The Start Rising Podcast, hosted by Caiti Courtier, is a show for entrepreneurs seeking personal growth and heightened positivity who are taking imperfect action. The podcast focuses on the topics of resilience and overcoming obstacles to achieve success, with an emphasis on questioning old beliefs and learning valuable lessons along the way. The podcast is aimed at entrepreneurs who may feel isolated on their journey and are looking for support during the beginning through growth stages of their business. By listening to the Start Rising Podcast, individuals can connect with like-minded individuals and gain inspiration to pursue their big audacious goals.
Ever felt like a fraud at work or in life, despite your accomplishments? Ever let fear hold you back, and wondered what you could achieve if you didn’t? Join us for an episode that's far from ordinary, as we journey through the real-life experience of launching my husband's podcast the Doing Awesome Daily (DAD) podcast. We get candid about the self-doubt, resistance, and fear that came with it. We delve into the nature of fear, viewing it not as a weakness but as a protection mechanism and the transformative act of recognizing it.
Moving forward, I bring you practical strategies to tackle imposter syndrome and fear head-on. By identifying tasks that trigger fear and re-framing our approach to them, we stand to gain a lot more than we might lose. We’ll also share about my husband's transition into fatherhood and how his mental preparation may serve as a guide for new dads out there. Together, we’ll inspire you to confront your fears, overcome imposter syndrome, and ultimately embrace growth and development. This is more than just a chat; it's a journey to bettering ourselves, one fear at a time. Tune in, and let's conquer this together.
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Welcome to the Start Rising podcast. This is episode 42. Today we're going to talk a little bit about imposter syndrome and how it may show up and how it's been relevant in my life and just a little interaction that my husband and I have had in regards to it as well. So the further and further you get into the professional development, personal development rabbit hole, you start to identify more and more things and essentially, you're never done with learning and developing and discovering more things about yourself. You just become further along the path. And one thing that I've definitely noticed it kind of feels to me like you're peeling back layers of an onion and I've definitely spoken about it before in previous episodes, but it's one of those things that it's like taking two steps forward and one step back. So to give a little bit of a story time, i suppose my husband and I today we've been working on starting his podcast and that will be called Doing Awesome Daily It sounds for Dad and it'll be his podcast And we've been doing some recording and like video recording, essentially to be able to publish it on YouTube and use it for other social media platforms to make it more visible.
Speaker 1:
And to start with, that's particularly confronting for me, because I'm someone who I would rather be behind the camera than in front of it, and that definitely tests my I almost say like self confidence, self worth, judging myself a lot harsher than anyone else would judge myself, and so that was stepping outside of my comfort zone. We recorded two back to back episodes on video with Oliver, our son, like in the baby carrier, strapped to my chest while he sleeps, because that was the only way to record the episode and get him to sleep for long enough that we could do that. And so during that it was just really it was a good. It was good conversations and things like that, and he seemed very confident in asking good questions during the interview, having a chat, and it went really well. And at the end of that, the time we were recording felt very energised at the end of it, and that was a couple of days ago. And then today we had a little bit of a chat as he he was working on his stuff I was working on my stuff while taking care of Ollie and he came in and he kind of spoke to me a little bit about the fear he's been feeling and the hesitation and the resistance with doing the podcast and wondering, well, what do I even have to offer people? and the self doubt just bubbling up to the surface. And we have a. We have a good relationship. We've certainly gotten better, we've got a good relationship.
Speaker 1:
We're both kind of wired similarly, but different in the way that we are striving for more than where we currently are And striving for things that will help better our family life and be able to make that goal of having both sides of the family in our lives on either side of the world very regularly. And in order to do this we need both. We need both financial freedom, time freedom and location freedom essentially. So we're both wired in the same way. I would say it's been in the last few years that he's gotten on board with the perfect, the gosh why I can't I speak today The personal development aspect of it. So here's a few years I don't want to say behind, but, like he didn't, he started a couple of years after I started And he's starting to have those questions, i suppose, and that resistance And one of the things I ask him, just because I can, i put my coach hat on and sometimes it's difficult to not have your coach hat on when you're meant to be wearing your partner hat.
