Mind Drama Never Wins Awards

This past weekend I was at an amazing women’s leadership meeting where the topic of imposter syndrome was discussed.  Wikipedia says it is “a term coined in 1978 by clinical psychologists Dr. Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes referring to high-achieving individuals marked by inability to internalize their accomplishments and a fear of being exposed as “fraud”… Despite external evidence of their competence…”.  Many of us have experienced this - perhaps you attribute your success to luck or timing, and you think you will soon to be “found out”.  You don’t give yourself enough credit to believe you are exactly where you deserve to be based on your skills, experience and unique abilities.  As I was listening, I thought of how often we engage in mind drama - over-reactive, exaggerated details created in our mind.

Think of how often you tell yourself stories about a situation - personal or professional.  Typically this happens when you are a little unsure of a situation and your brain immediately wants to tell you all the negative things that MUST be happening.  This is how the brain operates.  It is designed to protect us, and years ago watching out for all the negative was important to our survival.  Today, not so much.  We need to be in charge of supervising the primitive brain with our pre-frontal cortex and pay attention to those crazy stories.  We need to direct our thoughts in a way that serves us as we work to accomplish our goals.

Think of a time you went off the deep end due to mind drama.  There was a circumstance, and you made it mean something entirely different than what was going on.  I caught myself doing it at this meeting.  I was sitting at a table with a variety of people in leadership positions and I noticed my brain taking me back to elementary school and telling me I should not be sitting at the cool table.  It was fascinating to watch the stories I quickly made up as to all the reason why I should leave for the bathroom.  This type of thinking serves no purpose, and often times inflicts more pain to the person thinking this way.  

This week I encourage you to take a moment to become more aware of when this happens.  Just stepping out of the situation and becoming the watcher will allow you to pause and decide if the thoughts are worth continuing to think.  Once you take the mind drama out of your life you truly become the star of it!