Imposter syndrome and building confidence: She Bytes Back x BrainStation event

The following blog post is written by Rhea Sam

Back with a bang on empowering oneself with confidence and tackling imposter syndrome. She Bytes Back was back for a third event with Brainstation. The air was buzzing the minute I entered with warm smiles, conversations to catch up or meet a new face, and lots of pizza. What could be better than that? 

A new format was handed to us in the form of She Bytes Back network bingo as we entered through the doors! You read that right, it was a way to ensure you met new faces and fostered new connections to your network. There were friendly faces around , some old friends greeting each other before and after the event , catching up on the missed times and checking in to ensure everything is well.  Sometimes meeting a new old face who you may have collaborated with online but never met in person but you do now and it’s all laughs. 

Coming to the actual event with Brainstation , this event’s theme was around building your confidence and tackling imposter syndrome. As we all know imposter syndrome is such a killer. 

To kick off the introductions, we had the super woman herself, the brains and beauty Amber Shand, community leader of She Bytes Back starting us off with some statistics and some humour to get the crowd warmed up. This community was grown to build a safe space for women to grow in, foster meaningful connections and was all about leaning on community to take that next step in the chapter whatever that may look like for the individual. 

Did you know that 50% of women leave by the age of 35? That’s a scary and disheartening statistic to know. There are multiple reasons for this but two that was focused around the theme of this event.

Following this was a quick introduction from the lovely hosts of the event Brainstation introduced by Emma. Brainstation is a digital learning company that are in locations across London, Toronto, Vancouver, New York and Miami. A leader in the training space, empowered 10000+ people on their journey.  The key offerings are in upskilling professionals through bootcamps and courses. 

Before I dive into the individual speakers, it needs to be highlighted how phenomenal all three speakers were. Each bringing their own piece of experience into the topics spoken on. 

Have you ever felt so anxious before delivering a speech/presentation? So much that you’d like to call in sick, or refund their money? If so, well then you have something in common with our first speaker Jaz Marfo. That same experience is when she realised something was wrong when after years of knowing who she is and what she brought to the table, she had crippling fear and had faced first sign of imposter syndrome. 

Imposter syndrome and how to identify it was the main crux of her speech and what a delivery that was. She brought up how misalignment of expectations vs reality is when the imposter syndrome kicks in. Did you know the number one factor to identify with this is? Shame. Let that sink in. She graciously highlighted multiple times in her speech about shame and the association of not getting validation leading to feeling like an imposter. 

There are five personalities of imposter syndrome:  Perfectionist, Superhuman,  Natural Genius, Expert, and Soloist. 

Her message had a strong impact as most of her speech was relatable and reflective at most times. She emphasised on defeating the imposter feeling with gaining confidence, step by step, stay curious always learning, and don’t forget to give yourself the grace when imposter feeling starts to creep in. She kindly shared a framework with us called the ‘I am’ framework which you spend 60 seconds reflecting on who you are to build that confidence, if that’s too easy try spending 3 minutes writing every positive thing you associate with yourself.

I’ll leave with you my favourite quote by her - “Imposter Syndrome is an experience not a label” . 

The next speaker came in with her vulnerability as her armour. As a second-generation immigrant, the focus was on giving yourself the permission. Bhavika Jagwani brought on a very relatable analogy, one that a lot of immigrant women would understand in terms of familial responsibilities and giving everyone the permission to have you but not giving yourself the permission to dream , to explore and build your own confidence. 

She started off with a powerful hook – “ Before I was 7 years old I was a 30-year-old woman” 

She spoke about the downside of growing up to soon , being vulnerable with us about her having to be a guardian and giving herself the bare minimum while she poured everyone else’s cups to keep it full to the brim. Most people treated this as a sense of maturity but what did that really do to her?  Well, she grew up thinking external validation is the only way to live and in turn faced some level of abuse. Her speech amplified how there are behavioural patterns on wanting external validations and the need to support others. Her’s was always asking for permission before doing anything. 

The power of permission was her crux. She brought psychology to the table. Where does this permission step from? Let’s go way back to human evolution where we had shared characteristics with cats and dogs but we evolved and that resulted in 15-20% increase in anxiety related disorders due to the pressure all around. Pressure from society causes different coping mechanisms in individuals and that causes an environment mismatch in social groups. 

When we start following societal pressures we start removing the individuality of a person and cause a herd mentality to emerge. The fear of the unknown can be daunting , the fear of fitting in all falls back to giving yourself permission to think one’s individual needs. She kindly shares hers empowering advice through the POWE framework. Reflect on the why and trying and write down the exact emotions. Ask yourself how would you deal with this? 

Change is allowed so give yourself the permission to do so is my takeaway. 

Here’s my favourite quote from this speech: 

“We are not an end destination; we are a journey” 

The last speaker had all of us on the edge of our seats while she spoke about age being a number when it comes to confidence. It was all about retraining your brain on confidence. Grace Kisnorbo brought her spark through sharing her a favourite meme with us ‘ Im just a girl’. Her soft girl personality with sensitivity still honed into the confidence. How? She started with debunking a myth of learning something as you get older is harder. FALSE. There are ways to retrain and be sustainable about learning something new or building your confidence in a new piece throw two key bits, exposure therapy which focuses on trying new things slowly and repeating it till it feels familiar. The second key point on positive affirmations which feels highly relatable as someone who did that at university. Writing down affirmations and reading that out loud again and again helps to believe what you’re thinking and pushing out the negative aura. 

My favourite moment in the speech was the AHA moment we had after she introduced the behavioural framework. She shared a passage by Louise L. that spoke about planting a seed, watering it everyday till you see the first sprout , human nature would let it bloom but put that principle to your individual self then you would kill it before it blooms. Now let’s water it for ourselves with positive affirmations and when we see the first bloom, manifest its growth and watch it grow. I was so amazed with that connection and it had me thinking about it all the way home. The end was as cute as it could be with a cat note leaving everyone chattering and keeping the buzz alive. 

Ending this segment with my favourite quote from Grace – “Everything you think and everything you speak is constantly creating your future” 

Amber came back all smiles praising and having us join in the cheer to celebrate the three phenomenal speakers. So, we networked and clicked some cute pictures wearing our best confidence while doing so.

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