Unraveling Imposter Syndrome and Overcoming Self-Doubt w/ John Mollura EP 55

Shanenn Bryant: 0:05

Welcome to Top Self, the podcast dedicated to relax your mind, achieve change and become a healthier, more present you. Are you ready to move past the daily anxiety, comparing and doubting yourself and feeling like you're not enough? I'm your host, Shanenn Bryant, and I've ruined many good relationships because of my jealousy and stayed way too long in some bad ones because of my insecurity. But I stopped letting fear drive my actions and now I can't wait to share with you as I dive into these emotions, shed light on how they might be impacting your life and uncover strategies to break free from their grip. It's time to start living a life of confidence. So get ready to ignite your self-worth and transform your life because, my friend, you are worthy. You know it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that imposter syndrome is real, but it might take one to help us figure this self-doubt thing out. So I want to welcome my John Mollura. Welcome.

John Mollura: 1:18

What's up, Shanenn? How are you?

Shanenn Bryant: 1:20

I'm good. How are you?

John Mollura: 1:21

I'm wonderful.

Shanenn Bryant: 1:24

Do you get a lot of rocket scientist jokes? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to.

John Mollura: 1:29

Yeah, yeah. I get a lot of that when people aren't familiar with my backgrounds and they say this isn't rocket science and I'm like no, it's not.

Shanenn Bryant: 1:38

Like no, that's not at all what I do.

John Mollura: 1:40

There's far too few letters in the mathematics for this to be rocket science. Yeah, yeah.

Shanenn Bryant: 1:49

Okay, so I'm one not original and two wrong. So that's good, okay, you're good to go.

John Mollura: 1:55

You're good to go, no.

Shanenn Bryant: 1:58

I figured you probably maybe get some of those jokes, but you're also a multi-award-winning luxury photographer, portrait photography right, as well as a keynote speaker, and the thing that you talk about is imposter syndrome.

John Mollura: 2:14

That is right.

Shanenn Bryant: 2:16

I know many of us experience it and I know even in your journey you weren't even quite sure that, like, what is this? What's it called? I didn't know there was a name for it, and so I want to just talk about that journey, to kick us off, but also just the understanding of not only are we sometimes really insecure and feel like, oh, I'm not worthy of love in this relationship, but we can also then take it to In general, I'm not worthy right.

John Mollura: 2:44

Right, Absolutely yeah. So what I always like to start with just so we're all on the same page because for much of my life I didn't have the vocabulary to describe how I was feeling, which I always felt like I was a fake, Like, despite successfully landing things on Mars and having that data and being part of those teams, I never felt like I was worthy of the accolades or the success that came my way and later came to learn that that's what imposter syndrome is. We've seen imposter syndrome a lot in the media over the past, probably years so creeping up, but what it is at its core is just this extreme self-doubt and, more specifically, feeling like you're a fake despite whatever you've done and a lot of times having empirical proof of it. Like I see something behind you. Is that a degree or some kind of an award I'm sure you've won?

Shanenn Bryant: 3:41

Oh, it's my certificate for coaching and I went back and forth. Do I just even put that up? So I 100% get what you mean, but you were receiving some major awards, so tell us a little bit about that.

John Mollura: 3:56

It's actually hanging behind me over my shoulder here. It's a letter of commendation from the Department of Defense, which is a big deal for anyone to receive, but especially for civilians, for the military to recognize the effort that you've put into projects, to say you're worthy of getting this letter. And it was a huge deal for the company I worked with that so many of the team members earned these letters of commendation and we were working on something for the Missile Defense Program, so things to stop the US from getting blown up by nuclear weapons, which I'm not sure when this is going to drop, but we're actually recording this on the 22nd anniversary of September 11th. So we started working on this project just a few years after that attack occurred and we worked on it for years. We were away from home for weeks, some people months at a time, but at the end of all that, the thing we worked on was outdoing what it was supposed to be doing to keep Americans safe, like there was no question about that. Our part was doing what it was supposed to do. So we got these letters of commendation and, as we're standing in front of our whole company, our company president is calling us up, and right before he got to my name to give me this letter of commendation. I just had this upwelling of fear and I was used to being in front of crowds, that wasn't it. And I was standing there and my eyes just started like filling with tears and I'm like what is going on with me? And what it was was. I was so sure that the jig was finally up, despite working in this industry for years, that I was going to it's going to be my turn. And our president, mr Wallach, was going to say oh, malora, yeah John, we we actually all know you've been bsing us all these years and you don't get this. So this, this like culmination of this, like huge endeavor that we were working on and all the time away from home and the challenges and the hazards that we were faced with, it was just totally overshadowed by my own self doubt that I don't deserve this.

