Imposter Syndrome in a Capitalist World

Welcome back to another episode of small steps to self-love, the podcast! Today I'm interviewing Nora Rahimian, an anti-capitalist business coach. We talk about oppressive systems and navigating imposter syndrome. Also, speaking out and fighting for what you believe in. It's a powerful episode!

Each episode of small steps to self-love covers a different mental health-related topic and has a "small step" or action for you to take on your self-love journey. Tune in for today's small step and let me know in the comments what your answer is to today's question!

Like this episode? Subscribe to the channel for more just like this, or listen to shelby's podcast here: https://smallstepstoselflove.buzzsprout.com/

About Nora:
Nora Rahimian is an anticapitalist business coach who helps creatives and entrepreneurs achieve success on their own terms, without giving up creative control, financial freedom, or personal integrity.  She is also the co-founder and CEO of #CultureFix, a global network of artists, activists, and entrepreneurs who use their platforms for social impact, and she produces an annual hip-hop festival dedicated to giving independent musicians a meaningful platform. 

Her work is based in the belief that our communities have everything they need to succeed, that art & culture can spark the paradigm shifts to make the world a better place, and that the radical change we imagine is both possible and necessary.  Nora has spoken at conferences and universities around the world.  She has been named one of iStandard's Women Who Run The Music Industry, is a UN Alliance of Civilizations Fellow, and was recognized as a Trailblazer by VoyageLA.  Connect with her online at linktr.ee/norarahimian.

Find Nora @NoraRahimian on all social platforms.

resources from shelby:

·        check out Shelby’s mental health poetry books

·        Free self-love poetry print

·        Join the poetry club

·        Get help with marketing as a writer

connect with shelby:

·        Instagram: @shelbyleighpoetry

·        YouTube: Shelby Leigh Poetry

TikTok: @shelbyleighpoetry 

Transcript

Shelby

Hi everyone and welcome back to small steps to self love. My name is Shelby, I’m a mental health writer and poet, and I'm your host. I'm excited to have Nora Rahimian with me today, who is an anti capitalist business coach. I'm excited to learn more about what that means, what you do, and we're also going to dive into topics like Imposter syndrome and how that affects our self love today. So I'd love to just pass it over to you to introduce yourself and tell us more about what you do?

Nora

Yeah, I'm excited to be here. My name is Nora Rahimian. My pronouns are they, she, and I'm coming to you from land that belongs to the Chumash Tonga and other indigenous folks and occupied Los Angeles. I'm an anti capitalist coach and most of the time people are like what does that mean? Basically it means that I help people live a life where they're aligned with their values, where they don't have to give up their creativity or time or things that matter to them. And my work is really centred and looking at how art and culture and community can help us. Not just overthrow the systems of oppression that we live under, but really think about viable alternatives like OK, when we burn it down, what happens next and how those things are actually happening and are not as radical as we've often been told that they are.

Shelby

Interesting. I love that. How did you get started with this work? Is this something you've always been really passionate about or what was that journey like.

Nora

Yeah. So in some ways, yes. I was born in Iran during the US, instigated the Iran Iraq war, literally like the night I was born it was like bombs that the US had given Iraq to drop on us. So I tell people like my whole life was shaped by geopolitical factors outside of my control. So like what choice did I have right? I lived on 3 continents before I was three. We were immigrants and refugees. And so this sense Of like the world is bigger than my individuality was always part of my story, my work kind of coming up like I was organizing protests at 8 years old when the teachers were like everybody has to take a nap. And I was like, we're too old for naps. So I organized all my little friends and we protested nap time. Now I'm like nap time is the best thing in the world. So you know, it's always been in me, my tragedy. What I do now, I did a lot of community organizing in my earlier days around violence, intervention and prison abolition and. Then it's a long story that probably will take our whole 30 minutes, but I ended up in Liberia. I met a rapper who was doing political work. And what, and really clear to me was the way art and culture like they loved him, his fans loved him, and if he said everybody stand up, everybody stood up. If he said everybody should wear purple tomorrow, everybody would be wearing purple. And so in the love and respect and and intimacy that his audience had with him, what I realized was there's a power there. He could talk about fashion and he could talk about or he could talk about social justice issues and that's kind of you know as we talk about like entertainment, education or arts for change, that's kind of the theory that I play with so I got peer pressured into becoming the first music manager in Liberia. Managed him, did a bunch of social impact work. Build the music industry. And that's kind of been how I got to this place of there's ways to be and I really like working with creatives, there's a way to be creative where you don't have to. We like these things that we think are inevitable. We've been told that's just how it is. Or well, that's just what. You gotta do. No, we don't. Like we can completely create our own systems in ways that feel good for us in our communities.

