The SNAP Method: Beat Imposter Syndrome as an Introvert

Have you ever walked into a meeting, a room, a moment that mattered, and heard that voice in your head say, “What the hell are you doing here? You don’t belong. You’re going to be found out”? You know that voice. It’s telling you you’re not ready, you’re not enough, and if you just earn one more credential, one more win, or spend a little bit more time preparing, then you deserve to be there. That’s imposter syndrome. And here’s the surprising part. They may feel deeply personal, but they’re not. Those voices are a collective inheritance. They’re messages we’ve absorbed since childhood from our culture telling us we’re not enough. My guest today spent eight years in a Zen monastery learning how to face down these voices, and now she teaches a simple four-step practice that puts those voices in their place. Welcome to The Introverted Leader. It’s a podcast helping introverted leaders embrace your underrated quiet strengths so you can get promoted and start earning what you deserve. I’m Greg Weinger. I have over 25 years of leadership experience, and yes, I am an introvert. My guest is Caverly Morgan. She’s a meditation teacher, founder of Peace in Schools, and author of Heart of Who We Are, And she’s here to teach us her SNAP method for quieting the inner critic without going to war with yourself. Let’s get into it All right, Caverly, welcome to the show Greg, thank you. I’m really delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting me it’s absolutely, my honor. I’ve been listening to some of your talks online, you know, podcasts, it reminds me about the way I talk about things with my wife about, you know, like we’re joking, maybe, you know, drop a little profanity. We’re talking about, presence and being and all this stuff,You quickly caught onto my informal way, Greg. I appreciate you. You know, we don’t know each other yet, and I appreciate you leading with that, because it gives me permission to, not be too stuffy as we start out. Yeah, please, please.the way you talk about things are gonna be very relevant for my audience ‘cause as introverts, we have a preference, for silence, and we really enjoy and value that. But at the same time, feel called to leadership and, and having an influence out in the world. And it strikes me that what you’re doing is, very much that. You may spend time in, you know, in silence and retreat but you’re out there and your voice is having a big impact. Absolutely, and it’s so… I value what you’re doing in the world so much because it does… Just the way you’re approaching this supports the breaking down of what I like to talk about as our collective conditioning. So is it okay, Greg? I’ll just dive right into that since I just touched on it. Please. I trained monastically in a tradition that had me bring a lot of attention to my personal conditioning. By conditioning, I’m referring to the conditioned mind, the mind that’s been shaped by society, culture, friends, family, traumas, past experiences. and so I brought a lot of attention to my personal conditioning, the conditioning to wanna be a people pleaser or to get things right in order to get love and… But I didn’t bring a lot of conditioning or attention, excuse me, to collective conditioning until much later in my practice, and I th- I appreciate that you’re naturally supporting someone in breaking down some personal conditioning, which could create limitation or a box of sorts. But that opens the way for us to focus on collective conditioning because we are in a cultural context that seems to uplift the extrovert. I mean, I’m sure on certain podcasts, maybe episodes I haven’t had a chance to hear, you’ve touched on this, but we certainly are in a cultural context that likes extroverts Yeah, ab-absolutely.I’ve talked about this, many times and yeah, we have this natural bias for extroversion, which starts in the home and then goes into schools where, the people, who are raising their hands they’re getting more attention, they’re getting, better grades and often to the workplace where the people who are quietly their work, achieving, and not calling attention to themselves, are not promoted. Their salaries are lower, the system is not rewarding them, compared to the people who are just really thinking aloud, talking aloud, calling attention to themselves. And so that’s everywhere in our It’s everywhere Western culture in particular. Yes. And like I said, I just so much appreciate that you’re supporting people and seeing that this is operating on a personal level as well as a collective one, and that they can’t really be teased apart. