Many veteran advisors contact me with the following questions:

  • “I make a nice living in my career, but others seem to make much more. What are they doing differently?"
  • “Why am I so much more stressed than they seem to be?”
  • “Maybe they are more cut out for this career than I am?”

In my 33 years of consulting with Olympic, world champion and professional athletes, and comparing them to elite athletes who never reach those heights, I have come to a major conclusion:

Everyone is gifted, but most people need help ”unwrapping their gifts” because their gifts sit dormant, buried under layers of self-doubt, fear of failure, and the feeling that they really don’t have what it takes to make a lifelong career of financial advising.

Once advisors recognize and believe in their special gifts, they can literally separate themselves from the competition.

Helping advisors to uncover their true gifts requires understanding the cause of their insecurity and planning game-changing alternative thinking habits.

What Causes Your Insecurity And Keeps Your “Gift” Buried?

In earlier blogs, I have discussed “impostor fear”—something very common among advisors at various stages in their careers.  Many advisors, like many elite athletes, feel like impostors, having much less belief in their ability than do their managers, parents, colleagues and spouses. These advisors attribute their current success to luck and in their heart of hearts believe that sooner or later the bottom will fall out when these people realize that their “hero” really is inadequate.

Eliminating Your “Impostor Fear”

The fastest way to eradicate this fear is to recognize the thinking patterns that develop it in the first place, and then changing your thinking and adopting healthier habits. Here are examples of thought patterns that lead to insecurity and impostor fear:

  • “I am not nearly as successful an advisor as the others in my company, so I am not a good advisor.”
  • “My future as an advisor is probably bleak.”
  • “I have no control over my destiny.  It’s only a matter of time before I embarrass myself with my clients.”

Understand that those thoughts are self-sabotaging and are not usually based on rational conclusions, but instead on irrational fears about what might happen in the future.

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