Imposter Syndrome Isn’t a Problem. It’s a Clue.

This is Ray Gauge, and you're listening to Ray Gauge unsupervised.

So I'm going to go a little bit of a different direction with these episodes. What I did before I was thinking I would script them, and it just doesn't feel as natural when they're scripted. Doesn't mean I'm not going to sometimes read a definition or a note, but most of this is just going to be me processing the thoughts that are in my head and following them through to a conclusion. And a lot of times that conclusion is going to cause you to challenge where you're thinking from. And the reason I know this is because that's what it does for me.

Yes, I was on a call with a group of people, great group of people that I meet with every Thursday morning, and the purpose of the call is to talk about prospecting in different ways that we prospect. We usually end up talking about a lot of other things. Towards the end of this particular call, someone started talking about what we would commonly refer to as impostor syndrome. Now that's something that a lot of us have heard of, a lot of us have dealt with, a lot of us have thought about, but not everybody.

So I started thinking about this, like what is imposter syndrome? Because I made the comment like, the one thing that I think that is helpful for us all to remember is that our suck is someone else's suck cess. And we'll get get into that a lot deeper at some point. And I'm guessing that this particular subject is going to need more than one episode, because my intention with these episodes is not to have them be too long. The definition of imposter syndrome, it's defined as a psychological pattern where high achievers doubt their skills, fear being exposed as a fraud, and attribute success to luck rather than competence, despite evidence of their abilities.

Now this gets me to thinking, so what is the origin of the word syndrome. Well, first thing I guess is is I want to look up the definition of syndrome, which is defined as a noun. It's a group of symptoms which consistently occur together, or a condition characterized by a set of associated symptoms. To think about it like a rare syndrome in which the production of white blood cells is damaged, or a characteristic combination of opinions, emotions, or behavior like the not in my backyard syndrome.

Well, this got me to thinking, what is the word syndrome? Where did the word syndrome come from? And it comes from the Latin word is syndrome, which comes from the Greek syndromos, which breaks down as to run together. Now you can think of running together as having different meanings like let's go for a run together, or the lines are blurred because they're running together, or those two things go together as in cause and effect. So my question was which one of these is true? Is more true to the original Greek?

Well, the Greek when read from a physical perspective, and we'll talk about that a little bit more as well as time goes on, is a place where several roads meet. So thinking of it like there's three separate roads, one from Thebes, one from Delphi, one from Athens, and they all arrive at one spot. They're distinct roads, but they converge at a common point, so they're not blurring into each other or becoming one road. So if you think about this in medical terms, it's like multiple distinct symptoms arriving together at the same time or in the same patient, and each symptom maintains its own identity, but they converge as a recognizable pattern.

So it's not let's go for a run together, our lines blurring together, but it's more concurrent convergence. My question was, but what if that's backwards. What if the convergence point isn't the end but the origin. So what if the conversion point is the source. So the symptoms are emanating from one origin and not arriving at one intersection. That changes everything. So think of it like a wheel. The spokes of a wheel. There's a hub. The hub is not where the wheel converges. The hub is where the spokes emanate from, and the wheel is created as because of the hub.

So we tend to think of this as multiple separate causes. Then the symptoms coincidentally show up together, and then the meeting point is observational. But if you look at it the other way around, if we flip the ripped now we're looking at one source or origin multiple symptoms that radiate out from it. So then the together running from a common root cause. Now here's what's interesting. The Greek doesn't specify direction, so the running could flow either way, which one makes more sense. So if they're running from a source, then the symptoms aren't random cooccurrences.

They're manifestations of one underlying reality. Now, the togetherness is causual excuse me, causal, not coincidental. So this would mean the Greeks saw a syndrome as emanation, all symptoms springing from the same hidden source. This deserves some attention as we think about this, right because everybody agrees that it means running together. But if we look at the medical definition as symptoms occur together. But what if it's not that? What if the meaning is backwards? What if the conversion point is the origin.

What if it's not symptoms arriving at a point, but symptoms running from a source. So let's think about this in terms of imposter syndrome impostor syndrome. There's one cause. That cause is the underlying limiting belief that I am not enough, which comes from a belief in separation, which comes from fear. Multiple symptoms one source. The symptoms aren't random, they're expressions of the same false belief.

It's like my father in law passed away last year.

The doctors were treating symptoms that emanated from choices that he made decades ago. There was no possible way for them to treat the source because the source happened long ago, and the source of the problems they were treating, or the symptoms that they were treating, were because of a choice a belief. Medicine treats symptoms because by the time they show up, in most cases, it's too late to treat the source. So the whole system is built on managing effects and not addressing cause. If syndrome means two, I've got something outside of myself to fix.

This is the basis for the whole economy of striving. I can work, I can pursue wholeness if it means from I just recognize the false belief and choose differently. Nothing to weaponize, nothing to chase. One keeps me auditioning for my own life. The other gives me the choice right now. The same pattern is everywhere. Once you see it, What if you change, you already are until you must become present reality into future striving internal choice and to external requirement. It's one word, one directional shift.

But if you change it two, suddenly you need experts. You need systems. You need endless management to fix what was never broken. You need a medical system. You need religion for example, or you just remember who you are and choose differently right now. Next time, we'll talk a little bit more about some practical applications of this concept.

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