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, And that was part of my motivation is to help individuals, but with a broader goal of how could we, can we shift the culture? Mm-hmm. I think you’re coming at it as like, how is that culture formed and, how could it potentially be changed? How do we, kind of make a shift in collective conditioning? You know, as you were speaking, Greg, I had the memory of sitting in a meeting with the… It was a Peace in Schools meeting, a nonprofit that I founded that brings mindfulness to, high schoolers. And we were in the early days of forming this nonprofit, and someone who is now a very close friend, even though he’s no longer working with Peace in Schools other than in a consulting capacity, Barnaby Willett. We were in a meeting, and we had gone around and around for months about how we might be able to scale what we were doing, because what we were doing was really working. Sam Hendricks, he was the executive director when these conversations were happening. I was sort of a co-ED, but I was outward facing. He was doing all the internal, like setting up operations, specifically looking at how can we scale. So Sam and I had been going around and around, meeting after meeting, and I remember when we had finished, we were exhausted. We had hit a wall, and I remember Barnaby, who definitely would define himself as a deep introvert, just suddenly dropped the mic. Like the most perfect summary of where we had gotten stuck, the most beautiful encapsulated wisdom for what he saw as, what was blinding us. And then not only could name that, but could name possibility that was on the other side of the wall that Sam and I, as two kind of gregarious extroverts, just kept tussling over. And it was just such a beautiful example to me of, what gets overlooked in the collective conditioning that you and I are speaking to today, right? There’s the job interview, and the person’s not gonna be gregarious and put themselves forward in a particular way. But meanwhile, there’s so much wisdom and so much to be offered that’s just sitting quietly right there waiting to be, called upon That’s a really good example And that, that really is where introverts shine. They’re taking things in deeply. They’re reflecting while maybe other people are chattering away. And then an approach, is to pick your moment and ask the really pertinent question or make the observation. That’s a beautiful example. I think, the things that you, do or that you teach about, I think would be helpful for one of my big topics, which is imposter syndrome. Mm. I think behind that is, there’s this core feeling of unworthiness and I’m not enough, and, tied to it is perfectionism. Because you feel not enough, you’re always trying to be perfect, and then if any mistake happens, then you go into self-punishment. And I think also, in the mix here is anxiety, which many people have, whether introvert or extrovert. That is something that struggled with in the past, and I heard you speak about that. So I’m just wondering for people who are going through, having these kinds of feelings, what are ways to approach that and kinda change that? Thank you, Greg. You know, there are two approaches, and I think they’re both worth touching on. And I speak to both of them completely from personal experience, meaning this isn’t, something that I’m gonna try to back up with some kind of scientific research, although I’m sure it exists on these topics. But in my own experience, there are two things that have been most valuable to me. One, learning how to recognize the part of me who is feeling anxious, learning how to see the aspect of my own personality that’s getting beaten up by the inner critic, and to have practices that support me in working with that part of me. So I’d like to be able to touch on that as a, as a way in. And that’s the piece, by the way, that does have a lot of research around it. I know that because I partner a lot in teaching with Dr. Kristin Neff, and she has a lot of research about self-compassion practices and the efficacy of those practices. And you’re nodding, so I’m assuming you, you know that too. Yeah, Yeah. yeah. yeah, mindfulness and I guess you’re referring to the self-compassion, practices as well. Yeah. So, so I have experience with that doorway in being mindfully present to different parts of myself, and then having practices that support me in being in a conscious and loving relationship with these parts of myself. And then the next piece that I wish to speak to because it’s been so supportive in my own life is learning how to question who I actually am. So I think I’ve been so habituated to believe I am these thoughts. So something arises about, you know, that leads me to feel like I’m an imposter, and maybe in this way one I’m discussing, there’s, there’s even a subtle sense of attributing some reality to all of that and then trying to work with it and practice with it, but still keeping in place the sense that I have to do these practices ‘cause I am the person who has imposter syndrome. And so this second way that I feel lit up by when speaking with you is the value of getting to say, “What if I’m not even that which has imposter syndrome?” Like, so there’s, there’s helpful, useful practices when we believe that’s who we are, and that can support us in feeling better, feeling more confident in our lives. And then there’s just kind of blowing the roof off and getting to find out, well, if I’m not even the person that needs to practice with my own anxiety, who am I? Right. So it’s beyond a reframe. I would love to cover each of these in turn Great sort of settle the audience in. Do you mind if we start with, some of the mindfulness and, the self— No, please mindfulness, self-compassion, and then sort of this, who am I approach? No, I think that would be lovely. Yeah. In my experience, what’s been most supportive is to first be able to recognize, oh, this part of me is up. And in the beginning, it doesn’t feel like this part of me, it feels like this is the totality of my experience, right? I’m drowning in the voice of, ‘What the hell are you doing? You’re gonna make a mistake. No one’s gonna believe you.’ All the things that lead me to feeling like I’m an imposter, I shouldn’t even be here. So step one is, in my experience, seeing that that conditioning is arising. And actually, I wasn’t planning on this, bringing this in, Greg, but for the listeners, it might be supportive to hear that I offer and something that also is therefore offered to our teenagers through our Peace in Schools curriculum is a process called SNAP. So the S stands for see it. So first I just see, okay, this is arising. I am sweaty palmed, believing the voice of, “What the hell are you doing?” I’m c- I’m caving in, in the face of that voice. The N stands for name it. I can name. Okay. I’m believing the voice of the inner critic. Naming that the inner critic is present. This is the dynamic going on. The A stands for allow, accept. It’s a moment of embrace what is so that we can let it go, right? I can, I can allow this without fussing with it because it is what’s here. I’m not trying to change it. I’m not trying to fix it. I can just allow it. And then the P is return to presence. So that’s what allows us, in my experience, to recognize that this, this anxiety has a different relationship to, me right now, knowing that later we’re gonna unpack what is me, who is me, but in this moment, I’m referring to me as the, the part of me that believes that the anxiety is proof that there’s something wrong with me. Returning to presence can allow me to settle into this anxiety It doesn’t need to control my experience. It doesn’t need to be driving the car. It can be here in the car, but I can start to see myself as the driver of the car. With maybe this part of me who’s really anxious being someone who’s sitting in the backseat that I’m providing unconditionally loving reassurances to, that I’m supporting with their experience in the same way I’d support anyone I love. So that SNAP process, in my experience, is such a good way to cultivate a loving relationship with the very part of me that I’ve been conditioned to hate or fear Yeah, and thinking this through as, you know, someone who’s gone through this process of learning how to do something like this, you know, for the longest time I’d get stuck on the— You know, I’d see it, you know, I’m very aware, Mm-hmm. aware this, with the reaction in my body, but, the… Yeah, start to allow and, and accept it. And for the longest time, that’s where I would get stuck. You know, it’s, it’s like I don’t want this to be happening. I don’t wanna feel this way. I don’t wanna feel this, you know, surge of adrenaline or stress or this feeling in my chest, my heartbeat. I don’t wanna be awake in the middle of the night. Yep Yeah, and so what would be the guidance like to get over that hump? Yeah. You know, what’s been most effective for me is to see the part of me that doesn’t want this to be happening as a young part of me that for very valid reasons just hates what is. Just wants to say, “This sucks. I really want it to be different.” And just needs to maybe even throw a tantrum or cry. You know, again, if I had anyone in my life that I love visiting me today, and they were, like, just bitching about what is and freaked out about, let’s say, the state of the world, since so much is happening in our world right now that many people I work with are feeling quite stressed about, I would have nothing but care and compassion for the experience they’re having. I would say, well, tell me more about why this is so terrible. Okay, you might a night of sleep, but talk to me. What are you afraid of? Talk to me.” And that’s so different, isn’t it, Greg, than the energy of like, “Can you just get over this already? Why are you afraid of this? You know what’s happening, Greg. You’ve been through this a million times. You have a practice.” Right? So it’s really about cultivating loving relationship, and that’s where this practice of self-compassion and the practice of offering unconditionally loving reassurances to a part of ourselves does two things. It reassures the part of us who’s freaking out, but it also lets us recognize that we are that which can reassure. We are that which can say, “You don’t have to resist this, sweetie. It’s just what is. It’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re flawed. I love you.” it’s creating space around that. You know, and I think part