Meet Risa Williams

We recently connected with Risa Williams and have shared our conversation below.

Risa, 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 learning how to navigate my feelings of imposter syndrome, I really had to challenge the thoughts and beliefs I had about myself. I had to work a lot on my own self talk, and learn to talk to myself in kinder ways. What I also found helpful was to track my progress on goals I was working on over long periods of time. What this did for me was to build up my confidence, and get me to see written proof that I was doing things all the time and making my way towards goals. Sometimes, our brains can easily gloss over and negate all the little steps we’re taking. When you track these things for yourself, you can’t do that as easily, you can prove to your brain that you’re making progress now.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am the book author of three self-help books, The Ultimate Toolkit Books (including The Ultimate Time Management Toolkit, The Ultimate Anxiety Toolkit, and The Ultimate Self-Esteem Toolkit). My fourth book, The Procrastination Playbook, will be out next year, and I’m also working on a series of daily planners. I’m also a therapist and I specialize in time management tools, and I host a productivity podcast called The Motivation Mindset. I also am a professor at various universities in Los Angeles and a busy mom of two kids.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
You have to belief in yourself, most of all, and this often takes us so long to actually do. Being your own friend and your own cheerleader is key, especially when you’re running your own business or trying to create things and make them into tangible works of art or products. We often want other people to cheer us on, and they will eventually, but what I’ve found is that it starts with you. With the way you are talking to yourself, each day, every day. You’ve got to learn to be your own source of encouragement, especially when things are slow and feel like they aren’t moving. That’s when instead of being harsh and critical, we can go gentle and kind in the words we’re saying to ourselves and take care of ourselves in this way. The other thing I’ve learned is that it’s helpful to be around other people who are good at both cheering themselves on and others, too. We tend to mirror each other, so if you’re working on being kinder to yourself and others, you want to make sure you’re around people who value that too and are working on themselves as well.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
My challenge is the same as it has been for awhile. To encourage myself during the slow times, and know that things will get busy again. I often move quickly, and want to leap into new projects. Over the years, I’ve learned to slow things down on purpose. To take more breaks and downtime. To work on doing other things that engage me when I feel stuck on a project. For example, I can take more walks. I can read more books. I can play games. I can connect with my family and kids more. I can step away from projects and get more perspective more regularly. It’s all about balance. And that’s just something I work on, on a week-to-week basis, and I try to catch myself if I’m tipping too far over into work.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Jessica Kingsley Publishers

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