My STRATEGY to Beat Comparisonitis & Imposter Syndrome

Ladies,

Comparisonitis and Imposter Syndrome got you feeling defeated? Overthinking what you’re doing because the people you follow are doing it differently? Wondering if you are qualified to DO THIS?

Enter my personal strategy, the 90/10 rule! I use this WEEKLY to COMBAT comparisonitis and imposter syndrome. This is HOW I keep moving, producing, growing, and SERVING without bearing the heavy burden of EVERYONE ELSE’S CRAP, SHINY OBJECT SYNDROME, AND FEELING LESS-THAN.

This simple strategy will free you to work, serve, and slay in your OWN, authentic, unique way.

Free yourself, sister. Enjoy.

I pray this blesses you!

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:

(00:00):
Hey friend, I am so grateful to be chatting with you today. We’re going to have a little heart to heart. You and I. Oh yes, we are. I’m going to introduce to you the 90/10 rule. This is the rule that I live by when it comes to being in this crowded, saturated online space, and how I choose to be true to my message. Be true to all of you.

(00:30):
My Lola’s, my community, my sisterhood, and ultimately how I don’t get distracted by all the noise that we are constantly inundated with because we live, breathe, and work online. I know that if you are an online entrepreneur, have a side hustle, do something like I do. Live at least five out of seven days of the week on social media.

(00:58):
You have to hear my 90/10 rule and be open and willing because while you’re not gonna like it at first little Lola, you are going to thank me because it is going to change your life.

(02:01):
I hope you guys had a great weekend last weekend because you detoxed from social media, right? Just like I told you to in episode 170, right? I totally did. At the time of recording this, it is 10:40 AM on Monday. I am refreshed, rejuvenated.

(02:20):
I’m having my second cup of coffee all alone in my office using my brand new gamer headset. That’s right. I’m using a gamer headset to record this for you guys because it has a noise canceling microphone and noise canceling headphones. So I can’t hear my kids screaming and my husband playing with them in the living room. It’s a miracle.

(02:46):
So anyway, please, if you haven’t listened to episode 170, all about the number one thing that I do every single week to stay present, to stay focused, to stay true to who I am and my family. Please do yourself a favor and listen to that and detox from social media.

(03:04):
If you haven’t tried it yet, please do. Hit me up in my inbox tell me how transformational that was. Here’s some real talk. Have you ever found yourself following somebody online and then kind of becoming fan girlish, a little obsessive maybe? You’re like bingeing all their content. They’re inspiring you and motivating you.

(05:56):
Before you know it you’ll look up and a week has passed and you haven’t done diddly squat for your own brand, your own business. Also strangely, when you sit back down to write some new content, you have that person’s style flowing out of your fingertips. You have that person’s quirkiness or verbiage that they use coming out of your mouth, on your podcast.

(06:28):
Yeah. We’ve all done it. Okay. But here’s the deal. When you’re in high consumption overload, you get influenced. You are no longer you because what comes in also comes out, which is exactly why you’ve heard all the mega personal development gurus tell you, you are a sum of the five people you’re surrounding yourself with. Well, yeah, but you’re also the sum of the five people and mentors and coaches that you’re letting inundate your mind, body, spirit, soul, and ears.

(07:09):
I’m saying all of this at a risk to you guys right now, because I want you to follow me. I want you to listen to my podcast. I want all of that, but I don’t want you to do so at the detriment of growing your own brand and business in your own authentic way. In your voice, heart, spirit, and in the way that God intended you to share.

(07:32):
Because when you share, you listen to only one person or only a couple people over and over and over again. Now your voice is muddled. Now you are confused. What should your message be? Should you say what they say? Should you have an episode like they just had? You’re losing your authenticity.

(07:55):
It’s so easy to fall into potentially becoming a replica of your favorite people in the online sphere. We have to be extremely careful of that for so many reasons.

(08:09):
Number one, we cannot rip off other people’s content and free tip Thursday. Guys, if you ever use someone else’s quote, base your episodes on someone else’s episodes, you’ve got to give credit where credit is due. Any time you use a quote, a reference, you have got to say who it came from.

(08:36):
That includes on Instagram. When you’re using someone else’s quote, whoever told you, you can just take a quote and slap your name on it, that is false. You have got to give credit. Now that’s the first reason.

(08:52):
The second reason is that you were gifted with your own style, your own flare. Yeah. You got the cool fun words that you and you use alone. You have the style and personality that only you can have, but if you are consuming, like let’s say 60%, 70%, 80% of the hours that you have now, your personal style brand and voice is being influenced heavily.

(09:25):
I’m going to dare say that if you go listen to yourself, pre-hyper consumption of listening to other people and then post you’re going to hear that other person coming through. It’s super creepy. Oh my gosh. Yes it is. Lola, I have fallen into this trap time and time again, because we want to be inspired. We want to learn.

(09:46):
So I’ll find someone I like as a new mentor business coach, someone I interview on the show that I resonate with and I’ll go listen to their stuff and fall in the hole, two episodes in. All of a sudden I start thinking, well, should I do an episode about that? Or, I like how she said that. Her pricing structure looks better than mine. What happens? We get filled with insecurity because someone else is doing something differently than the way that we’ve been asked and called to do it.

