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Imposter Syndrome in Healthcare

Imposter Syndrome in Healthcare

So you feel like an imposter? A fraud. Everything that you’ve ever achieved is down to dumb luck. You’ve blagged your way to where you are. How come nobody else has noticed except you? You’ve conned them all and now you’ll be found out. Sound familiar? If you’re suffering from imposter syndrome you’re in good company. Research suggests 70% of us will experience the phenomena at some stage in our lives. Let’s take a look at imposter syndrome and how to silence it.

Imposter Syndrome – it’s not just you

Look around you, is it really true that everyone else is smarter than you? Perhaps they’re shiftily looking sideways in your direction and wondering the exact same thing? But how to get rid of that constant fear that you’re so fake? With all the pressures facing the health service at the moment life is tough. One thing that you don’t need adding to your stress is that little voice criticising you for not being good enough. Here’s how to silence that pesky negative narrative.

Do you have Imposter Syndrome?

Popularised by Dr Pauline Clance in the 1970s, imposter syndrome remains alive and kicking today, fuelled by the use of social media and constant connectivity.

Experiencing something of a renaissance, you’ll recognise it by the feelings;

  • At that pivotal moment – you’ll be found out
  • You don’t deserve your success
  • Your achievements are down to serendipity or even worse pure fluke
  • At some point someone will notice
  • You feel bad for conning others
  • It’s hard to take a compliment because you don’t really deserve it
  • You constantly feel that others are smarter than you
  • You punish yourself with perfectionism
  • You’re working late to make sure everything is ‘just right’
  • If you manage others you feel that you need to micro manage them just to ‘be sure’
  • You avoid anything that you suspect you won’t be able to do
  • You’re convinced you’re the only one
  • You feel more than just a little exhausted keeping up the pretence

Now you know you’re not the only person on the planet who feels this way you can relax. But how can you start to overcome it? Here are some self resilience coaching tips to silence that inner critic.

Five Steps To Kick Imposter Syndrome To The Kerb

Self Acceptance: Imposter syndrome is part of being a human being. In fact, it’s prevalent amongst high achievers rather than perpetual slackers so recognise that your self assessment could well be skewed. Let go of perfectionism and acknowledge that you’re doing your best. Constant striving will just heap the pressure on and you can use your time more effectively than that.

Stop Comparing Yourself: If we ever stopped to have an honest conversation with others about how we really feel there would be a veritable avalanche of astonishment. If 1 in 7 of us has experienced imposter syndrome you do the math! That person who you are comparing yourself to is probably wondering why they’re not as smart as someone else. This is how we are as humans. When we constantly compare ourselves to others (upwards or downwards) it damages us. So much so that Iyanla Vanzant describes it as “An act of violence against the self.” We think she’s right.

It’s ok to be scared: You’re scared. That’s a normal reaction in the current situation. Whatever you are feeling – feel it. It’s ok. You can harness that energy and do something creative with it rather than feeling overwhelmed. Recognise that everyone experiences a learning curve when they try something new and you’re no different. As human beings we learn by failing, it’s what we do with that failure that matters. Develop a growth mindset (check out our growth mindset podcasts and blogs) and utilise new learning information the next time you try something new.


Acknowledge your successes. However small. Even it’s turning up every day. It’s an achievement. That’s right, your achievements didn’t just happen by themselves. Recognise that you showed up, you stretched yourself and you definitely did something right. Keep a box or file of successes (certificates, wins, momentos, thank yous, compliments or good things that people have said about you, photos etc) to remind yourself of how hard you’ve worked and what you’ve contributed to your successes. When imposter syndrome strikes, tell it to get back in it’s box by getting out yours.

Put Yourself Out There: Instead of avoiding challenges where you fear failing, launch yourself into them. Known as ‘flooding’ in psychology circles it will enable you to shake off the need for perfectionism. The more you attack your fear of failure head on the less you will be concerned with looking foolish. Say ‘Yes’ to new challenges and treat them as research. Each time you approach a new goal you’ll find out what works and more importantly what doesn’t, leaving you better equipped for the next time.