Speaker 1:
So I asked him do you mind if I coach you? And he agreed, and we talked about it. I said I can see that your hesitation and your confusion that's coming up right now is fear attempting to get in your way, because you're budding up to the next level with this podcast. It's been something you've been talking about for a while And it's something that, when fear comes up in the way that it does, we can identify it as it's a protection mechanism protecting you from what's on the other side of that metaphorical door, and he's someone that has for quite some time.
Speaker 1:
He's just one of those people that I don't know has the gift of the gab, is able to talk and podcast. Having his own podcast would be really good for him, because that's his natural skill, whereas other people have a bit more resistance and do need to try a little bit harder for that, and I'm someone along those lines too. For him, it's easy to sit in a room and talk to himself about a topic and share information and knowledge, but for me it's a little bit more resistance. Once I get going, though, then it's perfectly fine. It's just that initial start up. So here's at this resistant point for the initial start up of his podcast and he's wondering well, what do I even have to offer, where do I go from here and what's the benefit of doing the podcast?
Speaker 1:
And he's someone who he may have only just become a dad human dad in April. He's been a dog dad for a few years now, but he's been a dad mentally for quite some time. He's been wanting a child for quite some time, well before we were ready, but just had that kind of and I always had that dad mindset that that's something he really wanted to do and to be And being able to have that. I suppose that mental preparation for himself is going to likely help a dad who maybe has just found out that he's becoming a dad And he has a little bit more awareness for the situation or can offer something a little bit of a different perspective. So I think he definitely has things to offer.
Speaker 1:
And, with fear and with feeling like an imposter, you need to remember that all you need to be is one step in front of the person who you are talking to, who is your ideal person, some little extra piece that you can see or you've experienced that they have not experienced yet, and that's all it takes. Is that the 10% edge that we all talk about? So this is what I worked through with him as we spoke about Figuring out, well, does he go ahead with it, does he stop? And I just tried to help him see that it's because there's something greater on the other side of this, and particularly with how strong that fear was coming up, it means that there's something good on the other side, and that's how I want us to all think about fear. When we do face it, we do feel that fear bubbling up inside of us.
Speaker 1:
They say that fear and excitement are the same physiological feelings. It's just the label you give to what is one of two things. You can either be nervous and fearful and feel the butterflies in your stomach, or you can name it as excitement and anticipation and name it that way. I want to say it was probably Mick Jagger or some famous guitar player that said that that's how he approaches his nerves. So he never feels nervous before a concert. He feels anticipation and excitement before it. I've kind of completely gotten that wrong, but that's a different way to think about it And I know a lot of us are probably managing that imposter syndrome and that fear of?
Speaker 1:
is this the right thing? is this? for me, we likely won't know until we try it, until we give it a go, and I think a lot of us are very quick to let the fear get in our way or do it, try it and then, because there's no results, immediately then give up on it And I think we lose a lot of things. There's that picture of the two people digging in the mines, that one person has dug this massive hole essentially, and has turned around and given up, and the other person is continually going and they're both like two centimetres from the gold, from the diamonds or whatever it is like. The persistent people are the ones that get the results, whereas the people that just dip their toe in and they try it and they give up and they go home, then they miss out on what could have been. And that's when it ends up being a situation of multiple like oh, this shiny thing, oh this, oh, that It's something to, something to think about, because we can't let these things stop us.