(10:19):
Now there’s a difference between there’s room for improvement. There’s optimization. There’s something I can learn and straight up imposter syndrome. Here’s the thing. Anytime I start following people that are, let’s say 10, 15, 20 steps ahead of me. I fall into severe imposter syndrome and comparisonitis because I think that because they’re more successful than me financially, their way is best.

(10:46):
Then I start freaking out and I start going down the rabbit hole. Oh, well I need that fancy thing or this fancy thing or their system or their Facebook ads dude. I need to rebrand all my thing, and I get so caught up in all the shoulds, coulds, and woulds that I stopped doing the number one thing I have got to do as a coach for Christian mompreneurs, which is clarity coaching and podcast coaching.

(11:15):
And what is that thing? Coaching? What is that number one thing I have been asked to do? It is to mentor, teach, inspire, and transform the people and women in my community that are two steps behind me. Right? If I leap up to somebody that’s 20 steps ahead of me, you guys are no longer going to resonate with that. If I leap up to a place where I can’t scale yet, I’m gonna waste money. I’m gonna waste time.

(11:45):
If I gravitate to somebody with a totally different message and their outlet sounds different than mine. You guys are going to wonder what happened, the stuff that you know and love. How many of you have gone to one of your favorite podcasters, watch their growth, and then gone into their reviews to notice and to see that after about a year, the reviews start to change.

(12:05):
They say, I miss the old blank. I miss when blank used to be herself and now she sounds different and adsey and salesy, and she doesn’t joke anymore. She’s hiding behind blank. People change along their journey and people, I believe, get strongly influenced by success and by money. They think that they should change because they’re making X amount of income or have X amount of downloads.

(12:36):
Not me. I don’t ever want to fall into that trap. So I made a rule for myself and I’m sharing that role with you right now today. I am allowed to consume 10% of the time, only 10%, the other 90% of the time, and I’ll explain what the time means in a second, I have to be producing.

(13:02):
So let’s do an example just for the simplicity of math, because not my favorite subject. Let’s say we have 10 hours of workable time this week. That means Stefanie Gass can work her business or live in the business realm for 10 hours. For me, business is all encompassing. That means personal development, production, promoting, correspondence, coaching, just any and everything that goes into “business bucket,” or business category of my life.

(13:38):
So when I just said to you, this is going to blow your mind off, right? I can consume 10% of the time. What is that? That is one hour. One hour to nine hours of me producing, performing, following up, reaching out, replying, and creation mode. Creative Stefanie Gass actually serving. Nine hours in service mode, including clients, podcasting, promoting, showing up on stories for you guys, in the DMS, whatever. Nine hours, one hour consuming.

(14:24):
If I only get one hour, don’t you think I’m going to pick the most valuable, the most heartfelt, the most incredible important people to listen to? So a lot of times, for me, that consumption is very, very limited, and there are very few people that I will let into that space.

(14:50):
What’s interesting in recent months, that hour is not going to big, hugely successful personal development people. It’s not going to the names that you know, and follow because here’s the thing. Most people that are super uber successful and in a huge financial position, I’m talking millions, they’re not where I’m at. They’re not where I’m looking to get to in the next 12 months.

(15:22):
I’ve actually realigned my focus and my, consumption to people that are A, where I am, or B have the right moral compass, or C can teach me something specific that I need to learn right now. So I want you to ask yourself, where are you spending your incredibly priceless work hours, the business bucket every week, how many hours?

(15:53):
I hope you do this homework and actually do this inventory. How many hours are you spending consuming versus producing? If you are over 70%, please check yourself at the door. Girl, it’s time. You’ve got to flip it. You cannot stay in analysis paralysis and hyper consumption and ever grow a successful business. It is not going to happen.

(16:24):
People are not going to trust you because you’re going to be changing your messaging. So get into who you are, who God’s asking you to be, who you’re called to be, and show up fiercely for that. Don’t change your heart in your messaging. Don’t do what everyone else is doing. Put your head down. You are worthy of teaching, inspiring, the blog, the podcast, the YouTube, whatever it is, you’re worthy of it.

(16:47):
Don’t let other people influence you to this insane extent, to where you wonder if you’re worthy. That is a lie. That is distraction. We know that distraction is one of the favorite tools of the enemy, right? We know this.

(17:02):
So 90% production, only 10% consumption. This is going to keep you from feeling comparisonitis syndrome, feeling like an impostor, and it’s going to alleviate all of that stress of I’m not as big enough as big as blank. I’m not as good as whoever. It’s just gone for me to stay at peace in my business and keep my head down and serve you guys. Well, I can’t watch everyone else.

(17:32):
You’ll see people will be like, Stef, do you know blank in your industry? Do you know this coach? I don’t know anybody. I’m so excited about that because it means that I have one authentic voice here online and it’s mine. In that one hour that I allow myself, I’m going to be very careful with who I let influence me, my business, my voice, my choice. Right? That rhymed!

(17:59):
Okay. I hope you guys had fun in this episode. I hope you learned something. If you are committed to reducing consumption and growing your production in your business, come on over to the Facebook group and let me know. Post your promise and the accountability to yourself. We want to hear from you that is at bit.ly/successsupportgroup on Facebook. Sending you off with love and light, Stef.