There’s only one you: That’s right, we’re with Chesney Hawkes on this one. You really are the ‘One and only you.’ Whilst you’re holding yourself back and allowing imposter syndrome to take the wheel, the world is missing out on the unique talent that is you. Once you kick imposter syndrome to the kerb and learn how to overcome it, who knows what you’ll achieve? You’re not an imposter. You really are awesome. You’re doing an incredible job under unprecedented pressure.

The Resilient Doctor provides online resilience courses for doctors and healthcare professionals along with resilience coaching for doctors. During the Coronavirus pandemic everything that we do is free to healthcare professionals and allied services. A huge thank you from us for everything that you are doing.

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Managing Overwhelm & Burnout at Work

Managing Overwhelm & Burnout at Work

When you’re overwhelmed at work, it’s easy to feel as though things are out of control. It’s a normal response that we’ve all experienced at some point. We take a look at managing overwhelm and burnout at work.

Manage Your Energy

Managing your energy is crucial. It’s the first step to feeling more able to take control back. Prioritise the one thing that you can do, right now, today that will make a difference. We’re not always great at recognising when we’re burning out so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that over 90% of us experience burnout at work. The situation is so severe that WHO have recognised Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon” in the International Classification of Diseases. Forget time management, prioritising your energy will transform your productivity and help you to focus on what you can control, building momentum for further changes. Consider your energy in terms of three domains.

Resilience & energy domains
Resilience & energy domains

Domains are all about working to achieve a positive balance – even under pressure. When we achieve balance across all three domains, our wellbeing, performance, productivity and happiness are optimised. It’s the ability to maintain an energy equilibrium that develops resilience, helping us to bounce back when there are bumps in the road. Ask yourself:

  • Do I invest time in myself?
  • Is there space for rest & renewal?
  • Do my nutritional habits help or hinder my energy?
  • What is my sleep hygiene like?   
  • Where is my downtime?
  • How could I create micro actions to create renewal in domain 1?  e.g. take a lunch break, eat breakfast, walk part of my journey to work.

Cultivate Curiosity Around Overwhelm & Burnout

Stay Curious. Research by Francesca Gino, Behavioural Scientist at Harvard Business School discovered that when our curiosity is triggered we’re more creative when we face difficult situations. We’re also much less likely to be tripped up by confirmation bias – seeking out information to support what we believe rather than looking for evidence to suggest we are wrong. When we’re overwhelmed it’s easy to believe that there’s no way out, but there are always incremental changes that you can make to your day that will increase your control without feeling like yet another drain on your resources.

Ask Good Overwhelm & Burnout Questions

Bob Langer at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research encourages the practice of asking ‘good questions’ as the way forward when faced with challenging situations. Ask yourself where you can make changes in your day, research any innovative working practices in your profession, who is doing things differently? How?Examine ways of working differently and see if it’s possible to incorporate them into your day, your team or your department.

Don’t Buy Into The Multi Tasking Myth

Systemic processes and professional cultures often push us into multi-tasking. What we believe is a paradigm of efficiency in reality is reducing our efficacy. Switch-tasking, jumping from one task to another, is bad for your focus and bad for your brain. Researchers have  found that multi tasking adds to your cognitive load resulting in multiple errors along with increased stress, overwhelm and burnout.

Rather than making us more efficient, switch-tasking makes us less accurate and slows us down. When we pile on the pressure with multiple tasks, we’re feeding into the feeling that there’s too much to do and not enough time to do it in. We can change that by looking at how we work.

1.Compartmentalise tasks. Place tasks together into low focus, medium focus and high focus categories. Put aside periods of time in the day for high focus tasks of at least 60 minutes. For high focus tasks, create a space where there is less chance that you will be interrupted.

2. Go digital detox. Dial down the tech to minimise distractions. Have periods in your day when you turn off your alerts and unplug. To monotask and achieve flow you’ll need to minimise distractions and fully focus.

3. Resilience Architecture. Plan your day before you start. Prioritise and organise your time so that you’re working with your energy levels, building in time for renewal so that your day isn’t all about sacrifice and burnout.

4. Ditch Switch-tasking. Where you can re-train your brain. When it’s possible to focus and get into flow minus interruptions do it – even if it means saying no (see below).