Shanenn Bryant: 6:11

So you didn't even get to enjoy the moment.

John Mollura: 6:14

No, it was awful, like it was all I could do to like thank you, sir, and like hustle off stage, because I was like am I going to start? Like crying, like, and like falling apart in front of everyone?

Shanenn Bryant: 6:26

So then, after that did you start to like, let me dig into this. Like what in the heck just happened?

John Mollura: 6:33

No, absolutely not. No which, which for the people that are really busy. If you don't finish the podcast, that's not the right answer. Don't do what I did. Yeah, shove it deep down with all those other unpleasant emotions, canon. Where I was at my life in this point it was it was 2005. So it was a little bit right before my 30th birthday. I had wrestled with very severe anxiety due to unprocessed trauma you know from from very early in my life and as someone growing up in the 1980s and 1990s like that. You just didn't talk about that.

Shanenn Bryant: 7:14

Yeah.

John Mollura: 7:15

Like you definitely didn't talk about it if you were a dude working in the department of defense and aerospace world as an adult, I didn't even have that vocabulary to really describe how I was feeling and I had done some counseling. But at this point in my life, like I was, I was concerned with building a career and building this almost superhero Marvel S persona at work, like if there was a difficult project, I'm raising my hand, if it's hazardous, like I'm raising both hands and looking back on it. It's because I was trying to prove that I had worth to myself or the ghosts of my past. So no, I did not dig into what just happened to me up on stage. I just I think I'd probably said something unkind to myself like you got to get your crap together, john, and you know that that was not something that I did. That wouldn't have come until I hit rock bottom a couple years later that I started digging into that self reflection. It was just just push it down and just onto. The next thing, which was very indicative of just how I approach things, and it's even something I really work on now is just after something especially good would happen. I would just put my head down and not want to celebrate it and just be right onto the next thing.

Shanenn Bryant: 8:38

Yeah, we have a bad habit of doing that in our careers, if we finish a project, or even, you know, in our, in our personal lives, if something really good happened, that we're just like, okay, now what you know, check, okay, now what's the next thing that I have to do? So is having some mini celebrations really important?

John Mollura: 9:01

100%, because one of the best things that I tell people they can do to really turn down the volume of imposter syndrome, that feeling of like a fake, is to really keep track of accolades or successes. You've had these little wins. It doesn't have to be a letter of commendation. It could be like figuring out how to set your dials correctly on your car. So actually defoc was the window before you work like little victories like that. You mentioned debating whether or not to put that award or your coaching certificate up behind you, the wall behind me. I didn't put this up actually until very recently, like over the past few weeks. These letters of commendation and awards that that I'd earned, or patches with military units that that I got to work with, they have been in a box in my basement, some of them for on the over 20 years and, like some of them are really cool. One of them is like thank you for helping us land this robot on Mars successfully, but I'd like never wanted to celebrate it, so it's just been sitting in a box and I thought, if I'm telling people to do this, I should probably do this. So, like, I spent, you know, like almost an entire week finding stuff pulling out all your awards a week like where is everything? Well, yeah, like I'd forgotten about stuff and I'm not saying this, be conceited Like I pushed things so far down and didn't take credit for them. I had letters of commendation from NASA that I didn't even remember getting. Oh my God, I'm like sitting like that is how much I was uncomfortable celebrating myself.