Shelby

Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. What a story. I wish we had more time to go into all of that. Sounds really interesting also. So can you talk - I mean we're a self love podcast. So can you talk a little bit about how some of these factors, your childhood shaped your self love, your vision of yourself, your self acceptance?

Nora

Yeah. Woo, big questions. It's like 8:00 o'clock in the morning. Yes. So I think as a immigrant, as a refugee, as a woman, as a queer person, as a person with mental health issues. Like all the things the world. As a woman with all these things living in under systems of patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, all the things the world is constantly telling me I'm not good enough or I'm not right enough and I'm I'm problematized and I'm villainizing all these things. And even as a small child. Your messages that they're like so in the spaces around this, we don't even realize that we're receiving them, but we're receiving them. And so I think I grew up with messages of like being too much, being too difficult. Because the systems in which I was living in were so uncomfortable for me. And I kept wanting to push back and challenge them, but didn't have the words or the language. And so I internalized those messages. And so part of my my journey really was being able to name what these things were and where those messages came from and also just really getting. Comfortable with like my own weirdness and my own quirkiness and like yo. This is just how I am. Like it's ok, if you don't like it cause I love me. And one of the things, you know, if we're going to talk practical things, I journal. I journaled since I was eight, like had my little. Hello Kitty diary with the lock.

Shelby

I did too. I probably had the same.

Nora

Oh my God, I. Still have it. But starting to just tell myself I love you. That wasn't a message that I received externally. You know, my parents did the best that they could, but they were immigrants. They were fleeing a war. They were like they were worried on survival. And so couldn't meet some of those other needs. And so just the simple act of telling. Myself, I love. You, which at first feels so weird and you're like, talking to yourself and you're. Like Dang, this is so sad. But just starting to like providing a counter narrative to all the external messages that we received. I think for me was really, really helpful.

Shelby

Yeah, that's so interesting too, because it sounds like you were. Figuring that out pretty young, whereas I feel like a lot of people like don't realize they're not giving themselves any love until they're older. So are you were pretty young when you started doing these sorts of things.

Nora

In different ways. You know I I think as a. Kid like I remember it. I found these papers the other day at 8 years old. I was Googling, not Googling. We didn't have Google back then. We had like whatever the Wikipedia and Britannica and like CD-ROM was. And I had, like, printed out pages on depression because I wanted to understand and name. So I I think I I always had this curiosity. And I always felt like if I could understand it, If I could name it, then I could develop the tools around, like doing something with it, yeah. But obviously like I'm here to tell you a story. And I'm telling it to you linearly. And we're like packaging. It was not simple. There was a lot of like up and down and steps back. But yeah, I think this thing to understand myself and how I sit in the world. Because I've always been an outsider in so many ways. It was a journey I was like forced into at a really young age.

Shelby

Yeah, that makes. Sense. That's interesting. Whenever we were first talking about this episode and what we're going to talk about, impostor syndrome came out we talked about it a little bit on this podcast before, but I would love if you could just first define it for audience, like a simple way and then how to kind of uncover the cause of impostor syndrome for those who are experiencing it.

Nora

Yes, I love to talk about this, so. Impostor syndrome simply is the feeling that we're impostors, right, that we're not good enough for the thing that we're wanting to do that other people are better at it than us, and that we don't belong in those places that we want to be in. And it comes up when you're like applying for a job or asking for a raise. Or maybe asking for more attention from someone or you know. It shows up personally, professionally, politically, in all the ways in the popular narrative, imposter syndrome is often framed as a you problem. I don't feel like I'm good enough. I don't have enough self-esteem. I don't think. Whatever right as an individual problem. That's false. Impostor syndrome? Really. And this is kind of what I was talking about even earlier in the conversation. Impostor syndrome is intentionally. Cultivated and curated in us, it is a result of white supremacy of patriarchy, of capitalism, of abelism, of agism, of of all the things. That in our whole life, for those of us who come from systemically marginalized groups, we're always being told we're not good enough or that we don't belong. We have to overcompensate. We have to prove ourselves we got here by luck like this. That and the other thing. So imposter syndrome is a way of individualizing. But really really is a systemic problem. And I think that's important because why, like, why does, who does that benefit? Well, that benefits the system. If you don't think you're good enough, you're gonna work harder. You're gonna ask for less. You're gonna overcompensate. You're gonna prove yourself, but you're never gonna demand what you really deserve. And so these systems of oppression intentionally cultivate that in US. And then they win because we believe that ****, right? So that and you know, I can talk about the anecdotes and I say anecdotes because it's like a venom that's trying to like bring you down. But that's really what it is and how I frame.

