Why Your Imposter Syndrome is Tricking You Into Waiting Until You're "Ready"
Big thanks to Carly for this week's livestream topic about imposter syndrome and waiting until you're ready. Maybe you're like Carly and me and have dealt with a ton of imposter syndrome over the years as well as the sense that you have to wait to feel more confident before you get started on your next step. Yet, if you take a step back, the fog on the mirror starts to clear and you see that if you make a few mindset changes, realize what “ready” really means, and sort through what comes up when you think of being an imposter, you'll see that you've been tricking yourself instead of moving forward.
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Alright, welcome into our Friday live stream. We were talking about imposter syndrome today. So this is something that I get a lot from other freelance writers, like when I get them in my inbox or I ended up getting questions about imposter syndrome or feeling ready. So this is something that I think we should tackle. And this is brought to you by Carly. So Carly mentioned this and I thought this was a really good live stream topic so that we should go over it. So basically what it is is, is when you are dealing with imposter syndrome, sometimes it ends up tricking you into thinking that you have to wait to feel ready to do something, or you have to feel you have to meet certain criteria to end up being ready or you need a certain experience or that you feel like you're behind other people.
So that's the interesting thing about imposter syndrome is like, it tries to convince you that you need to meet all this stuff before you actually do it. Or you feel like as a freelance writer, you're not you're not as qualified or like you're faking it, right? Like you're like everyone else is doing it and I'm just faking it. Like, I don't know how this is working. There's a whole bunch of different things that happen when you deal with imposter syndrome. So we're going to go through a few different things. So big, thanks to Carly for suggesting or like mentioning this and it got made into a topic. So I think a lot of writers deal with this and I know personally I dealt with it. Oh, hold on. Hello. When I was first starting out. So let's talk about the mindset changes that you needed to take when you're dealing with this.
So a lot of times with imposter syndrome, it's, it's like a mind game that you end up playing with yourself. So you end up feeling like you end up feeling like there's going to be some sort of thing that happens, right? Like there's going to be something that just pushes you into kickstarting it or like, oh, I'll, excuse me, I'll start tomorrow. Or I'll end up, you know figuring out in the next six months or all end up, you know, something will happen and it'll make me feel like I'm ready to do it, but that's really not what happened. So for me, what ends up happening when I have imposter syndrome and I still have it just FYI. I know that a lot of times you were like, I don't know if you're dealing with this, but I deal with this.
Like, I still deal with all of these things all the time, because that happens as you keep moving along in your business, as you keep raising the bar and moving up and doing stuff and you keep challenging yourself, right. Then you end up getting to these different places where you're still kind of dealing with certain stuff like imposter syndrome or feeling like you need to be ready. So for me, when I take a step back and I look at kind of the big picture I'm kind of like, what is going on? Like, why do I feel like an imposter? Why do I feel like everybody else is more qualified than me? Am I comparing and despairing? Am I thinking that I need to be further ahead to do X, Y, and Z? Am I thinking that I'm not really good enough to do my job.
Am I dealing with a lot of low self-worth? Am I trying to convince myself that I shouldn't do it? Am I looking for ways that I should just like skip out and not do it? Am I spending a lot of time and effort convincing myself that I should be this thing? Or I should be that thing or I should do it this way. There's a whole bunch of things that we can do when we kind of zoom out and look at the big picture. And there's a lot of things where like, imposter syndrome is like, you can't do this anyways. You shouldn't even start. Right. That's a lot of times where you end up, like where I ended up getting is that imposter syndrome is like, you're not even you're, it's going to be forever before you're qualified. You shouldn't even start or it's going to end up being something that takes forever. Oh my gosh. Charlotte, can you not bump the light? Can you feel Charlotte? You're just like a handful recently. She's like leaning up against it and like moving it Charlotte. Why can you go to your, have a hole? Thank you. All right. Let's do a quick update while she's being sassy. Oh, Beau's not in the thing. That's okay. That's okay. You go.
Good job. Let me go, buddy. Can you come over? There you go. Good job. You're so far away. Let's see if we can get them both in there. Oh, almost. Oh, us. So take a step back and look at your behave. Vicky welcoming. Look at your mindset stuff. Look at what you're kind of dealing with. Like, what is your mind telling you? And this is something that I ended up doing where it's like your thoughts are not true all the time. Right? They're just thoughts. So what you think about yourself sometimes isn't the truth. She knows you. Don't like, yeah, she just, Charlotte likes to like, be a trouble child sometimes. Like, I don't know. We've been doing this live stream for almost a year and you know, they were pretty good about it, but recently she's just been all active and wild.