Shanenn Bryant: 10:46

Well, in most of us would you know, if we're not in that position, we think, oh, if I got something like that. That said, thank you for helping us land this robot on Mars. I'm putting it up and I'm telling everyone, but what we know is when it's us. That's probably not true, like we're not even celebrating those things, much less the smaller things. That also deserves celebrating.

John Mollura: 11:09

Yeah, I just I try to keep track of it in a journal now, like just just write down when something good happens. And it could be something as seemingly simple as my pastor at my church stopping me when I was dropping something off and being like hey, I heard you did a really good job on that, keep it up. Something is small. That took you know the dude like three seconds to say that.

Shanenn Bryant: 11:32

Yeah.

John Mollura: 11:34

I made sure to write that down because I was like I don't want to forget that, because I remember how hard it was what he complimented me for and like how much work I put into it emotionally and physically, and I need to keep track of that and celebrate that. So, like I made sure to tell my wife when I came home and my kids at dinner, because I would have just never in the past I wouldn't have said anything.

Shanenn Bryant: 11:55

Right, Just kept it to yourself and thought it's no big deal. But then there was a point where you hit rock bottom. Tell me what happened.

John Mollura: 12:59

It actually started with the birth of our first child, which is a joyous occasion, you know, obviously fraught with unknowns and many sleepless nights, but what happened was one of my core things that I believed to be true about myself was I was going to let people down that cared about me Like I was going to blow it, I was going to screw it up, despite, like a track record, exactly the opposite of that. So now, being a father, I had such grand plans of like breaking these generational chains and all that, and I'm holding my daughter, and it was the first time my wife had left home since we came back from the hospital. I was like I need to get out and like go to Walmart. Right, right Like go ahead, take your time. I got this. You know, our daughter was asleep and my daughter woke up and I thought, no problem, I got the bottle in the fridge. I can, I can handle this. And my daughter wouldn't take the bottle and started doing that. I Kuiper, ventilating like infant scream, and, shannon, it threw me like into a panic attack. All the devils on my shoulder that had been chirping in my ear finally said see, look, you can't even feed your own child. I told you you were through this up. This is just the beginning of you messing this, this whole thing, up.

Shanenn Bryant: 14:26

Prove yourself right.

John Mollura: 14:28

Exactly yeah, and so that kicked my anxiety back up in the high gear. And then, a few months later, one of my best childhood friends who was almost like a big brother to me because he was a year older than me intentionally overdosed and took his own life. It rocked my world on so many levels, and I just remember the weeks after he passed away my wife and daughter were out and I was getting ready for work. I'm like I don't know how I'm going to go on, like all my coping strategies that I've used up to this point, which spoiler alert my coping strategies were not healthy.

Shanenn Bryant: 15:12

They weren't great. Yeah, they were not. You were really coping, they were not built to last. Not sustainable yeah.

John Mollura: 15:19

Yeah, and one of the big coping strategies I had was I was going to push people away before they had a chance to hurt me and defend this like veneer of perfection that I had created like very sharp words and use my natural ability to kind of read people, but instead of like reading them and being able to communicate productively with them, I was like kind of Darth Vader used the force like I would use this like and I would like cut the legs out from people underneath them If I felt like they were challenging me, had like zero empathy and I but I reached this point after, after we lost him, and I thought I'm gonna say this serenity, prayer, right, courage, and give me the wisdom to know the difference and the reason why that's important is, up until that point, I wasn't someone who was just not religious Like I actively like stiff-armed anybody that was religious Like push them away. If I heard someone who was like religious, I'd be like what you're not strong enough to do life on your own, because yeah, oh yeah, like if people that are like read the Bible, like I have a very much Saul and the Paul kind of story and this was like my Damascus Road moment, because after I said the serenity prayer, I just felt this warm sensation cover me from head to toe and I thought I've either just A completely lost my mind or B maybe God's real. And that moment of just extreme brokenness was what allowed the Holy Spirit and Jesus to actually get into my heart. So I say, oh, that's where Jesus found me. It's like no, he was always there.

Shanenn Bryant: 17:10

Right where you found it right, that's right let them come into the poop show.

John Mollura: 17:17

It's a word that wasn't in life, yeah let me show you what I've been doing. Yeah.

