We recently connected with Ryan Gottfredson and have shared our conversation below.
Ryan, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.
In my mind, how we think about ourselves ranges somewhere on the continuum from “imposter” to “worthy” to narcissist. Of course, we want to be as close to feeling “worthy” as possible.
I do believe I have made a significant shift from “imposter” to “worthy.”
For me, the key to making this shift was upgrading my mindsets.
I am the author of the Wall Street Journal best-selling book, “Success Mindsets: Your Keys to Unlocking Greater Success in Your Life, Work, & Leadership.” And, when I was doing the initial research for the book, I learned a profound lesson about myself: I had a prevention mindset.
With a prevention mindset, my approach toward life was to keep myself safe, comfortable, and free from problems. I was wired for self-protection.
What I didn’t have was a promotion mindset. People with a promotion mindset are not wired for self-protection, they are wired for value creation. They have a clear purpose that is focused on creating value for others or for something bigger than themselves.
The key that helped me shift from seeing myself as an “imposter” to seeing myself as “worthy” was to become less focused on my protection (a prevention mindset) and become more focused on a purpose for creating value (a promotion mindset).
There are two main activities that I engaged in to develop this value-creating purpose: First, I began engaging with “The Five-Minute Journal” every day to help activate my mind every morning to a value-creating focus (as opposed to a self-protective focus). Second, I developed a personal purpose statement that was focused on helping people elevate their lives.
The more I took my eyes off of myself and put them onto my bigger purpose, the less I felt like an “imposter” and the more I felt “worthy.”
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am a leadership professor at Cal State Fullerton. And, I am a leadership development consultant. I help organizations all over the world develop and elevate their leaders. I am also the Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author of “Success Mindsets” and “The Elevated Leader.”
When I work with leaders and people to elevate their leadership and their life, I love to help them awaken to and upgrade the quality of their mindsets. If you want to awaken to and upgrade your mindsets, take my free Personal Mindset Assessment: https://ryangottfredson.com/personal-mindset-assessment
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I have learned that our foundational mindsets dictate our qualities and skills.
There are a lot of people who try to develop certain qualities and skills–like humility, empathy, and patience–but they struggle to do so because they focus on the quality and skill and not the mindsets that underly these qualities and skills.
I have learned that I am able to more effectively develop and elevate myself the more I work on my mindsets, particularly these four mindsets:
-Growth mindset – Believing that I can change and being focused on learning and growing
-Open mindset – Believing that I can be wrong and being focused on finding truth and thinking optimally
-Promotion mindset – Being focused on a value-creating purpose and believing that I can work through any problem to fulfill my purpose
-Outward mindset – Believing that others are just as important as myself and being focused on lifting others
Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
Ask me this question every day, and I might give you a different each time.
Today, I’ll highlight “Leadership and Self-Deception” by The Arbinger Institute. This was the first book I read on mindsets, and helped me deepen my self-awareness in profound ways.
This was the first book I every read on mindsets. It immediately deepened my self-awareness, helped me to see that my mindsets were not where they needed to be, and invited me to elevate my mindsets to become a better person.
The core idea of the book is that we can see others as either people or as objects, While, seeing others as objects projects us and even feels right or good at times, it ultimately holds us back. If we want to be the very best version of ourselves, we need to see others as people and treat them as such. I have learned that this is much easier said than done.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ryangottfredson.com/
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