Yeah. So look at your big picture stuff. Look at all the things that you look at, all the things that are coming up, all the thoughts and write them down. A lot of times when I ended up doing this exercise, when I ended up writing down all the thoughts, my imposter syndrome is telling me, or when I write down all the thoughts that are coming to my mind when I'm feeling negative about myself, or I feel like, you know, like, oh, you're not qualified or you're not ready, or you're not good at this thing. Or you suck at this, I write them down. And then I'm like, all right, how many of these things are actually true? How many of these things actually make sense? How many of these things are things that I can figure out? Like most of them, like very few of them are actually true.
Like, yeah, maybe I don't have enough experience yet, but I can get that over time. That's kind of the same thing as like, when I left college, like when I left college, this was the most annoying thing. So when I left college we were dealing with all of the recession stuff and it was really hard to get a job. So it took me about a year to get my first job, even though I was applying to like hundreds of jobs. And now you get to the interview and I'd be this, this happened to me so many times I'd be this like, between me, like me and like tour to other people, like can be with a top three or four people. And they'd be like, yeah, we, we went with someone else cause they have more experience than you or yeah, like they ha they've already had a job or like stuff that I couldn't have done.
Like I was trying to get my first job. I was trying to do that. And they would always end up picking someone who had more experience or more whatever. And I was just like, well, I can't get experience unless I get a job and I've tried to get a job. And it's just kind of like this thing where you have to actually just keep trying to get that experience. It's not like someone's just not going to not hire you and be like, you don't have the experience like, okay, someone else will, someone else eventually will hire you because they like your writing. They like your work. They like your website. They like what you bring to the table. They like that you have certain niche expertise. There's always going to be somebody who will eventually say like, we like what you have. And luckily it's freelance writers.
It's also, luckily it's a different time now. But as freelance writers, we don't necessarily have to be like, I did five internships and all this stuff. Like we bring our clips to the table, we bring our results to the table. And we say like, are you interested in this? That kind of stuff really makes a big difference with our imposter syndrome is like over time we just gain that experience. Like you have to tell yourself when you write down these notes of like what you're thinking like what are those things like? What can you handle over the next, I don't know, six months to a year between those things. What can you figure out? What kind of things can you put in place to get more experience or to try things out? And I've always, you know, we've talked about this before, where, or on the live stream, maybe you and I have talked before.
I don't know. But I have taken a leap, like many leaps in my career. And what ends up happening is it always works out better than I thought. Like always. So even when I've been feeling like I'm not qualified and I feel like I have a ton of imposter syndrome and my, my brain is like, we're not ready. And my anxiety is like, please, don't, we're gonna die. You know, it always works out better than I thought, because a lot of the things and I talked about this with my core students the other day, there's this mark Twain quote, right. Where he's like, a lot of my worries never came. That's exactly it. Like we spend a lot of time worrying and we spend a lot of time imagining fake scenarios. Like I have imagined every fake scenario. I think maybe that exists in freelance writing.
Like I that's part of my, like I like to ruminate. I like to freak out about those things. You know, I don't like it. It's just, it's part of my, you know, process, I guess my anxiety. So when you're thinking about that, right? When you look at all these thoughts, like pull it back, like how many of those things are actually true? How many of those things can you work on? There's not this like finite amount of information. There's not this finite amount of energy. There's not this finite amount of knowledge. Like you gain experience and you gain a lot from just trying things out and just moving forward, you gain a lot from being like, you know what? I can figure all these things out instead of worrying that you haven't figured them out yet. This is like, one of my favorite words is yet.
It's just that you haven't figured out yet it's this, that you don't have that clip yet. It's just that you haven't signed a client or that particular client or this type of client yet. It's just that you you know, don't have this type of experience yet. That's just part of the equation. And when I started out as a freelance writer, I often would come to the question of like, how do they know all this stuff? Like I was in a community and I was actually, I was in several communities and I knew a bunch of freelance writers who were making good money. And I was just like, how did I know this stuff? Like, how do they just have this like compendium of knowledge? And it was just experience. It's just that they just kept moving forward. And they kept working with clients and kept doing the marketing.