Shanenn Bryant: 17:23

Oh my gosh. Well, I'm so sorry that that happened and I'm sorry for your loss and I know it's been a bit, but I'm sure that there's still lessons and things and that stings and it stays with you forever when something like that happens. So I'm so sorry for that, and it sounds like you really went into this full protection mode, like I am going to ward off any and all people that might affect me or I have any type of feeling for or could develop feelings for.

John Mollura: 17:53

Yeah, yeah, and that's actually how I operated through a lot of my probably from like middle school on. I just had this like very in high school I hung out at the punk rockers and like that was cool to like, just to be a jerk. Right to be cold yeah to be cold or put people down or to push them away, before you know they had a chance to hurt you. So that was really my modus operandi for much of my life until I had that rock bottom moment. And when I came out of it I just remember thinking, all right, how am I showing up in the world? And I was showing up as someone who was, you know, sarcastic and mean and I was like this isn't good. So I started figuring out like when I would get triggered. You know, I was a test engineer. My life was ruled by data. My boss skipped, probably. She used to say you know, one good test is worth a thousand opinions. You know, we'd be sitting in some boardroom and guys would be like arguing and postulating about what's going to happen, and my boss skipped. He's actually over here. We lost him a couple of years ago. He's always looking over my shoulder and he would say one good test is worth a thousand opinions. Just let me in. They called me Molly's Like let me and Molly go out and see if this thing blows up or not. Sometimes it would.

Shanenn Bryant: 19:24

Right. Yeah, you're like oh, let's prove it this way, Prove it with data, right.

John Mollura: 19:30

Let's get the data, because that's definitely the truth. Yeah, so I started getting data on myself Like, okay, I just blew up at someone in that meeting, or I just, you know, reacted harshly. Why did I do that? What caused that? I started becoming very self-aware.

Shanenn Bryant: 19:46

And.

John Mollura: 19:46

I really didn't like the answers. I was like man, you're jackass.

Shanenn Bryant: 19:51

And Well, yeah, that's what they say. Right, Like when you think that everybody else is a jerk, it's probably you.

John Mollura: 19:57

Yeah right. So I started being very self-aware and correcting my course, like how I would respond to people, and of course it wasn't like a switch flipped. It took a very long time and what I would start to do. I'd still react in an unhealthy way, but the first step was realizing I had done it and apologizing, which that's humbling.

Shanenn Bryant: 20:28

I'm apologizing all over the place.

John Mollura: 20:30

Yeah right, so over the number of years, like I went and started growing as a person. I didn't learn what the words imposter syndrome were until I was on a work trip and one of my colleagues that I was with, who was far more emotionally intelligent than I was at the point at that point in my life, she says, oh, someone's talking about imposter syndrome and I'm like what is that? And she's like well, that's when you feel like a fake despite what you have accomplished. I'm like that's a thing, it's not just me. She's like no, john, it affects usually high achieving people like you. And I just remember feeling like, oh my God, I'm not alone. I just thought I, you know, I just always thought I felt you know crappy about myself.

Shanenn Bryant: 21:18

Well, and what's great when you find something out like that is one, it's like oh, I'm not the only person. And then two, it's got a name, which means there's probably a solution to this there's probably some help that I can dig into. So I'd imagine after that that's when you really started to dig into it.

John Mollura: 21:37

Yeah, on the periphery I was doing so much other self-development work. The imposter syndrome stuff didn't really come about in full force, trying to really like dig in and understand it until it's coming up on. Two years ago Someone said they needed some content and I'd been kind of dabbling in learning about imposter syndrome and I said, well, I could speak at the webinar in a couple months about imposter syndrome, just kind of share my story and they're like awesome, we love it. So for the next like four months I was worried I wasn't cut out to speak about imposter syndrome and like when I realized that I'm like come on, dude.

Shanenn Bryant: 22:20

Like I'm getting ready to tell people how to turn this down and here it is. Yeah, well, I mean, that's real life experience there, right, oh yeah.

