, the story you tell yourself, and finally, the truth.

I just want to read a couple of what came in the chat. "I think I had to do this sacrifice assessment 10 years ago, and I couldn't do it because it felt like I had already given up, but I kept repeating these same mistakes, and I'm doing them now as I continue to gain accomplishments.

It's strange. That's why I'm here." "I had no idea the brain feedback, communication narrative, habitually negative, and you have to reinforce a positive." Absolutely.

Oh, one person says that a negative limiting belief is, "who do you think you are?" What I love about this is that usually we don't communicate with each other these deep feelings, these limiting beliefs, and how we see ourselves and we don't share.

When I was sitting in the newsroom, in the conference room, I thought it was just me. I thought, "Wow, I don't want to share with another woman, because I don't think she felt that. I don't think that she even thinks like that."

Now I look back on it, and I think we were all walking around with the Imposter Syndrome, right? And I also, I don't go into this a lot, but I also think that it kept us working really hard, and I look back on the male colleagues and they just kind of barely showed up.

The women were just working as hard as they possibly can, hoping that somebody would notice, hoping that the News Director would say, "Hey, you're doing a good job. What if I give you a raise?"

That was laughable. They always hand out these little things they called gems, but the gems were worthless, right?

Honestly, I can say that I left money on the table because of my limiting belief. What money are you leaving on the table because you have this limiting belief.

I'm so glad that you realize that you are more than capable, you more than deserving of the position, of the money, of the respect, and that's why I do what I do is because I sat there for decades and I think, "Wow, I would do this so differently."

What Are You Going to Believe - the Lie or Your Truth?

I want to make sure that women know that they can do it differently. I think we're at the point now where you have to decide what story you're going to believe. What do you believe? Are you going to believe the limiting belief? I want to call it the lie. Are you going to believe the lie, or are you going to believe what really is the truth?

For a long time, I believed my story. I believed it, and so it took a minute for me to absorb that I wasn't a bad writer, and I started collecting more and more evidence that proved that I was a good writer, and I also decided that I was going to reach out to other people.

Homework: Look for Evidence to Challenge Your Limiting Belief

I want to encourage you that if you are struggling to believe your story, if you're struggling to find evidence that supports your new belief, the new story that you tell yourself, then I want you to just become conscious throughout your day of what happens, whatever it is.

For me it was, if I wrote something, I would really evaluate it. I would also reach out to my inner circle, because a lot of times people outside, people who are watching you can tell you a little bit more about yourself than you can, than you know about yourself.

My friends would, when I said, "I think I'm a poor writer." They would always say, "What? Where did that come from?" And that's what you're going to find as well.

You have to begin living in your truth. You have to reframe the story, and you have to make that story become your identity. You have to make that new story what you believe about yourself. You have to tell yourself over and over again.

For me it was, "I'm a good writer". And maybe for you, "I'm a good engineer." At some point, you have to say it over and over just like you said whatever your limiting belief is.

Because here's the thing, your brain is like a huge computer. It doesn't tell you, "Oh, that's not true. This is true." It doesn't do that. It takes in whatever you give it, whatever you put in, it's going to absorb. So if you say, "I'm a conservative," and you have conservative thoughts and beliefs, and you hang out with conservatives, well, guess what? You're a conservative.

So, if you want to change your behaviour, you want to change your limiting belief, change your identity. Now, I'm going to give you two words that is the start of you changing your identity.

Some of you are going to say, "Really? Those are the two words you're going to give me?" Some of you may already be doing this practice.

Two words I'm going to give you is, I am.

I want you to talk about who you are. I am, you are whatever you put at the end of that sentence. That's going to become your identity.

For me, my belief was I was a poor writer, but after a while I could see that that was not true, so I formed a new identity and I started to say, "I am a storyteller." Now, was that transition easy? Not at all.

Every time I would say to myself in the mirror, "I am a storyteller. I am a good writer," little Connie would be on my shoulder. And she would say, "Really? Really?" because for 30 years I told myself something different, but I kept saying to myself, "I am a storyteller. I am a good writer."

Over and over. I posted it on little post-its all around me. And once I adopted that new identity of being a storyteller and a good writer, that's the way I wanted to show up. I didn't want to show up as a Perfectionist. I didn't want to show up as a Procrastinator or the Solo Actor.

I didn't want to do that because I felt confident in who I was. I am a storyteller, and I am a good writer. Do I have to tweak stories? Yes, I do. Do they always come out perfect? No, they don't, but I am a good writer.

I showed up differently. I didn't want to show up as that imposter any longer. I want you to take a few minutes and write down some of your I am statements.

Again, you may already have I am statements. It's been popular for people to do, I ams, right? But I want you to take a moment and write down some of your I am statements.

And I want you to think about the behaviours that you will have to adopt in order to become the person you say you are. What behaviours will you have to adopt? And what behaviours will you have to drop, in order to become the person you want to become?

So let's take a few minutes and write down some I am statements.

When I was transitioning from a TV person to an entrepreneur and a coach, I had to go through a whole mental I am, and I had to know that I could stand on my own. I didn't have a company behind me. I didn't have a regular paycheck.

I really had to put into my mind that I'm confident, I am determined, and that was all that I said to myself constantly. Because as we discussed earlier, that negative loop will pop up at any moment to tell you. "Mm, I don't think so."

How to Reprogram Your Brain with Your Truth

A lot of people think, "Okay, well it's just an I am statement and I'm just going to turn around." You have to really think about what it is that you do, and then what it is that you have to do in order to support your new identity, right?

It's not as easy as just saying, "I am, I am this, I am a risk taker. I am a whatever," right? You have to come up with the behaviours that will support that, and then that way internally, you will begin to believe it.

So that when you get hit with a situation and it's like, "Okay, do I take this risk or do I don't?", instead of automatically saying, "I'm not going to do it," now with this new identity, you'll start to think, "Well, wait a second, why not?"

Because the whole idea is that you want to get out of this box that you put yourself in, right? I was in this box of, "Oh, I can't write, I can't do this," and it was very limiting, and once I said no, I took the blinders off, right, that opened up a whole new world.

So, you saying to yourself, "I am a risk taker", you open up a whole new world. One of the behaviours that you'll adopt is you're not going to automatically say no. You're going to explore the options, you're going to give yourself the option, so you take away that need for certainty, right?

All of us have a need for certainty, but what you want to do is do the why not. If it's not harmful to you, if it's not going to kill you, you know all those things, and you're smart.

You're not going to put yourself in a situation like that, but you are going to open yourself up to new opportunities. You're going to explore what's available to you. You're going to live, no longer inside your comfort zone, you're going to move out of your comfort zone.

Solo Exercise: What Are Your “I Am” Statements, Your New Behaviours & What You Need to Let Go of?