You are standing in an office; it’s your office, and it’s the most opulent office that you have called your own. It has an incredible penthouse view, it’s furnished with the finest pieces and artwork you have ever seen, and it is yours: you earned it. Suddenly an internal voice whispers to you: you don’t deserve this. This is what is called the imposter syndrome, which is a niggling fear that you are not good enough and do not deserve to be in a position that you worked hard for. Online business consultant Richard Yu believes that this crippling fear is robbing people worldwide of their self-worth and preventing them from reaching true success. Here, he shares ways that you can boost your self-worth and overcome the imposter syndrome.
Richard Yu’s first piece of advice for combatting the crippling feeling of impostor syndrome is to acknowledge and identify it. By this, he means that you need to monitor your thoughts carefully, and if you hear yourself being doubtful about your worth or telling yourself that you are a fraud, you need to challenge this thinking. Richard Yu shares that taking the time to boost your self-worth and confidence is essential, especially when trying to prove yourself in the world of business.
The next action that Richard Yu suggests you take is to make a list. It may sound like a simplistic solution at first, but Yu shares that writing down a list of your achievements and physically holding it in your hands will provide you with irrefutable proof that you are worthy and deserve what you have earned.
The most effective action that you can take overall to overcome imposter syndrome, according to Richard Yu, is to own your accomplishments. We have been programmed since birth to deflect compliments to stay humble, and while humility is important, Yu insists upon accepting and acknowledging compliments to transform your perception of yourself. He illustrates this by giving the example of someone congratulating you on your big promotion and you instantly devaluating yourself by insisting that you were just ‘lucky.’ Yu advises that from now on, you should accept these compliments and remind yourself that you deserve them.
Richard Yu changed his fate from being a dedicated UCLA pre-med student to becoming an even more fiercely dedicated entrepreneur. He sought out mentors and invaluable experience that helped him to reach the top of the consultancy industry. Today, he has founded an empire within that industry. Yu provides aspiring consultants with the skills needed to build successful consulting enterprises and also aids existing consultants in scaling and expanding their skillset and revenue.
