How To Get Over Imposter Syndrome
Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Beyond Natural Light Photography Podcast. I'm your host, Sandra Coan, and on today's podcast episode, we are sharing a conversation that I had on a Six-Figure Studio coaching call this week all about imposter syndrome and how to deal with it and move beyond it.
I think it's a really important conversation to have. It's such a common problem for photographers, and I really do feel like I've figured out the solution. If you struggle with imposter syndrome or self-doubt or confidence or any of that, this is an episode for you.
First of all, this is a live conversation on my coaching call, so some of the audio is a little off, so thank you for your patience with that. In this conversation, we talk a little bit about Sandra Coan Certification, my new certification program. And we are currently taking applications for that program. If you want to apply, I am going to link the application here. Fill out that application so that you and I can get on a call one-on-one and see if it's a good fit for you. Without further ado, welcome to our conversation on imposter syndrome.
“When you have to look at your own work, is it hard for you sometimes? I'll be really excited initially after I do a session and then pick it apart to the point where I'm just talking myself out of this whole thing altogether.”
You go into the session and you come back, you're like, oh my God, that was so much fun. I nailed it. And then two hours later you're like, I'm a complete failure and I'm gonna burn it all down. Is that the cycle? Am I getting that right? What you were describing is classic imposter syndrome. It's awful and it feels awful. The only bridge through it is confidence. Confidence is the bridge between self-doubt and self-actualization.
“Emma”:
I hardly ever like anything I produce in the end. I think it's technically fine, but I'll always pick it apart. I'll always say I could have posed them differently. I could have done the light differently. I could have edited differently. I could have said something different. I was super awkward during the session. There is always something I will find in it. I'm not at the point now, eight years into it, that I need to quit, but I'm still at the point where I'll pick apart every single thing. So you are not alone by any means.
Don't feel like that's a sign that you need to give up. What's actually kind of cool is in a couple of years, when you go back and look at your earlier stuff you'll see how far you've come.
There is no level of likes on Instagram or followers that'll make you feel better.
It's definitely a thing inside you that you have to work on. And I'm very, very slowly getting there. I don't know if this affects you or not, but I know what caused the majority of my imposter syndrome was looking at everybody else's work. For a while, I would look at their work just for inspiration when I was trying to figure out who I was and what I liked. At this point, I don't have to unfollow them, but I hide them because I don't need to keep seeing all of the work from other people that might make me feel like I'm not as good.
I just focus on myself.
“Tess”:
Take your sessions and work as a learning experience. I would try to study my own work and think about what I could do differently next time. So whether it was with the posing, okay, so I need to remember to have this in the frame, or I need to remember the hands, or I need to remember this or examining my light. I need to remember this so I can do it a little differently next time. And that helps you to grow.
We learn best by making mistakes.
I remember being on a family shoot and my battery died and I didn't have a backup camera. I don't ever go without a battery again. Take those types of learning things that apply to your shoots and talk about them. That's how you learn, by studying your own work.
Sandra:
Confidence is the bridge.
I gave that a lot of thought when I was creating that program about this very problem because I feel like it's huge and it's so common. And I know for me personally, 'cause I've been in this too, and I still go into it every now and again, I think it's just really common.
The only way that I have found to get out of that cycle is to give your brain proof that it's not true.
Your brain needs facts and your brain needs action. When you are stuck in imposter syndrome, when you're picking apart your work, it's usually because you have really high expectations, right? You have good taste and you are an ambitious person. And sometimes there's a problem where our taste level and our skill level just haven't caught up with each other yet. And that's really natural. Sometimes it can just be a mental thing too. But either one of those problems is solved through action. It's really about making sure that you know your stuff. And what I have found over and over and over again with photographers is because we are all self-taught, or most of us are self-taught, we've never had that assurance that we've been trained and tested. We've never had feedback from actual mentors. We just do everything by ourselves.
We're learning in isolation.
We're trying to give ourselves feedback. We're looking at our work, and maybe it's not quite where we want it to be yet, but we don't know why. We just judge it instead of realizing that this is a skill that you learn. It's not like anybody is born knowing the exposure triangle and just freaking rocking it straight away, right? This is all stuff that you have to just learn and know. So when you can get in and you really learn and really understand light, for example, and how light works and what you see when you're working with natural light and how you recreate it with artificial light, suddenly that worry's gone. I understand light, I know my light, so I don't have to worry about that anymore. We're done with that imposter syndrome.
When you really understand the elements of posing, you don’t need to worry about it anymore. I teach in the certification everybody needs a Fab Five. These are your go-to poses and you know that you're gonna get everything you need for a really good gallery in every session because you've already thought about it. When you understand processing, you don't have to worry about it anymore. And so it's a mix of making sure that you are surrounding yourself with the training that you need, the mentorship that you need, but also the action that you can take so you can cross over that bridge between self-doubt and self-confidence.
It is all about taking action.
