Curiosity Is Your Superpower: Beat Imposter Syndrome for Good- E216

Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick

Dr. JC Doornick explores how curiosity serves as a powerful antidote to imposter syndrome and overthinking in an increasingly fast-paced, AI-driven world. He shares a personal anecdote about experiencing

Key takeaways

• Dr. JC Doornick experienced imposter syndrome in roughly 60 seconds after watching a successful author's presentation, highlighting how quickly the brain constructs negative narratives from comparison.
• The word 'hmm' functions as a cognitive pause button that suspends certainty without suppressing thoughts, allowing for fact-checking and intellectual humility.

Main topics

• Imposter syndrome
• Curiosity (trait vs state)

Notable quotes

Certainty is what closes the case. Uncertainty and curiosity reopen the case.

Conclusion

Listeners gain a practical mental tool ('hmm') to disrupt automatic ne

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) So nearly 70 % of people will feel like a fraud at some point, even the most accomplished ones. I Speaker 1 (0:07) felt it recently where I found myself comparing Speaker 2 (0:10) myself to a brilliant academic speaker until I remembered one small word that changes everything for me. Speaker 1 (0:18) Have you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the thinking for you? That your beliefs, perceptions, Speaker 2 (0:25) reactions, fears, and doubts have been shaped by unsolicited outside noise? How easy it's been for you to slip into that default sleepwalking mode and label it as Speaker 1 (0:37) life and reality. Yeah, that ends here. Speaker 2 (0:40) Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. JC podcast. This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control, and step back into that role as the shock collar and dominant force of your own. reality. It's when you change the way that you look at things that the things that you look at begin to change. So let's wake up, let's rise up, and let's make sense of why and how shift happens. Speaker 2 (1:08) Makes sense. Speaker 2 (1:10) So today's episode is really about curiosity, the real superpower that sits patiently behind imposter syndrome, learning and staying sharp in this fast-paced AI-driven world. And it starts with a simple question that I've learned to ask myself and I share with you guys all the time. And that question is just a sound and it goes, hmm. Remember, one of the tenets of the Make Sense Academy and our ecosystem is what Wayne Dyer used to say. It's when you change the way you look at things that the things you look at change. A lot of people love that idea, but they struggle to execute on it. And what I'm pitching you on here is the idea that the way to that is curiosity. I want to share something that happened recently. Like I said, it exposed me to something about the human condition that I think we're all dealing with. It has to do with comparison. things like imposter syndrome, overthinking, confidence, and this incredible human meaning-making machine that we have called the brain. I watched this short presentation because a lot of people think that I don't fall prey to negative thoughts or fly off the handle. We're all the same. Nobody gets out of that. Nobody gets out of the human condition. We're all at different levels and we're all unique. But if you think about it, We all have the same knee-jerk reflex because we've all been trained by the same people and things. We all live in the same world. I don't watch the news. Speaker 1 (2:35) I still find out about the news. Speaker 2 (2:36) And Speaker 1 (2:37) it was Speaker 2 (2:37) basically the first few minutes that I was watching it, the presenter, who's a very famous author that I love, and he began sharing a little bit about his background. So here I am kind of enamored and liking what he does and what he writes about. And he started talking about his background, where he got. the way he is. You know, it was obvious that he was highly educated. He was a well-studied person, an accomplished academic, and a very successful author. And his latest book, his latest book had done incredibly well and continues to do so, selling millions of copies. So he knew his research. He knew his terminology. was a very, very polished, intelligent, well-credentialed, and clearly successful human. And almost immediately, and I'm sharing this transparently, almost immediately, something happened inside of me. My brain, just without asking me, started to compare. And here are some of the voices that popped up in my head. He's more educated than me. He knows more than I do. He sounds smarter than I do. Look how successful his book is compared to mine. And before I knew it, my sense-making machine had taken me from watching another human's presentation to questioning my entire career and identity. The voice in my head said, maybe I'm not as intelligent as I think I am. Maybe I don't belong in these types of conversations because my genre of writing is very similar to his. Maybe I'm faking this whole thing. And I know a lot of people, a lot of flow burglars like to come into our environment and challenge me on this and call me a charlatan and poser and all that stuff. So, you know, like all that stuff is happening. extrinsically, but right now it's happening intrinsically and it seems real. Maybe I'm faking this whole thing and people are going to figure it out sooner or later and my career is just going to crash and burn. So maybe I should just save myself all the embarrassment and suffering and just go find myself a nice nine to five job. It was like Speaker 1 (4:34) 60 seconds. Speaker 2 (4:35) I Speaker 1 (4:36) took note. About 60 seconds, my brain had taken one Speaker 2 (4:39) man's resume. He was just explaining where he got his information from and his background. In 60 seconds, took one man's resume and turned it into the collapse of my entire career. That's pretty impressive, right? But then something happened. And one of the shirts that we have is something wonderful is happening. And I believe that. I truly believe that. So I love reminding myself, no matter what my situation is, something can happen. So what happened was, is I caught it. Instead of simply becoming the thought, I observe myself having the thought and all the feelings. So think about the difference between becoming a thought and just observing it. What that does is it separates you from it. The way that I did it, or almost simultaneously when I felt this happen, I said one little word, and that was just, hmm. And as we know, that stands for haven't made up my mind. But that's all I did. It doesn't mean that my initial thoughts were wrong. This is what is really fascinating. I caught myself doing something that I now know is disadvantageous, but we very, very easily can catch ourselves thinking a certain way and assume that it's the right way to think. I mean, it's our brain, right? It just simply means, is that so? It suggests, let's put it on a little timeout. That's what says. I'm not throwing it away and I'm not suppressing it or replacing it with some sort of bullshit positive affirmation that says that I'm special. And I don't want to poo-poo on affirmations. So all I'm doing is temporarily suspending my certainty so that I can look around and check the facts. That's all I'm doing. So our