Ever have that “you don’t belong here” thought? SAME! You can use a mantra I use to help be composed and successful for battling imposter syndrome.
The host explains that the video addresses imposter syndrome as it relates to public speaking and broader life roles, acknowledging the common feeling of not belonging. This brief intro sets the problem the video will help with.
The speaker shares a general pre-performance routine—breathing, mantras, tech checks, and visualization—as a practical way to prepare mentally before presenting. This section frames routines as a tool to manage anxiety and build confidence.
Borrowed from Brené Brown, the speaker presents the 'people, people, people' mantra as a way to humanize the audience and counteract intimidation. He contrasts it with the classic 'audience in their underwear' idea and affirms that this alternative resonated for him.
The presenter recounts leading a model teach for highly experienced colleagues across global Army performance centers, admitting nervousness despite frequent speaking. He describes repeating the mantra before the session and how it helped him perform.
The video closes with a concise takeaway: whether facing public speaking or general imposter syndrome, remembering that others are simply people can reduce fear and self-doubt. This final line reinforces the practical, human-centered strategy.
This video is going to apply to public speaking, but also a general principle for dealing with the lovely imposter syndrome that some of us have to go through. Unfortunately, it's as we grow in our careers, as we grow into different roles in our personal life, family life, whatever it might be, there might be some imposter syndrome feeling like, oh, I don't belong here, or someone's gonna realize I don't belong here, they're gonna kick me the heck out. here to help because I deal with that sometimes too.
I teach and present as a public speaker virtually every day as part of my job so I've gotten comfortable public speaking but it's still a challenge and there's one trick that has helped me I guess if you want to call it a trick as a general umbrella principle is having a kind of like a pre-performance routine going into the the presentation so taking a few deep, deliberate breaths or having a mantra in my mind, making sure my technology is ready or my notes, visualizing the days leading up to the event.
But specifically for this issue of imposter syndrome, one thing that has really helped me, I got it from Brene Brown in a book, Dare to Lead. It's using the mantra of people, people, people. And it's just a subtle reminder that you're talking to people at the end of the day, regardless of their title, their rank, their status, their position, anything that might intimidate you, they are people at the end of the day. I think of this as an adult version, a professional version of just imagine everybody out there in the audience in their underwear.
That's creepy, that's weird, I've never really done it, I wouldn't resonate with that, if it does for you, great, this is just another alternative to that. People, people, people. It helped me a lot. Literally today, I just got off of a Zoom meeting where I was presenting to a group of people in my work who are the most experienced people in my entire company. Our performance centers operate at 34 Army bases across the world. And so there's different people from all around the world on this call, people who've been doing it for 15 years teaching these concepts of performance psychology.
And I had to do a, I didn't have to, I got to do a model teach of this curriculum that we're developing. So I developed something that our curriculum team had been working on based on research and theory. And for two hours, I had to teach in front of these experienced people, about 15 of them, and show them what right looks like and how to teach this. Talk about intimidating. So even though I present all the time, I still got nervous and that phrase, that mantra, people, people, people, I kept reiterating it before I started the presentation and it helped me out a lot.
Just remember, whether it be presenting or general imposter syndrome, they're just people at the end of the day, you and I, everybody else, we're just freaking people.