Shelby

Wow. Yeah, I haven't heard it talked about much that way before, so that's really, really interesting and enlightening with your definition. Is it something that we can overcome? I mean, is it obviously if it's a systemic issue, how do we work toward overcoming that?

Nora

Yeah. So we catch, we can overcome it, right? Like systems are made of people. And if we change the way people interact with those systems, we can change those systems. So this the first thing is to catch, catch it when it happen. And to question it right, what really happens is we get these interruptive thoughts and you know. Our brains, they're so cute. They really want to protect us. They're looking out for us, right. Your brain is like, Nah, girl, like, don't embarrass yourself. Don't ask for that thing. It's OK. Sometimes you gotta tell your brain. Like thanks, fam, but you're wrong. And so catching those interruptions. Catching those voices and starting to question like whose voice is who. Do I even actually believe this. And just starting to realize that, like, not everything you think or feel is always true. And so that's part one. The other thing then is to then have a space where you Fact Check your own feelings about yourself, where you Fact Check that out. So I tell all my clients everybody should have what I call a shine page and a shine page is a page in your Hello Kitty notebook. It's a notes app. It's a whiteboard in your office where you actively, physically write down all the things that you are shining at. All the wins, all the successes, and again, personal, professional, big, small. It doesn't matter. So that when you start to feel that doubt and you start to feel that anxiety. You go to that shine page and you're like, wait, look at all the dope **** I did, look at al these accomplished. It's like I'm actually kind of fly and so you have a counter narrative to what we're hearing and what we're receiving. And over time, right and then again we none of this is linear, sometimes things are easier. Sometimes things are harder, but having a place where you're actively proactively pushing back against the narrative. Then your brain starts to change its mind and your brain automatically defers now to. Oh no, I thought I got this. Versus ohh no. Uh, so those that's my 2 step solution to imposter syndrome. Catch and identifying, catch the interruptions and celebrate yourself. Have a shine page so you can Fact Check the false thoughts.

Shelby

Yeah. Now I love the idea of a shine page. I have like a folder in my phone that I screenshot like comments or reviews or things like that that I look back to whenever those feelings come up. So I think that's a great tip. And I usually have our guests like, give a small step to our audience each week, so it's called small steps to self love that I feel like that's the perfect one to catch and also do the shine page. That's so fun. And I think that's something that could definitely obviously not be fixed in a week. Or, you know, a permanent solution, but something to definitely work on over time. I love to just dive in a little bit. It's your work as a business coach and anti capitalist business coach. What differentiates you from other business coaches?

Nora

Definitely. It's the anti capitalist piece which people are like if you're anti capitalist like why? Do you work in business? And I just want to. Be clear, like anti capitalism doesn't mean you don't get paid, right? But it's about being compensated fairly for time, labour, skills, effort, all those things and. So as a coach. You know, part of capitalism is the idea that you always have to work, that your value is only in your work, and that everything needs to be more and more and more by any means necessary, at any expense necessary. I don't think that's a sustainable way to live. I don't think that's a joyous way to live, I think that's a way that separates us from community and by separating us from community, we're no longer able to challenge these systems of oppression. So from an anti capitalist perspective, what I do is I help people figure out what's the life you want to live. And business being a part of it, but not the full part of it. And then how do we build that out in a way that can sustain you, but where you have enough where you can? Ditch work on a Wednesday afternoon and take your dog to the park or vacation with your kids, or have time to show up for community where you can nap where you can make you know whatever it is. And doing that in a way without doing harm to others. Or without participating in systems of structural violence or you know, that kind of stuff. And so it's really giving yourself space and permission to do things on your own terms. But still being able to pay your bills and still being able to live the life you you. And I think oftentimes the the narrative is that we have to make a lot of sacrifices and like go live in. Like yeah, I don't know. Like, wallow in despair and like, and that's not it. Right you can. It's actually creating a more full life for yourself, which is an act of love, right? When you're building work so that you can live the life you want to live that actually honors who you are and how you move in the world.

