Episode 53: Imposter Syndrome with Albert Bramante

Transcript

so i'm really glad you brought this this topic up um to come and record about here on the show
it's uh it's something that for me at least this whole topic uh around sort of imposter syndrome
and things like that for me it's something that's kind of always in the it's always been there right
it's always in the background but it's something that i almost never directly examine uh so i'm
really curious to hear like it seems like you're you have a great deal of expertise in this and you
deal with it regularly with your clients and things like that so i'd love to you know hear what
you have to say and what you brought brought here for uh for the listeners yeah well i think you know
my view of imposter syndrome might be a little bit different so i i think rather than overcoming it
which is what a lot of people will say like overcoming imposter syndrome my view is let's
work with it and maximize it because it's also uh one one way we can look at it it keeps us humble
it keeps us grounded on some level so rather than holding having us hold us back let's work
with it so the way i look at it like okay we're we're we're definitely should always be celebrating
our successes and patting ourselves on the back when when we do something great or when we
have a success at our table the thing though is not to let it hold us back by saying okay this is
what i need to do so it's kind of like we start operating on this i should do this i should do that
and but take credit for what we have and then what can we do to improve what can we do to
overcome whatever shortcomings we're working with so my thing is my view is imposter syndrome can really
be our friend i find that really interesting because you're right uh generally speaking it's
positioned at least well i think this is where things could get kind of interesting between uh kind
of where you come at this from whereas where i've run into this right from a from a employment or uh
like your sort of corporate america company kind of standpoint right it is often positioned as a thing
that you need to get over right it's just like a it's like well you know you were given this job for a
reason don't worry about it just move on kind of thing whereas what you're saying is is that it's
it's it's different than that for you it's it's almost like um uh it can be used as a tool as well
to help try to keep you grounded now you work primarily with performing artists uh probably
actors things like that um and i hope this is not a disparaging thing to say but a section of people
who maybe are known for a slightly larger ego kind of thing right do you think that plays into it do
you think that that's a piece of why you view it as a tool is it is it probably the audience that you
work with yeah i mean it is kind of known that you know there there are some egos because performing
artists is kind of a you know you have in order to be successful you have to have a little bit of
notice as a trend or a self-centered uh center of things but i i also and i talk about this in my book
um is that there's a difference between being humble but also being too high self like that
toxic high self-esteem or fragile high self-esteem and this is where like the ego comes in where
sometimes we can become egotistical where we're not open to coaching we're not open to feedback
and when you're at that level where you're just not open to hearing things it can hold you back
and because it can be like a form of self-sabotage right there sure so the other extreme the other
extreme also is is you don't it's one thing to to have imposter syndrome to your own deficit however
it's also not useful to go in the other direct fully in the other direction either absolutely yeah
no and and that can totally happen too where you can certainly certainly go in the opposite direction
and then not be open to suggestions that'll be open to feedback and unfortunately that's going to
hold you back more so than having what we would call imposter syndrome where do you think it intersects
with the idea of um you hear a lot you know fake it till you make it kind of thing i could see this
being both a solution to like sort of overwhelming imposter syndrome but i can also see it being a cause
of that right like do you do you see any intersections there have you worked at all with that well here's
the thing that that i i the principle behind fake it till you make it is great i don't know if i like the word fake it
because then it kind of means that you're saying it's not real so one of the things that i often
say is act rather than saying fake it act as if so act as if this is already happening so act as if
you're already are successful what are the habits of successful people you know in your field or in
your niche so for example with actors what are the traits of a successful actor a lot of big big part
of it is mindset so what can you adopt adapt in a sense from the successful actors and that is
by you know working with your mindset to a certain degree there you can almost kind of say that that's
definitely a part of of that is just acting as if it's happening it's not rather than fake it till
you make it which is great by the way but there's nothing fake about what you're doing and imposter
syndrome is sort of like the notion of i'm a fraud i'm going to be found out and i'm going to lose
everything because people are going to realize that i don't know what i'm talking about so what again
using that principle as a tool what you can say is well reframe it like okay well you do know what
you're talking about you went to you studied this for a while you you spent time doing this you do
know that now is there an element or an aspect of something you don't know enough about now what can
you do to become knowledgeable on that topic and so one of the principles that i always
adapt by is to have the framework that you're always learning and you're always learning new
things in a sense so that's where i kind of talk about you know the framework of we're always learning
and you're never you'll never stop learning no matter how much training you have you're always
going to need to learn more and you know even myself for instance i have a phd which is considered
a terminal degree but there's nothing terminal about my education that's always going to stay
and so i feel like that's important to to notice the distinction yeah absolutely and i think um
