How I Try to Stop The Internal Dialogue Sabotaging My Life

Small ways I’ve been able to silence my inner saboteur

The first day of my first job out of college, I shadowed the sixty-something-year-old man I was replacing as marketing manager at a local tech company.
He was kind and genuinely wanted to help. I was young and terrified of doing the wrong thing.

“Did you feel stressed out working this job? I asked him.

“No never,” he said.” “Do you feel stressed?”

I didn’t tell him that I always felt stressed, pretty much every second of every day and now the idea of taking over a role that someone had previously held for 15+ years was triggering some intense imposter syndrome.

But I did say, “A little bit.”

His advice?

“Don’t. There’s very little you could screw up here.”

I wasn’t reassured.

My attitude was pretty much that I would find something to screw up, despite all odds.

He ended up being right. The job was extremely basic, and no one really knew what they were doing. I was the least senior person on the team and the only person with any kind of formal marketing training (not that that matters).
But I still remember being terrified pretty much the whole time I worked there. Always afraid of doing the wrong thing. Always questioning myself and second-guessing my abilities.

When I think back now, the reality of the situation was so different than the story I was telling myself every day.

I like to say that senior management had no idea what they were doing, but I was also acting like a pushover. I went in, did what I was told and was too scared to speak up or question any of the tactics that were effectively running the business into the ground. I was scared of sounding stupid or being wrong.
When you hear those stories for long enough, the stuff in your head starts to feel like truth.

It can get louder than reality and overshadow every positive affirmation you receive.

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