And they kept like using the experience they had and leveraging that to get better stuff or to get different stuff. That's it, that's, it, it, they stopped listening to all of those negative, like imposter syndrome, like your crap don't do this voices. And they were like, you know what, I'm going to do it anyways. I'm going to try it out and it ended up working out. So your imposter syndrome sometimes makes you feel like, you're like, oh, well, I, I shouldn't be doing this and I, I'm not good at this. And I'm not a real writer. I'm not a real freelance writer. Or I still have my full-time job. I'm not a real this. And then you're like, oh, I need to feel ready. I need to, oh, I first need to get my website done. I first need to get my linked. I need a bowl. You make this huge list of all the things you need to do before you become a freelance writer. Or before you reach out to this big client, where before you do extra, before you're ready or before you feel a certain way. And most of the time I've noticed, like I never feel ready. Like when I started this live stream a year ago, I didn't feel ready at all. I felt like a doofus. I felt like a total doofus. You go. And you go, buddy.
I felt like a total doofus and now I'm a lot more comfortable being on camera. I'm a lot more comfortable doing the live stream, answering questions, all that stuff. But that just came from experience that came from me being a doofus sometimes and being weird and like making mistakes or muting myself for like the first two minutes or like weird stuff I've done. And there's a lot of times where I have imposter syndrome about like, you sound like an idiot when you talk on camera or like you are not qualified enough to give advice or you don't have enough experience yet. Or I'm just waiting to feel the one day where I feel confident about my body so I can get on camera or I feel good about how I speak or how I talk or like the words that I use or I curse too much.
Like, there's all these things. If you go back there's all these things that pop up, but you know what, like that feeling of ready just doesn't come. When you are trying to push yourself to get to the next stage, you're not ready because if you were ready to be at that stage, like you wouldn't be trying to achieve that. You wouldn't be behind if that makes sense. So like, oftentimes I've found that when you're trying to do something new or you're trying to like move up a level, you're not going to be ready. Cause that's why you're trying to move to that level. If you are ready to move to that level and you got there, like there's a project that I've started recently, for example, that I was just like, totally freaked out. I'm like, I can't do this. I don't know what I'm going to do.
And then I started doing it and I was like, oh, I should have done this. Like two years ago, I should have done this project type like two years ago. Like, this is so easy. I know how to do all this stuff. And that, that was because I like waited until I was ready, big mistakes. That means I could have been doing that project and helping people two years ago when I had all this knowledge already, I didn't have to be ready. Like I already was. And that's when you're kind of like realize you're a little behind that's when you're like, oh man, I should've pushed myself a little bit more on this front. And I think that that imposter syndrome tricking you into feeling ready is just holding you back. It's just like this way that your brain is just like, oh my God, it's too new.
We can do like that kind of stuff. And really like when you end up doing that over and over again, you end up like, when you ended up keeping going, even though you don't feel ready, even though your imposter syndrome is like, you suck at everything and you can't write. And everyone else is better than you. And you're a fake and you're, you're not like really good at this. Everyone's lying to you, all that stuff. Like when you keep pushing through that and you keep doing stuff, even though you're not ready, you end up getting to this place where you just kind of like, it gets really quiet. Like that voice may come up, but it's really quiet because you're like, no, I've done this a hundred times. All right. So like the, the, the relationship is that that voice and starts really loud.
And the action you take is very small. And then that ends up being very different. The voice is very small and the action you take is really big. And I think that just comes from experience just continuing to do it. So the other piece that I want to talk about is what we want to do. So the readiness part, I think oftentimes is like this really interesting trick. Like I used to do this all the time where, like, there's a couple of projects I have in the works that I have struggled with over the last couple of years of, you know, getting going. And I it's mostly like, I'm like, well, I don't know if I'm ready or I don't know if I should do this yet. Or I don't know if it's the right time. And oftentimes, like, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter just do it because when you end up doing it, you end up learning a lot in the process. You know, you don't have to do everything at once. You don't have to go whole hog. You don't have to make it overwhelming for you. You just have to do something, right? Like sometimes what starts people on freelance writing as they just redo their website or they redo with LinkedIn and they, or they put up a website, that's how they start becoming a freelance writer is like, they start getting inbound leads and clients because they have an online presence and then stuff comes in and then they start freaking out. They're like, what's going to happen. I have all these biases. And most of the time, like a lot of clients just don't work out. But when we're thinking about that, like that, that piece of feeling ready, like, there's a lot of things that you're going to do for the first time that you still, like, you'll just never feel ready for like the first time you submit your work or the first time you sign a client or do your contracts, or you end up starting a Bayer project flow or you end up signing a big client.