It's proving to yourself that you have the skills, you actually do know what you're doing. I've thought about this so much because imposter syndrome is a huge problem, and I've seen, so many people struggle with it. There are so many really, really talented people quitting or leaving or giving up on photography because they've talked themselves into believing they’re just not good enough. In actuality, they just haven't had the scaffolding and the training.
“Emma”:
In certification, this is the first time I've had that one-on-one, no gatekeeping and that's where that confidence has come from. I still know I have room for improvement. I didn't realize my crop was off, but I had someone who could tell me that and help me, but not criticize me and tell me that I'm crap and that I'm never gonna make it. That's where I'm suddenly getting that confidence from. People are seeing that and I'm starting to get more more inquiries. I didn't have that when I started certification.
I knew that I was struggling, I didn't know why.
Through learning about light and how to find it and now the posing, it's just all the things that I have been looking for to be taught. I'll be a cult leader for Sandra Coan Certification, but I feel like I've unlocked all the information I've been seeking and asking for. I can't get it in a community near me. I have asked, I physically asked people to help me with this and they won't. And so now doing it through Sanda, I'm like, oh, I finally finding the answers and I understand the exposure triangle, you know?
Sandra:
Do you feel like those layers of imposter syndrome are falling off? Because that's one of the reasons why I designed the program the way I did. I want to address this problem. I am tired of seeing super-talented people walk away from it.
I know as a mom how empowering this career can be because you get to make your schedule, you get to decide who you work with, and you get to decide how much you get paid. That makes us some of the luckiest people in the world, and it can be so empowering. And it drives me nuts that there are these little tiny things that people aren't being taught that are forcing them to believe that it's a problem with them and that their work isn't good enough and they're not worthy. They're leaving when most of the time it’s one little tiny tweak or little something that you just don't know, so you can't Google it.
Emma:
You're not gonna get it posting your work in a forum where you're gonna get a thousand people telling you a thousand different things. That's only gonna make it worse. I see that every day 50 times a day. People going, why aren't I getting clients? Or why isn't this working? And everyone's got an idea, but no one wants to sit down with you and go, let me mentor you and help you.
Sandra:
There's probably a factor of you being just really hard on yourself. There's a combination of your taste level being here and maybe your skill level here. There might be an element to it if you just don't know what you don't know, so you don't even know how to ask for help. There could be a whole bunch of these things, but that feeling that you have, is a solvable problem. That is something that you can move out of. Because I have moved out of it myself. I know it's possible because I have done it and I'm seeing it happen. Like, Tess, I'm just pointing at you like your growth. I'm seeing that happen. I don't want you to be stuck and I don't want you to give up because you have this story running in your brain that may or may not be true. We don't have all the information.
I spent an entire year thinking about starting certification.
Then I spent a solid six months interviewing people and talking about imposter syndrome. I keep seeing it. I’m seeing how many people get stuck in clarity.
Why is that so hard for people? It's easy for me to come in 25 years and be like, follow your bliss. Do what you love, stop doing what you think you should do. But when you're at the beginning of your career, you don't even have a frame of reference for that. It's almost like deconstructing what that means to find clarity. So in Certification, we start with light. I am really working with people on what kind of light do you like?
Can you identify it? Do you know how to see it? Deconstructing each and every piece so that you have this total understanding. It's not just about learning to turn on a flash and meter for it, it's knowing that I like this kind of light quality, I like these kinds of light patterns. I'm naturally drawn to this level of contrast. It’s really being able to deconstruct it so that then you can go on and create it with an intention and then suddenly when you can do that, the self-doubt is gone.
This whole certification program started because of Six-Figure Studio and four years of watching people really struggle with clarity. I'm really passionate about it, as you can tell I'm really excited about it.
It is a solvable problem.
It doesn't mean that you don't have innate talent that you feel this way. It doesn't mean that you weren't meant to do this and you're wasting your time. That's just the lies that your brain is telling you.
That stress is the worst feeling and there is a path through it and beyond it. Being in business for yourself is like being in therapy because it gives you the opportunity to really face things that you wouldn't otherwise face in your life. Yeah. And get through those is one this, one of those, you know, one of those obstacles.
Emma:
Does anyone else have anxiety before shoots? I would be very excited and then all of a sudden it's days before and I start to dread it. It turns into this mind-racing thing the night before. Does that get better?
Sandra:
That's all part of taking action. If you think of it as a bridge, you're stuck over here in imposter syndrome island and you need to get onto “I feel awesome about myself and my skills” mainland. All that is, is a bridge that needs to get you from here to here. You build that bridge is by learning and taking action.
You can't manifest your way out of this.
You can't give yourself positive affirmations out of this. Your brain is going to tell you that you're lying. The only way over that bridge is by taking action and proving to yourself, “I have learned this and I know I know this beyond a shadow of a doubt. I've been trained and tested and I got it.” I truly believe that my Certification program can get you there.