Shelby

Definitely. Yeah, that's something that I've definitely needed to hear. I've been a hustler, you know, for a while and. Work, work, work. Work, work and I feel like the past few months I've really, like, been shifting toward the like. No, I actually want other things in my life besides just that? And yeah, getting back to passions and things that I used to do that I stepped away from for a while because of the work and money and all of that.

Nora

A lot of it especially for those of us who become entrepreneurs. And those are the messages. We receive, right? Work, work, work, work work. You can sleep. When you're dead, you know. It's actually not an efficient way to build the business. You will burnout. You're not as inspired, you're not as creative, you're not as. Innovative so. Counterproductive from that perspective alone, but I think a lot of times we leave corporate spaces or traditional workspaces, but we create those systems within ourselves and. Now we become right. It's like when we become our own oppressors because the system is so internalized in us and a big part of my work with clients is helping them unlearn what they've learned. It's like that conditioning. We don't even realize there's other ways of doing things.

Shelby

Right.

Nora

You know, one of the questions that I play with my clients is what would you like a day to look like? Oh, you don't actually want to work nine to five, guess what? Don't have to. You know, and so bringing also a little bit of like play into it and being risk. And again this. Is the self love piece being responsive to how your body works when your brain wants to be, you know, being responsive to your own systems. Rather than forcing those systems into some structure. That was created 100 years ago to get people to be productive factory. First, so the learning is the unlearning. It's the being responsive.

Shelby

Right. Yeah, totally. Whenever I left my, like, corporate job to pursue entrepreneurship, I was like, OK, so like my 40 hour work because gonna be this. And it took me a while to realize and. I was working more. Than 40 hours a week too. But I was like, wait, I left so I didn't have to do that anymore. You know? Why am I putting this on myself? So yeah, that's a really good point and really interesting work as a business coach, I love that.

Nora

Thank you. The last thing I'll say is like a lot of these things are social constructs full time 40 hours, like even what we think of as success. And so this practice of like what do I want? What do I need? How do I define these things for myself? Right. Again. It's like catching where the story came from and then asking yourself. Is that story true for you? I never wanna work 40 hours, but sometimes I work more. Sometimes I work. But like for real like up in the morning and like, sit behind a computer. No, I want to wake up in the morning. I wanna go to the gym. I wanna eat a nice breakfast. I wanna curl up with my book and then maybe I'll start working. Doesn't mean I'm less productive. Doesn't mean I'm less serious, right? Which is a whole other conversation, I think we can have about what professionalism looks like and what productivity looks like because a lot of that. Is also conditioned in us, but yeah. Like you can be successful and create your. Own way of. Being and that doesn't make you any less than in any way.

Shelby

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Really important to remember. Well, thank you. This was wonderful. Is there anything else that you are passionate about or you feel like we skipped over that you want to share with our audience?

Nora

The last thing I'll say is like, take risks, make mistakes. Allow yourself to fail. I think part of that imposter syndrome is the expectation to be perfect, which obviously like failure means different things for different people depending on how much privilege we have. But stop saying no to yourself. And that for me was a big thing, how much I was saying no, out of fear of like other people were gonna say no to me. And last year, I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna do all the things. I'm gonna throw everything at the wall and. See what sticks and it. Was it's incredibly. Kind of liberating. So. Yeah, like experiment, play. Entrepreneurship should be fun because you can do whatever you want, right? Like, eat dessert for dinner and like, pizza for breakfast. It's like that kind of childhood quality. Yeah. And I think when you invite that in, it just gives a lot more spaciousness, so have fun with it.

Shelby

Yeah, I love that. Stop saying no to yourself. That's a great take away quote from this episode. So where can people find you if they're interested in learning more about you and your work.

Nora

I am on all socials at Nora Rahimian and ORARAHIMIAN. I'm sure my linktree will also be in the show. notes. So I have a newsletter I send it out about once a month. It's full of tips and conversations. This I also offer like little special deals for my subscribers and things like that. My DMS are always open, my e-mail is always open. I think part of this work is that we actually connect to each other and so I really do invite people. If you've heard something today that kind of resonated or sparked like I'm friendly. I love people. Don't be afraid to reach out because those connections, those relationships are really important in this world.

Shelby

Definitely. I love that. Thank you. I'll definitely have your links in the description as well. Thank you so much again for being here and I hope everyone has a wonderful week filled with self love. And compassion and kindness.

Nora

Thanks, Shelby. Thanks for having me.