Like there's a lot of times where you're going to feel nervous or you're going to feel a lot of like uncertainty, which makes you feel like, oh my gosh, I'm not ready. And it's just like a, it's just a trick. It's just a trick to kind of hold you back. Like, it's a trick that your mind plays where they're like, oh my gosh, bad things are gonna happen. Like, all these horrible things have happened to us before, like they're going to happen again. Like I got bullied or I had a rough family situation, or like I had all these teachers that told me all these horrible things, or like all of these voices, usually that you hear are not your own. Right? Like most of the time I found this, like through therapy, through talking, talking in therapy is like, most of the thoughts that you have are not thoughts that you would normally have.
Like when you were a little kid, you didn't have those thoughts. They were planted there by other people, repeating them to you all the time. So that readiness thing is like, oh, you have to be ready or you have to do all this stuff first. Or like, usually that's like just a way to like, feed the thoughts. That's just a way to feed all the bad thoughts. And not actually take any action or not actually do anything. We've got a wiggle word over here. So think about that. Think about the readiness. Think about the, like, who said that to you, right? Like one of those things is like, who said that to you? Who, whose voice do you actually hear when those thoughts come into your mind? Like when you hear something about not being ready or when you hear something about that, you have to do X, Y, and Z first.
Like why, why do you have to do that? Who said that? And most of the time, like that came from somebody else that came from somebody else saying like, no, you can't do it that way. And some of the best like entrepreneurs and business owners and freelance writers are just like, why not? Why can't I do it that way? Like, let me just try it out. And it works out way better than they thought. Yeah, they're still nervous. They don't feel ready. They feel like they have a ton of imposter syndrome, but they're moving forward anyways. And then, then if you have questions, if anyone here has questions, you can pop them in the chat. Feel free. If you feel like this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up. Make sure to subscribe if you want to earn or we'll we'll, if you want to build a higher, any freelance writing business.
And then also like, let me know below in the comments, if you're watching this as a replay what have you struggled with, with imposter syndrome? Like what has come up for you that really makes you feel like you're not ready? Or what thoughts have you dealt with? And like, how have you moved forward from that? Like, let me know in the comments. Cause I'm always looking for new strategies and information about how people are moving beyond this, because I have my own story. Right. But I think there's a lot of other people with stories that are very poignant to other writers to help them move beyond. So drop that in the comments below. All right. So the last thing I want to go over is what we want to talk about loops what I'm talking about. That in terms of building confidence.
So when we're thinking about we have all these thoughts that come up, we have all these things that end up. Could you go to your little Hobbit hole? Can you go to your hospital? We've all these thoughts that come up. Thank you. Can you go, buddy? Can you catch it? Oh, you were so close. You almost caught it. All right. Let's try again. You go. Good job. Well, can you catch it or do you want your three dogs? Oh, you were so close buddy. Is there? It's right there, but it's right there. There we go. You got it. You got it. We have to say 1, 2, 3 dog or else they like Bo can't bear can barely catch anything.
There we go. Almost got him on camera. Almost got them both on camera. All right. So let's talk about thoughts. So let's build some confidence. The way that you build confidence is usually through action. It's not through thoughts. So the, a lot of times we Intel ourselves a bunch of different thoughts, right? Like I am a good writer. I am good enough. I do good work for my clients. I work very diligently. I care a bunch. I do a lot of research. I work really hard. I turn my work in on time. I care about the details. I care about their audience. It makes a really big difference to me to help make an impact in their business. There's a lot of things that we can tell ourselves and those thoughts are good and they are helpful, but they're not as helpful as actually just doing it anyways.
Like there's that quote that people talk about, like feeling the fear and doing it anyways, this is the same thing. Like when you get imposter syndrome and it starts tricking you into being like, Hey, you're not ready. You should wait some more, you know, like that you do it anyways. And I know that a lot of writers, including myself, very much fear making mistakes. Like a lot of us are very perfection, perfection, mystic. In that we, we are very much driven by turning in clean copy that doesn't have errors that has the right sources that has everything, you know, as clean as it's going to get. But there's plenty of times in our business where it's okay. That it's messy and it's okay. That we're trying. The point is that we're moving forward, even though the hard stuff, you know, like even though we're having really thoughts, or even though we don't feel ready.