John Mollura: 22:28

Yeah, and what I always like to tell people is I've said it a couple of times it's all about turning down the volume of imposter syndrome, increasing the frequency between it happens and also the intensity we want to decrease. That it's not like a switch gets flipped, Like. It's not like you walk out of my workshop and it's like, oh, I'm totally better now. It's like no, right, I'm going to learn some skills to quiet this.

Shanenn Bryant: 22:54

Yeah, and that's what I tell the jealousy sufferers Like when they're experiencing those types of things. It's never that. I'm never going to feel jealous again or insecure again in my life, but getting your mind to relax and being more calm and being intentional about the things that you're doing and being able to self-comfort. All of that, like you said, turning that down, not turning it off.

John Mollura: 23:16

Yeah, yeah. And, like I said today, september 11th, so it's just been a little bit over a week since we lost Jimmy Buffett. And I'm a huge Jimmy Buffett fan, not just for the tailgates and the margaritas, but because the stories he wove were so just amazing and just I've always had wonderlust, so to have him put that kind of musical tapestry to it was just really why I loved him. The reason why I bring that up is he has a quote that he said years ago about grief, and maybe this will help some of the people that are listening that are wrestling with those feelings of jealousy, especially if it's fresh and they're like I'm never going to feel better. Yeah, jimmy Buffett said grief, or insert jealousy. When it happens, it's like the wave coming right off the bow of a large boat. It's huge and you feel like you're out there in the water and this giant wave is coming. You feel like it's going to just drown you. But the thing about these big emotions is, once you get further away from the bow, or as time goes on, these waves become. The wave just naturally becomes smaller and instead of it risking drowning you and taking you under, now you're just able to kind of float over it. So I just want to say that, to encourage people, because with grief or jealousy, yeah, that really is how it goes. Just hang in there.

Shanenn Bryant: 24:45

Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, because with any of this, it's like when you first set out and you know you've experienced this like, oh my gosh, it can feel so overwhelming. Like you said, how am I ever going to get through this or get to a place that I feel good about, or is this ever going to go away?

John Mollura: 25:10

Yeah, yeah, and also being realistic about it. There are still times like you mentioned. Losing my friends still stings and I got choked up telling you about that tonight and that doesn't normally happen, yeah, but that's been so many years ago. But for whatever reason, it just hit differently. So don't be surprised if emotions do come back up. But also then, just like I encourage people with imposter syndrome to write down the accomplishments they've made, if you're working on getting through a difficult emotional time, write down those times where you have felt good. So as time goes on and sometimes it does seemingly come out nowhere like a rogue wave and hit you, you can look back and be like, oh right, I did feel good in the past, even after this happened.

Shanenn Bryant: 26:01

Yeah, that's so good. That's such a great piece of advice there for us to do to go back and go. You know what? For a bit I was okay. I got to a point where I was okay and this is maybe a little bit of a revisit, but I know that I'll be okay again after this. So that's amazing. One thing that people may struggle with when they think about imposter syndrome and they think, really I have to remind myself and say these things about me, these great things about me, because we kind of live in the place of, like people think, well, if they're talking about themselves or if they're saying good things about themselves, they're conceited or they're this, and I think maybe that's the hang up a lot for people. Do you have a way to navigate that?

John Mollura: 26:52

Yeah, I blame Saturday Night Live for this. Do you remember this skit back probably from like the 90s. Was it Stuart Smalley or whatever?

Shanenn Bryant: 27:05

Yeah, it's a kid right.

John Mollura: 27:06

No, he was like an old, old, like a pro-wild cry guy my age, now in their mid-40s. But you know, had the polo shirt and the nice, he would just sit in front and be like I'm good enough. I'm smart enough and gosh darn it. People like me. I think that skit packed the whole kind of motivational self-talk thing like years, because every time I hear that I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm such a tool. I sound like that dork on Saturday Night Live. But the thing is you don't have to share it with anybody. These archives are awesome, it's for you, or to note on your phone. Or like if people sign up for my newsletter, they immediately get emailed a fillable PDF that they could just keep on their phone or in their Google Drive. Right, and they can just have their own little personal archive of awesome because, at the end of the day, it's for you.

