How to Recognize What You Have
Many coaches, though experienced, still wrestle a little or a lot with fraud guilt, also known as “imposter anxiety.” This haunting feeling subtly or overtly chides you that you are a phony. “If people knew the truth about me, they would not respect me and certainly not come to me for coaching or healing. If they saw what you I do in my ego-driven moments, or knew the fears that distract me, or the real me were to be revealed, I would be exposed as unqualified, judged, and rejected. Certainly no one would pay me to coach them.”
It’s time to put an end to such foolish thoughts. We are now going to once and for all drop any sense of fraud guilt. In this lesson we will shine the spotlight of truth through the darkness that hides the jewel you are and the gifts you came to give.
First, recognize that the ego projects its beliefs about itself onto the spirit. The ego is a false and limiting idea of who you are. You were born in spiritual perfection, and you knew it. Children do not worry about being phony because they know who they are. Every living thing knows what it is, except for human beings who have been distracted from self-love. Trees naturally express treeness, dogs are perfectly happy to be dogs, and birds love to fly. Of all creation, only human beings have been deluded to think that we are something we are not, and to be ashamed of what we are. Such shame comes only from a delusional identity. You have been carefully, systematically, and methodically programmed from an early age to believe that you small, limited, separate, and unworthy. This is the ego’s false notion, and nothing more. It has nothing to do with the real you.
It is the ego that is the phony, not you. (A Course in Miracles Lesson 160: “I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.”) You are an unlimited spirit, created in the image and likeness of a perfect and loving God. Any other identity is a trick of the mind that does not see what is there and sees what is not there. The ego, in its frantic insecurity, needs you to believe in it, so it perpetrates the grandest hoax ever executed. It convinces you that you are what it is. Since it is a phony, you believe you are a phony. Since it functions on the premise that it is small, vulnerable, and needs defense, it tells you that you are subject to the same faults. The job is done, and you walk the world feeling like a fraud. Not because you are a fraud, but because the ego is a fraud, and it has tricked you into believing that you are what it is. All at the expense of remembering your genuine gifts and inestimable worthiness.
The second escape from fraud guilt is easier to get a handle on because it rests on practical, observable behavior. This principle is eloquently illuminated in A Course in Miracles Lesson 159, “I give the miracles I have received.” If you give someone something, you must have it first. You cannot give what you do not have. Giving is proof of having. Receiving is proof that the giver had the commodity he or she has given.
If you coach, teach, or heal someone, and they receive an insight, clarity, relief, empowerment, or healing, you must own that consciousness in order to give it. Your client would not have received a form of good unless the good you gave was already yours. So helping anyone in any way, especially through coaching, is proof that the gift you gave them is your own, as well. You must be an equal in consciousness to the consciousness you inculcated in that person. Their awakening demonstrates that you have already awakened. So anyone who truly helps someone cannot be a phony. When a client authentically receives, you authentically gave. Your coaching genius is not the phony. Your fraud guilt is the phony.
If you knew that you were a brilliantly talented coach with immeasurable gifts to give the world and the power to change lives in miraculous ways, you would be willing to receive all the rewards of coaching that you deserve, including monetary support, working with the clients of your choice, making a schedule that pleases you, and being innovative and creative in your coaching. These are the gifts that fraud guilt has robbed from many great coaches. But no more. From this point on we are stepping into our true power as healers. You are now going to do what you came to do.
When you notice that a client has received a benefit from your coaching, know that the source of that benefit is within you, firmly established by Higher Power. Coaching is a two-way street. When the client comes to an important realization or manifests a desired result, claim that realization and result for yourself. You deserve to succeed because you are empowered with the gifts of God, which are quite real, just as you are.
Exercise:
1. In what ways do you feel like a fraud?
How might the false or limited self be projecting these ideas onto your genuine self?
2. What specific benefits has a recent coaching client received?
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Now claim these gifts as already within you, or else you would not have been able to give them.
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Affirm:
I am a genuine healer, empowered by the gifts that God has placed within me.
I never need to apologize for what I am.
What I am is perfect, created in the image and likeness of pure wisdom and love.
The gifts I give are real.