Want to know more about monotasking? Take a look at our free Mindfulness at Work Toolkit or any of our free tools in the resources section.

Learn to say ‘No’ to Overwhelm & Burnout

Practice saying ‘No’. When you’re saying yes to something it usually means that you’re saying ‘No’ to something else – and that’s typically you or something that’s important to you. We all need downtime or activities that renew us. These are usually the first things we let go of when we’re stressed and burning out but that’s a mistake leading to a phenomenon known as sacrifice syndrome. It’s an easily recognisable corrosive pattern of workplace behaviours; working late, skipping lunch, catching up on weekends or working well after you should have finished. Here are some saying no strategies to get you started.

Strategies for Saying No

  • Focus on your feelings. If you’re used to dampening down your emotions it will take time to identify what you’re really feeling. Focus. Notice what’s going on for you when you feel the temptation to automatically say ‘yes’. Take a breath. Create some space to breath deeply and identify your true feelings. What’s here? Anger? Resentment? Passive acceptance? Fear? Notice what emerges without judging it as good or bad it’s all information. Once you’ve identified how you’re feeling, you can begin to articulate it calmly and confidently.
  • Monitor your inner critic. It’s possible that you’ll begin to hear your old self trying to pull you back into the habit of saying ‘yes’ to everything. Let’s call that voice the ‘Yes Monster’. You’ll probably feel resistance the first few times you say no. There’ll be guilt and a nagging voice warning you about how your new found assertiveness will be perceived. Recognise that those thoughts aren’t facts. They’re just thoughts and you can master them by changing your self talk to a more positive script “It’s ok to say no” “Not everyone has to like me” “It’s important I say what I think.”. 
  • Re-train yourself to say ‘No.’ Build your assertiveness muscles with small things that aren’t emotionally loaded. Yes, it might feel uncomfortable the first few times, but you’ll get over the discomfort the more you practice. You may notice the fear of rejection and confrontation creeping in again. It’s important that you speak your truth and you can do that in a compassionate, kind way whilst still respecting others.
  • Still, wondering if you’re the one being unreasonable? Flip the situation. If your roles were reversed, would you expect your own needs to be met at their expense? Probably not. Flipping the scene can unveil some truly ugly truths.

Get in touch

The Resilient Doctor are experts in managing overwhelm and burnout at work. We provide online resilience courses for doctors and healthcare professionals to develop resilience, master stress management and sustain high performance. We also provide internal support to organisations, consultancy and leadership coaching. Our clients include the NHS, Fortune 100 companies, elite sporting bodies and international start ups. Contact us to find out how we can work with you.

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Elite Sport Performance Hacks for Doctors

Elite Sport Performance Hacks for Doctors

Can elite sport performance hacks for doctors really work? The concept of periodisation has long been used to plan and optimise the performance of elite athletes. These performance psychology principles can be used to sustain high performance for doctors, building workplace resilience and wellbeing to reduce stress and build resilience. Here’s how to borrow work periodisation performance hacks for doctors from elite athletes.

Periodisation and Performance for Doctors

Periodisation is used to break training into cycles. It recognises that in addition to high intensity training, there needs to be downtime for rest and recovery. Alternating phases of complexity and intensity is central to periodisation. Overtraining is the route to burnout and injury in the sporting world. When we work with sporting bodies like the FA and UK Sport we use periodisation training to help clients prepare for events more efficiently. When we coach doctors, we use it to manage energy levels and avoid burnout. Periodisation is bespoke and based upon the needs of each client.

Vary the Volume & Intensity of Your Day

These sports principles can be used in everyday life. It’s a way of constantly changing the volume and intensity of performance to suit individual need. We introduce Resilient Doctor coaching clients to this concept to help them create professional momentum alongside an effective work life balance. Performance and time are chunked into a framework that includes:

  • Macrocycles – a long term goal e.g. 6 months of a year
  • Mesocycles – smaller cycles, e.g. 6 to 8 weeks long
  • Microcycles – short cycles e.g. a session at the gym or project at work

Periodisation is a simple, data driven technique that when used with positive psychology will increase your performance and enable you to develop a growth mindset.