Shanenn Bryant: 27:59

I love that archive of awesome yeah, yeah, keeping it to yourself, but keeping that running list, I love it.

John Mollura: 28:07

Yeah, I love it.

Shanenn Bryant: 28:08

So what are some other things that we can do to step out of this a little bit if we're feeling like especially you know that's a pretty strong feeling to think I don't deserve this?

John Mollura: 28:20

Yeah.

Shanenn Bryant: 28:21

You know I some people feel it with many things. You talked about parenting. I think there are a lot of people out there that are like I suck at this whole parenting thing or I don't know what I'm doing, or you know I'm not going to be any good at this. So what are some other ways that we can navigate through this?

John Mollura: 28:38

Yeah. Number one is, I think, recognize that the landscape we're operating in, like humans were never designed to get this much information thrown at you at once. One of my favorite authors, john A Kuff, describes parenting in the digital age as you now have a view into everybody's manicured backyard that they want you to see as a parent. He said you know, like when you and I were growing up, or John was growing up, Johnny A Kuff was growing up, our parents or whoever was raising it like could see, like I don't know four people. You're like all right, well, that kid's always eating glue, so we're doing better than them. Those people like we're not even going to try to keep up with them, but these other three people, I think we're doing pretty good, whereas now you can see what someone's doing in Auckland, new Zealand, you know, with their kids bento boxes and be like God, I'm not so good at what I'm doing. Meanwhile, your kids are fed and clean and, you know, happy and healthy. Number one is just realize that we're not supposed to know all that about everybody Like it's just like information overload and it's okay to kind of turn it off and recognize when it's like okay, yeah, I probably just need to put this down from, which is easier said than done, but again taking those baby steps, like I need to stop comparing myself to other people. And then the other thing you mentioned people will not feeling worthy is. There's a three-step process that I like to have people do to really help themselves feel worthy.

Shanenn Bryant: 30:23

Okay.

John Mollura: 30:24

Super complicated. They might need to write this down. And this has to deal with receiving a compliment, okay, okay. So, old John, when someone would give me a compliment, they'd be like dude, I saw your band playing last week, you really rocked last week. Old John would have said oh, thanks, man, how drunk were you? Immediately push the compliment back, either by some kind of self deprecating humor or you know, just some kind of or like shrugging off me like oh yeah, the rest of the guys carried me.

Shanenn Bryant: 31:01

Yeah.

John Mollura: 31:02

So what I like to have people do is my simple three-step process for accepting a compliment and truly just accepting it. His step one is you smile at the person that gave you the compliment, but don't smile too long and make it awkward. I was giving them a nice smile.

Shanenn Bryant: 31:20

Wait, I was really smiling at you for a long time. I think you said that about me Like. No, I wasn't trying to be awkward.

John Mollura: 31:26

No, no, it wasn't you, it's another, it's my workshop. It's like the shoe shaker you got into another one.

Shanenn Bryant: 31:34

Like it's just staring at me a little too long smiling. It's awkward now, Okay. So yeah, Step one smile, but don't make them awkward. Don't make it weird man.

John Mollura: 31:45

Step two just say thank you Period. Thank you is a full sentence.

Shanenn Bryant: 31:53

It's so hard to do.

John Mollura: 31:54

Right, right, oh, you're going to feel all sorts of weird and be like I need to say something kind of I feel so awkward, but that's when step three kicks in and you just smile again at them.

Shanenn Bryant: 32:06

Okay.

John Mollura: 32:06

So smile, say thank you, fight the urge to say something self-deprecating or giving someone else the credit, and then just smile again and like it's going to feel weird, it's going to feel icky. But the important reason why it is to do that and get comfortable with that is our brains are always listening to us. For better or worse, we're the person that's always with us. So if our brains are constantly hearing us belittle ourselves, it's going to continue to believe that it's going to get that message. It's like, well, yeah, you're not really that good of a guitar player, john, that person was probably just drunk. And then that's going to just cascade into everything else in my life. So by accepting a compliment and again it's like anything else you do the rep, so you're going to get better at it. You start to really believe these compliments people are giving you. So getting used to accepting compliments is big, even if that's too big of a jump for some people to make to be like I'm going to do this so I feel better If there are other reasons just to get started. Accept the compliment and just say thank you, so you're not throwing it back at the other person, because not only does it make the person receiving the compliment feel bad, but the person that kind of took time out of their way and got maybe out of their comfort zone and said something nice. Now they're like, oh, was I wrong? Should I not have said that?