of it is just you’re so completely immersed in that feeling and that, view that, you know, there’s no distance on it. I mean, even just the framing or just the concept this is just a part of me, like I’m bigger than this, a shift, and then you can treat it differently and then work toward the compassionate you know. Yeah, Like, you would never talk to someone that you cared about this way. it would just not, not, not be something you do, and I mean, hopefully not. your friend, your child, your, sister or brother. so, that’s helpful. And then, the presence part. unpack presence a little bit for my audience ‘cause I don’t know that that’s necessarily, understood what that term would be. Yeah. And I use it very specifically, so thank you for inviting me to say a little more about it, Greg. First, I just wanna back up, and it’s neat that you said, you know, we’d never talk to another person we love like that. And I don’t know about you, but Greg, I wouldn’t even talk to someone I’m, like, struggling with the way that I’m habituated to talk to myself in moments like that. Like, I wouldn’t even, like, be having a bad day and talk to, like, a person at the grocery checkout the way that I’m habituated to talk to myself in moments of struggle. You know? I just wouldn’t say some of the phrases that I hear in my own mind to myself, to someone I don’t know or someone I’m even kind of a little annoyed with Yeah. It’s unbelievably savage the way we speak to ourselves It really is. We do an exercise on a lot of the retreats I offer, and we actually do it in Peace in Schools too, where folks reveal their negative self-talk, and it’s always such a moving experience because we get to see, oh, and we’re all doing this. The brutality of all of our negative self-talk, as you say, like the savageness of it, it is just— I’ve never met anyone who’s not engaged with it This is what you mean by collective conditioning. And that was kind of an interesting realization for me when I realized, okay, well, ‘cause there’s a simplistic view. Well, you know, that’s the voice of your parent, but my parent never spoke to me like this. Where did Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. crazy. Mm but I’m certain my parent has that same voice in their head, you know? Absolutely I think that’s the collective aspect of it that is somehow our inherent Absolutely. I totally agree, and I think that’s why it’s so important to have practice that dismantles personal conditioning as well as collective conditioning. Because in both cases, it’s not something we chose. It’s just the soup we’re… Well, that’s a weird analogy. We’re not really swimming in soup, are we? So it’s the sea we’re swimming in. Yeah. I, it’s, that could be fun, swimming in soup at some point. Depends on what soup it is, I guess. Yeah. So I mean, yeah, the— it’s, it’s the ongoing mental chatter that Mm-hmm. if you pay attention to, you don’t really have control over. It’s just kind of happening. And, developing a sense of compassion toward that, the fact that this is a very human thing. Everybody else has this psychopath running at the mouth in their heads too, Yeah You know, makes you feel less alone in it and, kind of dissolves a little bit of this feeling of separation. Yeah, absolutely and then bringing it back to presence. So is presence,starting to,going back into what’s in your body? there’s the mental chatter, but if you breathe into it, you to realize that there’s more going on than just this voice in your head, that there’s all your senses, everything going on in your body. I feel like that’s pulling you in the direction of presence. But, where do you go from there? So when I first started a mindfulness practice, I focused a lot on the present moment thinking, “Okay, everybody’s talking about being here now.” Ram Dass put that great book out forever ago, and it seemed to just summarize so much wisdom. Be here now. That’s it. Just focus on that. So that’s what I did for a long time. How can I not get caught in the seeking, resisting, seesaw, and instead focus on having my attention in the present moment? How can I not get caught in the attention going into the past, going in the future? Okay, direct it to the present moment. It’s such a valuable practice to learn to anchor the attention versus have the attention on the 10,000 things. So as is sometimes referred to in Buddhism, the, the 10,000 things that, that the attention is constantly kind of running off toward. I speak about presence differently than I speak about the present moment. So when I refer to returning to presence, i’m referring to returning to the recognition that you are not that which you are habituated to see yourself to be. So if I’m returning to presence, I’m actually returning to my own being, which is not to be equated to my personality, which may be introverted or may be extroverted. It’s not the same as just my thoughts. So if we refer for a moment, this is an image I have in my children’s book about mindfulness. If we bring in the image of the sky, just take this image