So a lot of times what ends up happening here is like, we put the wrong driver in front of the bus. Like we put imposter syndrome and like the readiness as the driver of the bus, instead of our thoughts about like, Hey, I can totally do this. I'm going to figure it out. It doesn't matter if I make a mistake, we're human beings. We make mistakes. It's okay. Like if you ever had a client where you made a mistake and that client came back to and was like, oh my gosh, you're the worst writer ever. Cause you made a mistake. You're like, okay. Like that, that is not a client you should be working with. You're a human being. You make mistakes. Like that happens. You want to learn from your mistakes and you want to do better next time. All right, buddy, can you catch this?
Ready? 1, 2, 3 dogs. Oh, you're so close buddy. You're so close. You can learn from your mistakes. You don't want clients. You want clients who treat you like a human being and who understand that you're trying your best. I think this is a fear piece too. Like freelance writers often feel fearful that their clients are going to be like, think that they're a bad writer or that they're really at their job if they make mistakes. And there's plenty of people who make mistakes all the time, I make mistakes all the time. But you have to learn from them. That's, that's how you end up getting to that place where you submit first drafts and they're like pretty clean and you have to do minimal errors is like, cause all those years beforehand you submitted drafts or you had to do a bunch of edits.
It's all a learning process. And I think switching to the idea that this is a learning process and it's like an experience process, like you're gaining experience over time and you're learning over time rather than like, I have to know everything. I have to be ready. I have to be prepared for every situation that the client's going to throw at me. Like I just don't think that works. I think it's way better. Just be like, it's a learning experience. I'm figuring it out, doing my best. And I'm seeking advice when I need it. I'm getting help when I need it. I'm doing better. I'm trying to learn from people who are ahead of me or learn from people who are better at this thing than I am. I think that's the better, the better mindset. And usually when you have a better mindset, usually when you end up in this situation where you are coming to it as from a place of like, I'm going to figure it out.
Yeah. I'm going to make mistakes. Oh, well that happens. I think you end up attracting those better clients. Like when you have a call with someone or how you write your web copy or how you portray yourself online, like that really ends up getting you the right clients to work with you rather than a lot of red light clients that are basically like, if you don't get it perfect. I'm going to tell everyone how horrible you are. It's like, okay. Like that's usually my response to like, that's what I know. It sounds kind of dismissive, but for me, like, that's kind of what I'm doing with those thoughts is like, I'm dismissing them and just like, okay, like then, then what's going to happen. Like, okay, like, there's, there's a lot of things where it's, there's not like a magic black book where you're going to get blacklisted.
There's not like a magic portal where people are gonna go and be like, they suffer from imposter syndrome. They suck at their job. Don't hire them like that doesn't exist. There are plenty of clients who are out there who want to work with you, who like your style, who like your work, who treat you with respect to understand you have other clients and they don't treat you like crap. They don't assume perfection from you. Every time you see you turn something in and they understand it's a teamwork process. That it's not something where you just toil in the dark, all alone all the time. Right. That's just not realistic. That's not realistic. That's the difference between saying like, oh, I'm a writer. I'll just write it for you. I'm gonna, I'll just write whatever you want. And someone's saying like, no, we're going to work together to create content that works for you.
That's the difference. A lot of times writers have things on their websites or LinkedIn that attract these clients where they say like, I make sure to get your work in on time. I do all this stuff to like, make sure it's perfect. You know, error-free copy all this stuff. And they attract clients that like expect them to be perfect every time they submit something or expect them to read their mind or expect them to jump through all these weird hoops. Instead of saying like, we work together to do this thing. That's the whole goal. The goal is that you work with your clients, you don't work for your clients and your clients. Don't just give you something and you toil away and then hope you meet their demands without any information from them at all. It's all about the teamwork part. And the teamwork I have found too helps get rid of imposter syndrome because when you end up working with your clients and it feels like a team, they say nice things to you.
Like you say, nice things to them. They say nice things to you. You get along. It's a great teamwork thing. And that helps build your confidence. And then you're like, wait a minute. I actually can do this because my client said, I'm doing a good job. Cool. They don't have to say nice things. This is something I tell people all the time, your clients don't have to say nice things. They don't, they don't have to say nice things about you. They don't have to refer you. They don't have to compliment your work. They don't have to tell you anything other than like, thank you for turning this in. Like, they don't even have to say that. But when they do, you have to put that in, you have to incorporate that into, you know, into your thoughts. Like, yeah, well, I must be doing a good job because my clients said so.