The Benefits of Periodisation for Doctors

Whether you’re adapting your performance for a busy period or you simply want to sustain your performance, periodisation has multiple benefits. Introducing this easy to use concept into your day will enable you to;

  • Manage physical and mental stress
  • Maximise performance during high stress periods
  • Increase endurance
  • Enable you to avoid plateauing
  • Maintain momentum
  • Avoid working practices that lead to stress and burnout
  • Improve your wellbeing
  • Better manage the stress of busy periods
  • Help you to monitor and assess progress

Periodisation – Sustainable Performance Hacks for Doctors

If long term performance is important to you, periodisation is a systematic strategy to help you sustain high performance. When your performance threshold is permanently set to high, just like elite athletes, you’ll eventually burn out. Healthcare is a high stress, high performance, burnout culture. Periodisation will help you to dial down the intensity, manage stress and develop resilience. Here’s how.

  1. Identify Peaks & Troughs. Look at your work and home commitments over a period of weeks and begin by identifying any natural peaks and troughs. Start to plot your time daily based upon those periods of high and low activity. Specificity is key. Chunk your time into cycles that work for your personal schedule, macro, mesa and micro.

When planning time chunking we use areas that include professional, exercise, personal and downtime. You can create addition categories as needed.

2. Intensity Map. When work demands high, intense energy and focus, identify where and how you can take regular breaks and include downtime. Next to each activity estimate the intensity required, for example, let’s take a look at a typical day.

Intensity Mapping

5.30am Wake up. Run 30 mins (80% intensity)

6.30am Commute and check emails (50% intensity)

7.30am Walk from station, meetings, completing work tasks, planning (40% intensity)

10.30am Break (downtime – if you’re lucky)

10.50am – 1pm See patients (60% intensity)

1pm Lunch walk and eat (again, if you’re lucky enough to take a lunch break. Many of the health professionals we work with don’t)

1.30pm – 5pm Surgery & meetings (80% intensity)

5pm Commute. Listen to podcast (20%)

6.30pm Dinner

7.30pm Working on personal development project 9pm (60% intensity)

Why Ploughing Through Won’t Work

It’s common to see people overextend themselves by ploughing through the day performing at high intensity without pressing pause, especially in healthcare settings that demand a high level of focus. Notice where high levels of intensity include regular breaks and periods of low intensity afterwards. If your entire week were to look like this with periods of high intensity (over 50%) dominating, we recommend that you include either a full day or a weekend of downtime for renewal. It’s important to create these chunks of time to stop yourself falling into the trap of sacrifice syndrome.

3. Vary Intensity. Make sure that your planned work and exercise cycles aren’t both set to intense on the same day. On a high focus work day, keep your exercise moderate to low and vice versa. Recognise that extended bouts of high intensity exercise can increase cortisol levels adrenal stress and feelings of depletion. You need downtime from work and exercise. Adjust the intensity level of tasks daily and weekly depending on the level of performance you’re working at.

4. Flexibility is critical. You’re constantly working with variables and it’s ok to make adjustments. Recognise where there are fluctuations. When you feel overwhelmed, give yourself permission to to take a break. Go for a walk, stretch, grab a coffee. Even if it’s just 5 minutes, incremental steps will begin to make a difference to your overall energy levels. Build down time into your schedule. Keep at least one weekend out of the month when you have real down time. That means no work, no work related emails and your alerts are switched to off. You’ll be better prepared for periods of high intensity in the days and weeks that follow.

Get in touch

The Resilient Doctor are experts in sustainable high performance, consultancy and leadership coaching. We work with Fortune 100 companies, elite sporting bodies and international start ups. Contact us to find out how we can work with you.

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High Performance Without Physician Burnout

High Performance Without Physician Burnout

When you feel like you’re running to stand still it’s easy to fall into the trap of doing more to clear the decks. Working longer hours is detrimental to your health and your performance. What if there was another way? One rooted in data? Here’s how to sustain high performance without physician burnout.

It may sound like a counter intuitive approach, but sometimes we need to slow down to get more done. It’s a paradoxical truth that we often ignore, at our own cost. Succeeding doesn’t have to come at such a high personal price. It’s possible to succeed without burning out even within a busy healthcare environment.