i mean i think you hit on a couple things there one i really like what you're saying about uh
rewording or reframing just making the small nuance between calling it faking it right as opposed to
well how about you you think about more terms of like act as if you're already there and and i i i agree
with you that there's a nuance there one of them sounds negative right the idea of faking anything
is not necessarily at least in the cultural zeitgeist right that's not considered a positive
thing whereas acting as if acting as if you have uh that you're you're prepared for something is a much
more positive spin on that and probably even that small small change there is definitely um valuable
the the other thing that i think you're saying that's really interesting is um yeah this like
this idea of being a lifelong learner right and and even like hidden in there somewhere right is
you're saying you know phd is a terminal degree right we term it that as society but that's not
necessarily accurate right like yes maybe it is the last degree you obtain but that doesn't
necessarily mean it's the last thing you try to do or achieve or learn or anything else
well yeah and i would definitely say that that's definitely not um invite now that might be the
end of your formal education but that doesn't mean that your life you know real life education
will always remain constant and and grow and evolving really for every day that you're alive
and if you i think well my experience if you adopt this mindset approach um again you're always learning
you'll find that there's much more success yeah absolutely and and it definitely um obviously that
plays into concepts like like growth mindset for instance and things like that um so when you're
working with your clientele again performing artists uh sounds like mostly or largely actors and things
like that when when they come to you initially like what do you find do you find that you have to do you do a
lot of coaching in these areas along the way or are they aware that they that they are feeling this
way or is it something that kind of gets uncovered over time like tell me about that experience
yeah it's really a lot a lot of times it's over time and they i mean one i became really interested
in this area because i noticed a lot of actors were self-sabotaging which is hence the impetus and
driving forth from your writing the book so because it was when i first started as an agent you know
20 you know 20 years ago i was running into this issue where actors were self-sabotaging
and i couldn't really figure out what exactly was happening here why were they self-sabotaging
what was really happening here and that was really uh a point of uh of study because most actors that i
that i know in a sense do not really even know why they are self-sabotaging can you give an example
maybe of like what an actor self-sabotaging looks like yeah so maybe not not blowing off auditions
not showing up for an audition being late for an audition being unprepared for an audition
um being late to set all those things can can impact so that's what that would look like in a sense
would be self-sabotage so it's kind of like getting in a way being your own worst enemy and
that's why i i've strongly believe for a lot of people that our own worst enemy is staring us in
a mirror yeah that makes a lot of sense and it's funny because my initial knee-jerk reaction because
you were you were saying like oh you know they don't show up for auditions they don't um they don't
rehearse their lines they don't you know whatever get late to set like whatever that set of things was
my initial knee-jerk reaction when you said that uh just the thing that fired off in my head was
well that seems so silly right like they're actors they chose this path and and presumably they
understand that like if you want to get a job like if you want to get work you got to audition and like
what but then i i immediately thought to myself like well wait a minute though it's not really any
different than if you were working at a company or an organization or something like that
people's self-sabotage there too right they show up same things like they show up late to work
they they don't uh they don't aggressively go for the promotion that they want they don't
complete their work on time like it's it's the it's the same it's just funny because i frame it in
terms of an actor and it like it seems different but then you put it in context and it's it's the same
kind of kind of stuff i imagine yeah it it really is you know again a sense it is the same stuff over
over and over again and again they don't it's not like these actors realize what they're doing
sure you know no one walks around saying hey i'm i'm gonna sabotage today right right it doesn't
what will often happens is you'll start to say well why isn't anything working i can't never do
anything right and sometimes it's just taking a step back and saying look okay maybe you're
contributing to this maybe you're the one that's holding yourself back and so what techniques method
because you're talking a little bit about you know helping them become aware of this
what other components do you find that you can help them along the way coach them through some of these
things um that you've seen a good impact from i imagine that simple that simply awareness is not
enough right i well it's the first step right the first step is awareness and i think when you're
fully aware of what's happening that's going to be an important step so just being aware of something
again it's not enough but it is the first step because that in order for anything to be done
awareness is key so then we have to kind of figure out okay why is this happening
is it due to fear is it you know fear of failure fear of success so really determining those
factors so that would be like the next step first step would be acknowledgement then the next step is
kind of examining because that may be unique for every such of every person's situation so why is this
happening now it can be just simply simple just reworking habits so becoming more conscientious for
instance war you know maybe becoming less anxiety because anxiety can actually cause people self
sabotage trauma you know having past trauma and anxiety can cause these fears and these you know
these things holding us back so sometimes it's working through those a bit another form of self