Right. Or I sent, you know, an LOI and someone got back to me, so I must be doing something right. Or I decided to put up my website and I already have someone emailed me asking if we can work together. There's a lot of things we need to like incorporate into our personality, into ourselves, to like push out the imposter syndrome. Right. We incorporate all this good stuff. This teamwork stuff, this like this like symbiotic relationship stuff, rather than being like, I have to do it all by myself. I can't do it. What am I going to do? Like, I'm the worst writer. Oh my gosh. We don't toil away in the dark. So can you go in your Hobbit hole? Can you back up? I got, I got, I got, I know. Good job. Good girl. All right. Bow ready? Whoa.
Okay. Are you ready? 1, 2, 3 dogs. Oh, you're so close. All right. Ready? Let's see if we can short distance. 1, 2, 3 dog. Nope. That one hit you in the face. All right, buddy. It's okay. You're going to be 15 soon. Your eyesight's probably going. You're doing the best you can. He's never really been good at catching things. So he's trying his best, right, right, buddy. You're trying your best. He's like, yes, I am. I'm drawing my best. Charlotte's like, I just want more for you dos. All right. So last little pieces I want to put in here. Oh my gosh. You're so sassy. Last little pieces is you build your confidence over time through continuing to learn and through experience, you build your confidence by pushing out imposter syndrome, thoughts and incorporating the good things that happen. The good things. When people get back to when they say nice things about your work when you feel good about what you've turned in.
And this is something that I do with my work. Like I talked about this in one of my weekly emails that I sent, I have this image that I, that I built over time where, and this kind of really helped me with like, not worrying about feeling ready and not worrying so much about feeling like I'm not good enough, or I'm not a good writer. I'm like faking it or that like, everyone else is better than me or like everyone thinks I'm great, but I actually suck at everything. So this image is like, I have this paper origami boat, and I'm on a beach. It's like this very, I think it makes sense because it's so delicate. It's like this very delicate paper or Gotti boat, you know, it's about this big and I'm on the beach and I just like put it in the ocean and I just like, get a little push.
I give a little push. I'm like, all right, bye. And I think about that every time I submit an assignment or I submit some kind of project or I do some kind of new, scary thing, I just like, I'm like, here you go. You know, like I tried my best. I, I, you know, and you're going to go out into this vast ocean of possibilities that are both and bad and opportunities and situations like that, that kind of makes me feel a little bit freer where I'm like, you know what? I did the best I could. It doesn't matter that I don't feel ready and all these other negative thoughts in my head. Like I did the best I could. I'm going to release it out into the ocean. That's what we're doing. We're releasing our work out into the world. Like anybody at any time can come across your work.
Right. It's all the internet. And I feel like sometimes when I have this paper boat thing and I just like, put it in the ocean, you know, let it go. It kind of makes me feel like, you know what? I did the best I could, even if my client hates it, even if I, you know, even if I made mistakes at this current time, I feel like I did the best I could. I feel like this was my best effort. I feel like this was my best situation. You know, all that stuff. I feel like this was what I could do really well. And sometimes your best, isn't always your top, top best. Sometimes your best is like, I only got four hours of sleep. I'm exhausted. I have to turn this in on time. I'm going to do my best. I will make edits.
If I need to, this is the best I got right now. Sometimes that's what happens. It doesn't happen all the time. But sometimes that's just like your best right now. And I think coming to peace with that, like that piece where you're just like, Hey, I'm not a robot. I'm not, I can't do everything perfectly. I'm never going to feel ready to like, do all these jumps. You know, like there's plenty of people. There's plenty of people who go their whole lives feeling like imposters. Like they achieve all these things, right? Hi buddy. They achieve all these things and they get all these trophies and these awards and magic things. And they ended up still feeling about themselves. Cause they never really do the mindset work. Like they keep striving and moving the goalpost and they keep being like, oh, I'm not ready.
I'm going to try this thing. But they never actually like incorporate like, oh, I only got the Nobel prize because like, everybody else was dumber than me. Or like, oh, well I only did this because I got this, this, I had this one connection. It's like, they don't incorporate all the good things and all the hard work they've put in. And I think that's really important. I don't hope for you that you ended up in a situation where you start incorporating those things. So you don't get 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 years down the road as a freelance writer. And you still think that like you can't do the basic stuff. It's totally fine to get to a new level and try new things and then feel like an imposter because you're trying new things, but it's a lot different than writing a thousand articles and getting to 1,001 and being like, I still can't do this.
