We often feel like we are only as good as our job, our children, our body, our last operation... but we are in fact valuable simply because of who we are. What are your strengths? What do people come to you for? 

Humans are like stools - we need at least three legs to be stable, e.g. health, work and relationships. If you’re reliant on one domain in your life for all of your self-validation, it’s very easy to knock out from under you. Where do you get your sense of self-worth currently? How reliable is that source as a source of self-worth? Where else could you get it? 

Keep your power. Don't give it away.

Our notion of what it means to be competent has a powerful effect on how competent you feel. Fear of failure is much more likely if your metric of success is achieving perfection, given that perfection is impossible. So, change your metric for success.

Design an alternative definition of success that supports your learning/performance/experience better, that is achievable, and that is within your control, e.g. always doing your best, staying relaxed and calm, or learning something new. If you stick to this performance habit, you can trust that the outcomes will follow. Every evening, reflect on whether you did your best to remain [insert metric for success].

A useful concept here is the difference between a fixed and a growth mindset. I really recommend Carol Dweck's TED talk and book Mindset, attached, if they're new to you.

“Imposter syndrome is a tax on personal growth. It will tell you to retreat to the safety of your current competencies, to avoid these new and uncomfortable opportunities. The feeling of discomfort when you start rewriting the stories you tell yourself is natural. It’s a positive. It’s a sign you’re taking on things that scare you. It’s the cost of entry” Sahil Bloom

“Don’t focus on not falling, focus on standing up” Marcus Aurelius

We tend to treat ourselves differently to other people, usually much more harshly. "We compare our insides to other people's outsides".

 

Self-criticism is associated with a rise in our stress hormones, and subjective experience of stress. In contrast, self-compassion has been linked to reductions in anxiety, physical pain, depression and cortisol.

Many of us fear that, if we stop beating ourselves up, we'll stop achieving as highly. In fact, self-compassion seems to increase motivation, improve performance over time, and enhance well-being. This paper is a good read. 

Our values are the fundamental attitudes guiding our mental processes and behaviour - the rulebook by which we live our lives. Although they feel completely intuitive to us, values in fact vary from person to person. 

When we don't live according to our values, we can feel unfulfilled and uneasy, a state of 'cognitive dissonance', where our beliefs and actions don't align.

 

Spending time to work out what you value, and therefore how to align your actions to this, can be really helpful. 

There’s a good worksheet attached, and coaching is a good option to explore them further.