sabotage that can apply to really a lot of people not just not just actors is procrastination which is
also kind of rooted in perfectionism too it it these are holding you back because very often if you're
kind of operating from both perspectives and i do believe they're highly related perfectionism and
procrastination because usually one of the things we procrastinate because we want things to be perfect
and therefore we never we when we do that the unfortunate thing is we don't get it done
at all because we're worried about them the it being perfect so that can be a form of self-sabotage
so and very often those are rooted in the trauma as formerly responsive trauma so perfectionism
procrastination can really be symptoms of the deeper trauma that might need to be dealt with and this is
where it may require a coach or a therapist and maybe more of a therapist than a coach i mean a coach
it can be helpful but if it's complex trauma you're better off going to a psychotherapist
for that um help to to work through those those uh process and through that trauma in a sense in order
to really become more effective in a sense and more productive those are things that you can do so
finding out the root cause of things reframing limiting beliefs is important too so especially for
actors one thing this has been romanticized and i've talked about this a lot is the idea of the
starving artist and a lot of times actors will adopt that mindset i'm a starving artist i'm a struggling
actor i'm a broke actor i'm an out-of-work actor and now what might be true is at the moment you may
not be working however when you reframe it in that type of vocabulary you are making it very important
you're making it kind of like a again a limit um a limiting belief by saying came out of work actor
then your subconscious mind is saying okay well that's who you are it's part of your identity
so even the slight reframe to be you're a working actor you're a professional actor you're a thriving
actor and it's very simple but a very powerful reframe so that alone could be can be important
yeah that's that's really interesting the things that we say or in this case because you're right you
know you you do there it's very easy to have a picture in your mind of what the starving starving
actor or the starving artist or like any of those kind of creative fields um looks like and then if
you adopt that mindset as a person in that field uh it just becomes part of your identity right and
ultimately it probably limits you um because once you wrap something into your identity of course
it it becomes part of just uh who you are and then it's hard to give up right because then it let's say
you do get a job and now all of a sudden it's like well wait a minute now i'm somewhere in your brain
is like well wait a minute now i'm not the startup artist anymore you know which sounds good to an
outside party but to you yourself and your head somewhere it's probably um incongruent of course and
it really makes you you feel really powerful in that in a sense and the thing is with with our
identity we don't like change now as human beings we don't like change now of course one of the
constants of life is change so and a lot of times we like to hold on to things sometimes tightly and
that includes our identity that really include you know really includes our identity in a sense so
that might mean again um sticking to that starving i must be a starving artist now of course consciously
who wants to remain a starving artist but subconsciously the idea of changing your identity
because there might be more responsibility now your life is going to change when you change your identity
and that can be scary and what if you fail right and that's always a piece of it too is like well
okay so so you get the job but or the whatever it is the gig and then what if it goes awry would you
have been better off like somewhere in your brain you're probably thinking yourself well i would have
been better off just not doing this to begin with right and it goes back to perfectionism and like
this this crazy venn diagram that's that that is all the factors here and then you know it's like
or you do get the job and now you start wondering yeah am i going to get fired today is this going to
end today and so then you start running it through like a loop in your brain a loop in your mind it
becomes like a repetitive loop where you're like what what's going to happen and then therefore you're
getting in your head and it's going to take away from your performance and that can hold you back
yeah absolutely why don't you tell us who you are what your background is like uh and anything you'd
like to uh promote or or anything else any links that you you have of course you can pass along and
i'll make sure they're linked in the description sure so hi you know so hi everyone my name is albert
permanti i am a talent agent in new york i represent actors for film tv theater and mostly print
voiceover i also have a phd in psychology and been a psychology professor for the past 20 uh 22 years
and i wrote a book called rise above the script confronting self-doubt and mastering
self-sabotage for performing artists which is available on amazon and and also as an audiobook
so feel free to check it out and i became very interested in working with actors
at a young age but i love being around actors and around creative people so you can get the book
on amazon you can find me also on like linkedin and instagram or you can go to my website at
albert permanti.com i'd love to connect with you absolutely and i'll make sure again i'll have links to
uh your website your linkedin your instagram the book everything uh everything that you bring to the
table uh will be linked in in the show notes for people um listen i really appreciate you having
you on this is really interesting conversation do you have any uh closing thoughts or things you uh
think we we should say before before uh ending the episode here i would just say to take action and
don't have a to-do list put things on a calendar because a lot of times to-do list you start to think of
the word someday i'll get to this and someday is not a day on the calendar so that couldn't couldn't
be truer that's absolutely correct wilson again uh thank you so much this was a great conversation and
uh look i i picked up i picked up the book um i have not gotten a chance to read it yet but i'm very
much looking forward to making my way through it okay thank you so much
so
thank you