of the sky for a moment and imagine an open, aware sky. When I first heard it, I found it so valuable to recognize that if the sky is pure awareness, then these experiences of anxiety are like clouds passing through the sky. If the sky is pure awareness, then i-imposter syndrome and all the thought forms that come along that reinforce the idea that I’m an imposter, all that negative self-talk, That’s just a weather pattern in the vastness of the sky. And when I talk about returning to presence, I’m talking about returning to the recognition that you are the sky. That actually you are presence That all of these other experiences are rising and passing through the fullness of you I’m just thinking from the perspective of a who maybe we can’t take as a given that, you— Have you ever had the experience of not thinking? Or a pause in the thinking. And I think if you reflect, everyone you have had that, and it probably felt amazing, you know, and calm and, radiant but that’s, maybe not something that happens that often, but those glimpses could allow you to see that you still exist even when you’re not thinking. That’s what you really are. whatever that experience is or, I think we can get deeper than that, but, There are things that are primary to the thoughts running in your head. That’s exactly what I’m pointing to, Greg, that an experience that’s such a constant, always there in the backdrop of our life experience, that it’s so constant that we actually overlook it. It’s just so always in the backdrop of our experience, and that’s the experience of simply being aware because we don’t know the experience of not being aware, it’s like it just is always way in the background. But what we’re talking about now is a practice of remembrance that actually allows that awareness to be what’s at the forefront of our experience with all of the mental chatter, the monkey mind, the negative self-talk, the anxiety, the box that, “Oh, I’m an introvert, therefore I can’t do this,” or, “I’m an extrovert, therefore I shouldn’t try this because I’m too extroverted.” Like all of that stuff, that’s what we could talk about as what habitually is at the forefront of experience it was reminding me of some New Yorker cartoon where the fish are talking, you know, looking at each other, “What is water?” You know, like we… Exactly. We completely forget, and this has to do with collective conditioning, I think. We didn’t grow up in a society that’s asking us collectively, that’s drawing attention collectively to a reinforcement of being intimate with our own being. Like the primacy of just being an aware being that’s always in the present moment. Can you see why it’s bigger than, like, the present moment, though? It’s like even the view of what we think of as time is something that’s happening inside presence, inside this, the nowness of just being. And we’re not collectively taught to draw our attention to that. We’re collectively taught to draw our attention to all the things that reinforce the ego. You don’t have enough. You need more. Buy this car. Get a new partner. Get a new job. You should get more money at your job. You should hate these people at work ‘cause they’re doing better than you. Like all, all the things that reinforce something other than just being and the inherent wholeness of being yeah, thanks for drawing it back to that, ‘cause we started out by talking about there’s this basic feeling of unworthiness and this un-unwholeness. Like, “I’m incomplete because I’m not enough, and I know I’m not enough because I need to do all these things to be enough.” And so in a sense, what you’re talking about is kind of the antidote to that, is that the deeper you inherently enough. It’s whole. And, we’re habituated to not be able to experience that for ourselves directly. Exactly, Greg, and I think that’s why I’m so passionate about a practice that supports people. That’s why I called my book The Heart of Who We Are. It supports people in recognizing who we are beyond how we’ve been conditioned to perceive ourselves to be. Because ultimately, we could spend our whole lives just trying to fix the content, right? Like, okay, If I get these extra tools, if I listen to these podcasts and become a better leader at work or whatever, like all the things, if I do enough spiritual practice and I become more mindful and then I’m less reactive and I’m more responsive, okay, then I’ll… This need will be met. But the thing we’re forgetting is that this illusion of a self that’s separate from life, the ego, that— In Buddhism, they call it a hungry ghost. The image of the hungry ghost, I know you know it, Greg, but maybe some listeners don’t, that the hungry ghost is, this ghost that has a tiny little mouth and a huge belly, so it can never get full. It can never be satiated. And we’re like that until we ask, ” What is my own being? Is that being lacking anything?” When we’re in those moments that, Greg, you accurately point to, everyone’s felt it at some point, even if it’s fleeting, right? We, we’ve all, felt that moment