The landscape of Physician Burnout

Burnout has 3 distinct domains. You’ll recognise it by these 3 components that begin to reveal themselves as you head toward burnout.

  • Emotional exhaustion This is when there’s nothing left in the tank, for you or anyone else.
  • Depersonalization Your energy reserves are so low, you start to feel numb. Your colleagues and patients? They’re starting to look a little bit annoying. This is a classic sign of physician burnout.
  • Reduced personal accomplishment You feel like you’re not developing and you’re not accomplishing anything worthwhile. You have little or no motivation and your productivity nosedives.

It takes honesty and wisdom to recognise when you’ve become the victim of your own drive to succeed and you’re burning out. Or if you’re skating around the periphery of burnout, tempted to keep going at breakneck speed, now is the time to press pause and examine what’s really going on.

Workplace burnout is now recognised by the World Health Organisation (WHO)  as a diagnosable condition, adding it to the  International Classification of Diseases It’s big news in terms of performance and one of the major blocks we come across in our sustainable leadership coaching.

Overdrive & Physician Burnout

Maybe you feel incredibly driven but there just aren’t enough hours in the day? If you’re starting to feel stressed and bordering on burnout, that’s a signal to switch things up and start doing something different. You can’t reach optimal performance by working longer hours or sleeping less. It’s time to adopt some performance smart strategies.

We are living under the collective delusion, that in order to succeed we have to burnout along the way” – Arianna Huffington

Visualise instead of burning out

Really? Can visualisation truly make a difference? Data from the field of sports psychology suggests it can. When basketball players were asked to visualise for an hour a day, it was found to have the equivalent impact of 7 hours of physical practice. Science is only just beginning to understand the mind body connection and the impact that it has on performance. Visualisation is a technique that we’ve used in our coaching with sporting bodies like UK Sport and the Football Association. Why? Because it works. Whatever the habits are that you want to change, begin by visualising them. This is the first step in beginning to align your mind, habits, goals and performance. This mental practice combined with real world effort has been demonstrated to improve results What’s more, it’s more effective than just doing one alone.

Slow Down

Downtime is the key to high performance. That’s why it’s always a mistake to work harder. The constant striving associated with sacrifice syndrome will only take you on a journey to depletion and eventually burnout. Skipping lunch, working late, using your weekend to play catch up are all corrosive practices that will only serve to slow you down. You’ll put more hours in and see fewer results for your efforts.

Renewal is critical for peak performance. Build regular intervals into your daily routine to develop physical and psychological renewal.  This is the way to high, sustainable performance. Yes, you need to set goals and work hard, but there also needs to be space for essential recovery time. Dampen down the sacrifice with some simple changes; take lunch – even if it’s short. Go for a walk, periodically disconnect from tech, practice mindfulness, invest in decent sleep, develop compassion and cultivate hope. Research has demonstrated that the mere act of hopefulness that things can be different, has a positive impact upon our neurobiology and our performance. Don’t wait until it’s too late to strike the balance.

Be strategic without burning out

It sounds obvious, but when we’re stressed or burning out, we lose our way. Our decision making is impaired and we lack the clarity necessary for effective thinking. That’s why strategy is so critical to performance. Effective strategy involves setting clear goals, designing a plan to deliver them and monitoring your progress. Decide upon your metrics for success and tackle your goals each day. Remember to stay flexible, things change and you need to be able to adapt to each situation.

If you’re doing something and it won’t help you to achieve your metrics for success, ask yourself if you should be spending time on it. Think in terms of ROI for your time to maintain your focus and keep your strategy on track.

Discover more…

We’ve successfully worked with thousands of businesses and individuals around the world to help them achieve their goals. We’ve coached hundreds of leaders in business, elite sport and tech. We work internationally with Fortune 100 companies to optimise performance, reduce burnout, building resilience and workforce wellness. We provide consultancy, leadership coaching and training. If you’d like to know more about how we can partner with your organisation, get in touch.

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Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic in Healthcare

Overcoming the Healthcare Burnout Epidemic

In 2019, for the first time ever, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recognised workplace burnout as a diagnosable condition, adding it to the  International Classification of Diseases. If you’ve ever ever experienced burnout, you may be left wondering what took them so long. We take a look at how to overcome the burnout epidemic in healthcare.