Speaker 1:
It's really a self-defence mechanism and it's a really good one, to be honest, because it stops a lot of us in our tracks And it's something that there's no lions or bears. They're going to come out of nowhere and most of the places that we live currently there's no immediate threat to our lives and starting a podcast by any means won't threaten our lives. So there's a lot of potential and possibility with it And I encourage you to go ahead and if you are feeling fears around, whatever it is, with your business, whatever your, or starting your business, putting a new offer out there, taking a different direction with it, i encourage you to talk about it with someone who essentially has a similar entrepreneurial mindset to you, specifically someone maybe in the entrepreneurial like mindset space only, because I feel like if we talk to people who are not in this mindset of being an entrepreneur, i think a lot of the times people don't understand that And that's where the whole community piece comes in really strong, because it's hard to explain to someone who doesn't quite get it why this is important or why this is something that you're excited about or fearful of, because their protection mechanism is being wrapped in a blanket of a JOB a job being an employee And while that suits some people and it's definitely a means to an end, people who don't have that mindset Well, it might steer you in the wrong way. It might megaphone the level of fear that you're feeling. So points to consider and even if there's a community that you can get in touch with to be able to join like-minded people.
Speaker 1:
I think there's so much power in it because as entrepreneurs it can feel very lonely and isolated. And I will say my first time around doing the entrepreneur stint full-time during the pandemic was very lonely and a lot of pressure on myself and did the hard yards as far as did a lot of things wrong because I didn't have a community different, didn't have people to bounce ideas off, and that became particularly challenging versus the second time around, having a group of like-minded ladies around me and still did a coaching program two years ago and still am part of that with everyone And it's great to see the support that's still there for us all as far as what we offer the community and how we assist each other. It's well-depart. Not only is it less lonely, but you can see other people succeeding and you can see, hey, if they are doing it, then I can do that. Or if you need to be connected to someone, there's more likelihood that you can be easily connected to someone who knows X or whatever it is that you need to do, so go ahead and stare fear in the face, stare imposter syndrome in the face and don't let it take you down.
Speaker 1:
If you need to break out a good old fashioned pen and paper notebook or writing on your phone or computer or whatever makes you happy, and write out what are the real fear points like what could really happen by doing the thing, starting the podcast, what is the risk to it? Okay, well, using a freebase platform, bought a microphone, so there's financial aspects to it. All right. What else? Well, maybe, using things you already have. You start with what you have. In order to do it. You shouldn't need any editing software. You can do that for free on Audacity or WavePad, uploading it through Buzzsprout or things like that. There's plenty of different ways that you can write out to assess. Okay, well, what is the true risk here? What is the risk that is leading to me feeling fearful? that then causes this And write it out and assess it. I think naming it and seeing it staring you in the face on the paper is what helps us process. But just know What is fear.
Speaker 1:
Impostor syndrome and fear are never a one and done thing. Unfortunately, they will rear their ugly heads multiple times, but in different ways, in different ways, and you just get better at it. You just slowly get better at it, like even the other day with my TikTok video that I recorded. It was just a rip, the bandaid off moment. It was a do it now because you have the time, and just get it done and don't procrastinate.
Speaker 1:
And I ask myself all the time, which you may be able to borrow too, is the reason you either do something or you don't do something. That's either paying or reward from not doing it or from doing it. So that may sound a little bit confusing, but hear me out, either there is pleasure associated with delaying it because you associate pain with doing the task is the way to think about it. So if it's something that I'm putting off and not doing, even though I have the time, it's because I associate pain with doing that task. For example, i'd note paying a bill or doing something with your business that pushes you outside of your comfort zone, or reaching out to someone, or making a phone call to ask a question or something like that. There is more perceived pain in completing the task quickly, so the easier way is to ask yourself where is the pain and then just rip the bandaid off and just do it. It's easier to do it and to get it completed and move on to the next thing than putting it off. I'm sure most people are putting off some things in their business because that's just the way we operate.
Speaker 1:
Sometimes, along with making your list of what things may make you fearful, looking at your daily tasks and assessing, all right, is this something that I associate pain with, or is this something that I'm fearful about? and go ahead and take care of it that way. A whole lot of things to unpack here. I think we did a pretty good job, but I hope you appreciated kind of seeing behind the scenes, behind the curtains, as far as how things happen, as far as in my own household as well, between my husband and I, as far as the coaching pieces and how we navigate those things. Hope you enjoyed today's episode. Hope you can have a new perspective of looking at fear and imposter syndrome and being able to name it and address it and then that way you can face it. Talk to you next week.