of I’m not consumed with everything going on in my mind. So even if it’s a fleeting experience for us, in those moments, if someone said, “What’s lacking right now?” It would seem like a crazy question Yeah. I was thinking about these things. there are different levels of fixes, you know, if, if you Mm-hmm. wanna put it in those terms. I mean, we can kinda regulate our emotions, our nervous system so that we’re better able to function in a situation. I think starting out with mindfulness practices can do that, and then you can go deeper and, and deeper, and you sort of separate yourself from the chatter in your head. And, those may not be enough to fully address, these feelings of inadequacy or imposter syndrome. What you’re describing is kind of the ultimate, I don’t know if it’s a solution, but it’s the ultimate resolution of that problem because you’ve created a problem where, it’s a problem for the mind. It’s a problem for the ego, like you’re saying. But it is not a problem for you if you’re able to access deeper awareness. Yes, I think it’s really important to acknowledge that there’s room for all of it. I still draw upon certain practices if I’m in a moment. Let’s say I’m about to go give a talk to a lot of people, I still might, have some strong sensation arising, a feeling that I might label as nervousness. And I might apply a practice that I, it’s a basic mindfulness or breathing practice that I find supportive in that moment. And yet to apply a practice like that while knowing that I am not the anxious one that needs this to fix me, and that once I have the practice, I’ll feel fixed, and then I’ll be okay, it’s a different orientation to the practice itself we are so habituated to be reinforcing the notion that something like a spiritual practice can become a self-improvement plan, even in the most subtle ways. And I think what you and I are talking about today, Greg, is those things can be useful, so they shouldn’t be thrown away. The practices, for example, they can be really useful. But if you take out the distortion of they’re gonna support a self-improvement plan, then you get to do them for the joy of how it is to do them while not being confused that you are that which is lacking or you are flawed in some way over the past several years. I’d done plenty of time meditation and, can feel amazing, but more and more I want that felt sense while being out in the world even being in crowds and certainly with one-on-one relationships or small groups I have found that it’s actually critical because it’s a shallow experience of being if we can’t integrate it with our lives. It’s a fragile experience of peace if it’s not something that we can access no matter what’s going on with the content of our world And I think it’s absolutely, for me, it’s a bedrock of leadership because that presence is leadership presence. You know, it’s, that’s what, people are hungry for, and that’s what I think can really create changes, create cultural changes like you were talking about before, and, facilitate new ideas, make the people around you feel comfortable enough to all participate, even the quieter ones, not just the, the talkative ones. So th- this is all fantastic stuff. I’m just curious, are there anything, any other, practices or teachings that you think might be relevant that we haven’t covered? Yeah, thank you. So we’ve talked about mindfulness practice in general, the practice of self-compassion. I hesitate to call this practice of returning to the question like, who am I really, a practice because at the end of the day, there really isn’t any separate self practicing anything. But at the same time it is. It is a practice in a way, and what I mean by that is given how habituated we are to see ourselves as a separate self walking through the world trying to survive, employing all our survival strategies and coping mechanisms in order to do so, and usually that’s who we’re identified with. It can feel like a practice to even remember that we can set that down for a moment, that we can sink the attention back into being. So for the purposes of this conversation, we’ll call that another practice, a practice of resting in being. And to me, those are the heavy hitters. If you’re weaving those things throughout your day, you will have a very different experience of reality in a very short amount of time. Because the reality most of us are accustomed to living inside is a reality that is conditioned and has been created through our perception. And when instead of feeding that perception, we actually let the attention rest back in reality with a capital R, the reality that our being is indisturbable peace and that the nature of our being is the very thing we’ve been longing for and scrambling in our outside world to try to achieve or get. When we rest in that being, that reality, nothing appears the same And it’s a wonderful respite from the savage voices conditioned in our heads it really is. I mean, if, Greg, if we go back to that image of this is a part of you that’s feeling bad. Let’s say