What is Burnout?

Now reported to be at epidemic levels, the WHO state that “Burnout is a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” Serious stuff. Healthcare burnout is at an all time high.

Burnout affects our motivation, our performance. It even bleeds into our personal lives leaving multiple casualties. Take a look around and you’ll see examples of workplace stress in healthcare, with professionals constantly being stretched. But how do you know when you’ve crossed over into burnout?

The 3 Domains of Healthcare Burnout

Christina Maslach and Susan E. Jackson designed the the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) to measure occupational burnout. Maslach and Jackson identified 3 components of burnout;

  • Emotional exhaustion This is when you feel tired, fatigued and exhausted at work. Maybe you can manage to get through the day but your reserves are depleted and you have no energy left for anything else.
  • Depersonalization Think of this as indifference at one end of a spectrum and a callous/uncaring attitude at the other. You might even experience hostility towards  colleagues or patients. This is about feeling so numb, that there’s nothing left in the tank for anyone else, your energy reserves are simply too low.
  • Reduced personal accomplishment You may feel that there’s no stretch, no challenge or that you aren’t accomplishing anything worthwhile. The result? low levels of motivation and productivity.

Still Wondering if you’re burning out?

Healthcare burnout symptoms can be varied, but if you find you can answer yes to these questions, you may be experiencing burnout;

  • You dread going to work
  • Sunday becomes poisoned by the thought of Monday
  • You feel exhausted and drained of energy
  • The prospect of work fills you with joylessness
  • There are low level, nebulous aches and pains that you can’t explain
  • You genuinely don’t have enough time in your working day to complete all of your tasks
  • You’re playing constant catch up – with everything
  • Your day is clouded by overwhelm
  • You feel guilty
  • Sleep is difficult
  • You’re short tempered for no reason
  • You frequently feel hopeless about life and work
  • One bad day at work merges into another
  • You frequently feel resentful towards your friends and colleagues or patients 
  • You’ve stopped doing the things that used to renew and energise you a long time ago

Healthcare Burnout Recovery

When you’re experiencing burnout, things can feel harder than usual so don’t beat yourself up. But there is a way forward. It’s important that you create the space to address the underlying causes of burnout. Ignoring burnout won’t help, it isn’t something that will just disappear.

  • Talk to someone. Sharing how you are feeling with a professional will help you to begin the process of addressing the reasons for burnout.
  • Identify what the trigger for burnout is. There might be several reasons, work related stress, taking work home, working patterns, shift work, lack of time for self care or family and friends. This can take time, try journalling or talking therapy to dig deep and discover what’s going on for you.
  • Self care. This one might sound obvious, but when we’re stressed or burning out, sometimes we stop doing the things that renew and re-energise us. Get back to basics and take stock of your nutrition, exercise and general wellbeing. Are there areas where you can be more gentle with yourself or create more opportunities for self care? Start small and build up your routine slowly, one thing at a time.
  • Audit your assertiveness. Are there times when you find yourself saying ‘yes’ when you really mean ‘no’? Brush up on your assertiveness skills and give yourself permission to say no when you need to.
  • Values. Often when we start to talk about work life balance and wellbeing in coaching, we start with values. When our values are congruent with what we do on a daily basis, we have meaning and purpose. Research around wellbeing and happiness suggest that living with purpose is key to our happiness and wellness. Doing some homework around what’s important to us and whether our working life is in alignment with those values can be an enormously useful starting point.
  • Focus on what you can control. This is the cornerstone of many resilience models. Take a look at Susan Kobasa’s 3 Cs or Martin Seligman’s PERMA model to find out how to develop resilience. Our free Resilience Toolkit is also a great place to start learning about resilience.

Work with the Resilient Doctor

Want to know more about burnout or building resilience? We work with the NHS, FTSE 100 companies & sporting bodies to develop resilience and optimise performance. We offer training programmes, consultancy, coaching and keynote presentations. We’ve also worked with hundreds of individuals to help them optimise their wellbeing and performance. Get in touch to discover how we can work together.