Shanenn Bryant: 33:44

I love that you brought that up, because I was going to tell you I did an entire episode. It's been a little while back about absorbing compliments. Because, my husband would say that to me all the time. He's like Shaman, you're not hearing the things that I'm saying to you, like you're not soaking it in and when I give you a compliment. So then I was really aware for the longest time of when he would give a compliment or anybody would give a compliment, and I also thought that too, because it's kind of what he said of like it's sort of rude to the person who's giving you the compliment. Like you said, they start to question because it isn't easy. Actually People get weird about even giving someone else a compliment. Should I say it? Are they going to think I'm weird if I say it? Is he going to think I was smiling at him too long if I do that? Like, yeah, but people do. It takes some you know gearing up and some guts for someone to give you that compliment and then when you shoot it down it's like okay, maybe I won't do that again next time.

John Mollura: 34:46

Yeah, yeah, like I, like you mentioned when we started like I'm a portrait photographer, so like I notice style, I notice I notice you know color schemes. So a lot of times, like I'll be saying in line, if someone's like really cool earrings on, I'll be like those are really nice earrings, Like so many times are like what? Like are you trying to?

Shanenn Bryant: 35:08

hit on me. And a lot of times.

John Mollura: 35:10

I'll follow up with, like a little portrait photographer, I look for these things, good job. And they're like oh, thank you. And then they'll say, yeah, these old things. Yes, I'll be like these old things.

Shanenn Bryant: 35:20

I got these yeah.

John Mollura: 35:23

But there is that kind of awkwardness where it's like yeah, I just said something nice to you and now you're looking at me like I'm a freak.

Shanenn Bryant: 35:30

Oh yeah, I mean, it's a hard one. The idea, though, of holding back just the simple thank you and that's very helpful to John, because, like, if you're trying to get out of the negative not saying like, oh, you must have been drunk, you know, with the comment that you were talking about, so then you're trying to think of something positive to say back, and then you get stumbled on that. So then, typically, you're going to default to your habit of either saying something negative, you know, whatever, so I love just thank you and stopping at that, yeah, yeah, and smiling at them, saying to you, or since you're not just like, thanks, yeah. Yeah, Well, these are some great things the archives of archives of awesome. How can people get that from you? Yeah?

John Mollura: 36:14

So if you go to John Malora dot com, there's a big banner at the top. It says sign up for my newsletter. And don't worry, I'm not organized enough to spam people. If they sign up for the newsletter they'll get the PDF of the archive of awesome sent directly to them. It's a fillable PDF or, if nothing else, you just take a screen shot of it and put in a note and then over the next five or six days they'll get a daily tip digging a little bit more into imposter syndrome ways it shows up that you might not even realize it in your life and then some tips to start turning the volume down. And then, yeah, just be able to be kept up to date on things I'm doing, like being on the awesome podcast, like Top Sell.

Shanenn Bryant: 36:59

Yeah, okay, we're going to test your three step theory because Okay. You're a keynote speaker talking about imposter syndrome. You have been involved in Mars missions. That's right, a luxury photographer and I didn't even know the band thing, which makes sense. I kind of knowing a little bit about you now makes sense and have been in a rock band.

John Mollura: 37:27

Yes, you're awesome.

Shanenn Bryant: 37:30

That's incredible.

John Mollura: 37:31

Thank you.

Shanenn Bryant: 37:32

You're welcome. You're welcome. Okay, John, thank you so much for being on Top Self. I had a great time. If you want to get in touch with John, we'll put his information in the show notes and go grab his freebie. So thank you so much for being on Top Self.

John Mollura: 37:51

My pleasure buddy. Thanks, shannon.