you just became a foster dad. Let’s just pretend you’re a foster dad and, and I just dropped a six-year-old boy on your front step, and you brought him in and said, “Yeah, I’m gonna take care of him for a while.” If he was feeling bad, would you, even just as a brand new… You don’t even know this kid yet, but you recognize I said I was gonna be his foster dad for a while. Would you just be like, “Hey, look, you know what? I can’t deal with your bad feeling. I don’t, I— So I’m gonna constantly be focused on something else,” or, “I’m gonna overeat,” or, “I’m gonna go watch TV,” or, “I’m gonna do something that makes me feel temporarily comfortable because your discomfort is too much for me.” No, you’d immediately turn to him and say, “Well, come sit on the couch with me.” And if he’s really shut down and he needs to eat ice cream with you, great. You eat ice cream together. But you’re together. You’re bringing love and compassion to this part of you. You’re embracing him, and you’re, most of all, as we talked about before, you’re allowing him to be there because the, “I’m gonna go off and do something else that’s from a place of disassociation or avoidance,” that’s a lack of allowing Yeah. You’re really describing care. I mean, it’s how can you provide care to yourself, these different parts of you, and Yeah self-compassion and self-kindness. Yeah Keverly, this has been really great and we’re getting close to time. I wanted to give you a chance to share if you have any resources that you’d like to share with the audience, and where should people go to find out about you and your work? Well, thank you, Greg. It’s really been beautiful, and I can tell that we could just keep talking for a very, very long time. But, given our current time constraints, until soon, I will end with, and then I will also just say, you know, thanks for giving me the opportunity to mention, my website, caverlymorgan.org. All my upcoming events, are listed there. And as you’re hearing, I especially wanna invite people into retreat. If you’ve never been on retreat before, you are welcome. If you’ve been practicing for 20 years and you’ve been on a lot of retreats, but you wanna try something a little different, and what I mean by that is I do teach outside some specific traditions that leave a lot of people who come into my retreats feeling like there’s a certain uniqueness to the situation, because I’m bringing many different pathways and practices together and focusing on the heart of all these traditions. So if that’s new or different for you, you might find that stimulating. And then I’m told by, someone that I work with that right now there is a free gift available on my website for folks. If you’ve heard this podcast and you wanna check it out, it’s for you, and that’s at caverlymorgan.org/freegift Thanks, Greg Thank you so much for sharing that with our audience and, I really enjoyed this conversation and, really glad to share some of these ideas and your experience with, the audience. So thanks so much for being here today. Thank you, Greg. It really has been a delight. Thanks for being in presence together. Yes Okay, that was Caverly Morgan, and I wanna take a moment to recap what I’m taking away from this conversation. Number one, imposter syndrome is not a personal flaw. This is a result of our collective conditioning. The brutal voices in your head weren’t put there by your parents, your boss. It’s not the result of some bad incident when you were a child alone. This is the culture that we’re swimming in, that soup, and it’s rewarding the loudest voice in the room and overlooking quiet individuals. Naming this out loud changes your relationship to it and helps you depersonalize it. Number two, when the inner critic strikes, snap back. See it, name it, allow it to be here without trying to fix it or shove it down, and then return to being presence, to your breath, to sensory input, looking around the room, that kind of thing. You don’t have to kill that anxious part of yourself. Allow it to be there. And number three, this may seem like a wild thought if you’re not used to this kind of concept, but it really is true. You’re not the thoughts running through your head. You’re what’s there when the thoughts stop. Caverly trained as a monk for years, and she still gets nervous before a big talk, and so do I. I’ve spoken to 1,500 people, and every time my heart races before I start talking. Your wiring doesn’t disappear, but with practice, it stops running your life, And you can meet that part of yourself with the same kindness that you might offer to someone who you really love. . Here’s one simple next step. If this content resonates with you, you can follow or subscribe to the show. If you’re already following, like the show. This tells the algorithm that this content is important, and it helps other people like us discover this really valuable information and help people feel less alone. We need more quiet, confident leaders. I’m Greg Weinger. Keep leading with quiet confidence, and I’ll see you next time