I'm dumb. Like at some point you gotta, like, you gotta like, think about that and be like, hold on. I didn't wake up for a second. Like I did a thousand of these, I did a thousand things. They're all published. I did a great job. You know, like you have to incorporate that in. And you know, like I said, I think the confidence comes from taking action. The confidence comes from thinking about like, I can figure this out. I can get, I can get it together. I can figure it out. I can work with my clients. Like my clients aren't, you know, expecting me to be perfect all the time. And if they are, they're definitely not my client the confidence piece and like getting, you know, quieting imposter syndrome also comes from incorporating all that good stuff in. So the next time you, you feel like you're not ready, try to tell yourself it's going to turn out better than you thought.
Like all the times in my, I guess we're just shaking everything today. The, all the times in my business where I thought to myself, like, I'm not ready. I can't do this. I I'm, I'm not qualified. I'm not whatever I was like way overqualified. Like it worked out way better than I thought. Everything turned out essentially like better than I imagined. And like, I'm a catastrophizer right? So like, that's something where it's like, you know, better than I imagined it. This was like way better, like far, far, far away from any type of catastrophe. Okay. Good night. So just try to remember that, like you can figure it out. You can keep taking action. It's okay. To make mistakes. Imposter syndrome is going to happen as you level up. And there, I don't think there's any point at which you feel totally a hundred percent ready.
You might feel a little more confident, but I don't think there's any point. Like, I don't think there's been any point where I felt 100%. Totally, totally ready. Maybe I felt like 50% ready. But you definitely don't want to be at a point where you get someplace and you're like, oh crap. I shouldn't have done this a long time ago. Like, why was I waiting? Like that's the part is, cause you could have been further along. You just held yourself back with all these crappy thoughts and feeling like you need to have this readiness thing. And I, I used to struggle with that so much. I'd be like, I have to be ready or else this bad stuff's going to happen. But the bad stuff never happened. It never happened. And you know, like I said, like we, we make errors, we're regular people.
We probably make less errors because we're writers and we like pay attention to that kind of stuff. And you know, if you're diligent, you should make less, but it happens. So I hope this was helpful. We'll do one last puppet. Cause everyone went back to their habit. Holes Bo decided to dig a hole in there. If you guys ever see all these messy blankets it's cause I put them out and I make them nice. And then they just dig, dig around in them. Like they, they will not like say on a pet bed without blankets. Like they have to have blankets. They have to have blankets or sheets or something and I, you look super cute. Well, you look super cute. You can we ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh, you did good job, buddy. It only took us like six tries, but you did it.
So anytime you look on here and they look really messy is because they like to dig around. It's like they have to have these blankets and sheets, but they like to dig them around and move. And they're just kind of like Nestler's they're nestled or Nestle dogs. Cool. All right. If you have anything that you feel like like tips or tricks or things you've dealt with with imposter syndrome or things that you've dealt with with feeling ready or learning or experience or change your mindset drop it in the comments below. I'm really interested to hear that. If you feel like this was helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you want to learn more about building a high earning freelance writing business subscribe. And we're here every Friday at noon central time to do our live stream topics change all the time.
If you want to submit a topic, did I add it yet? I did not. But if you want to submit a topic or you have a question that you want me to answer on the live stream, maybe it's not a topic. It's just like, you have a question and you're like help. You can go to Mandy ellis.com/question and you can submit it there. And if you're nervous about as many questions, you can submit it anonymous. Non-Literal I'm not honestly. So yeah, go to Mandy ellis.com/question, pop it in there and I'll answer it on the live stream. Or I'll make a topic out of it. Sometimes people ask me questions and it ends up being a topic. It ends up being a huge like a much bigger thing that I think we should chat about. So I hope this was helpful. I hoped you enjoyed the pup dates. We had a few more updates today. Charlotte, you just, you just look like such a weirdo. You're just sit so funny and you just a little grump or you are with your little, you look like a bat. Alright, here you go. All right. Both. You want to try it one more time? 1, 2, 3 dog. Oh, you were close, buddy. All right, we'll try again. We'll try again. Hold on.
There you go. There we go. All right. All right. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for tuning in and I will see you next Friday. Bye.
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