The Simple Mental Model That Reframed My Limiting Beliefs

⚡️ Today’s level up ⚡️

You don’t have to succumb to your negative beliefs. There is a model you can use to reframe your thoughts that lead to unintended results to intentional results.

• Imposter syndrome is a healthy sign of growth

• Circumstances are neutral facts and trigger our thoughts

• Thoughts are opinions about those facts and produce feelings

• Feelings are emotions, either good or bad, and generate actions

• Actions are what you do, don’t do, or how you react and cause results

• Results are the consequences and will reinforce your thoughts

• Get a certified coach, like I did, to help make this journey easier

• Download my models to get actual sales examples and a head start

In early 2019, I was coming off of an MVP year.

I was #1 in the organization in total bookings…by a large margin. I had already locked in a life-changing income. Other people were asking me how I had closed such large deals.

Yet…I wasn’t confident…at least inside.

• I felt like a fraud.

• I felt like I got lucky.

• I was downplaying my success.

I was convinced I was an imposter, and at any moment, I would be discovered, and all my success would come crashing down or to a screeching halt!

Sound familiar?

Unfortunately, this is common thinking for a lot of high achievers.

Maybe you’ve heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

It was a famous study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1999, and is known for showing that less-competent individuals can overestimate their abilities.

These are generally the highly confident (eh, hem, arrogant) performers who generally have low self awareness and underperform. Ignorance is bliss I guess.

Yet, it also highlights the inverse effect is true for high achievers—those who generally think a lot about their goals and targets, but underestimate their actual performance.

A 2022 analysis by Dunning and colleagues clarifies that high performers can show a “false consensus” effect—assuming tasks are as easy for others as they are for themselves—and thus believe their own performance is common rather than exceptional.

It doesn’t stop there:

• A 2019 study in Frontiers in Psychology indicates that while imposter feelings correlate strongly with anxiety, they do not correlate with actual performance outcomes (i.e., sufferers perform at least as well as, or better than, peers who do not report these feelings).

• In a 2020 survey conducted with over 10,000 blind participants showed that nearly 58% of employees reported experiencing persistent thoughts that they are not as competent as their peers think they are.

• According to a 2021 study from the Personality and Individual Differences journal, 48% of surveyed high achievers (graduate students and early career professionals) displayed perfectionistic traits that led them to underestimate how well they did on standardized tasks or job metrics.

That’s pretty f*cked up, right?

Here you are being thoughtful, raising your standards, and you still beat yourself up internally.

However, there is a silver lining.

Imposter syndrome is a healthy sign

I realized I needed help.

I already worked for a great manager, had a fantastic team around me, and had a top-notch sales coach, but I still needed to overcome these limiting beliefs.

So, I started working with a performance coach specializing in helping high-end tech sellers overcome imposter syndrome.

‍In our first few sessions, I explained my situation. I went on to explain that I was feeling a lot of doubts about my role because, as an introverted college dropout, I was advising Fortune 100-level brands on how to transform their customer experience. These C-level executives were accustomed to taking their advice from Harvard MBA-toting consultants from Deloitte and Accenture.

It was a breath of fresh air when Amber explained: “Of course, you’re going to feel like an imposter! You’re doing things you’ve never done before! Imposter syndrome is prevalent; it’s a healthy sign of growth, especially in sales, where there is no defined path to success.”

That was a pivotal moment in my career. Then…we got to work!

The power of a self-coaching model

Once we established that these beliefs were common and a sign that I was progressing toward bigger and better things, she introduced me to a self-coaching model developed by Brooke Castillo that became an indispensable tool.

We walked through how it works, and once I saw it, the light bulb went off and started shining bright. It became so clear. Before, I felt like I was navigating in a dark tunnel without a flashlight. Now, a spotlight was fully turned all the way up!

Having a self-coaching model in place meant I could regain my power whenever I needed it.

The CTFAR framework

The foundation for the self-coaching model is something called CTFAR, and it works like this:

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