Pursue Your Next Career Move With Confidence: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

1. Class Introduction: Hi, my name is Michele Mitchell and I'm a designer and illustrator, the host of the Freedom Fridays podcast, and an author who is passionate about all things communication, design, and people. I am so excited that you decided to join me in this Skillshare class, Pursue Your Next Career Move with Confidence : Overcoming Imposter Syndrome. Over the last seven-plus years, I have experienced a lot, working for brands and individuals as a freelancer and a corporate employee. I have personally had to overcome impostor syndrome and my own limiting beliefs in order to find my worth and my value in every space that I'm in and I want to share that with you. This class is for anyone who is looking to begin their professional career journey or for individuals who've already started but are looking to take that next step, like going for a promotion, starting a business, or making a complete change of industry. By the end of this class, you'll be able to differentiate false statements and negative self-talk from statements, thoughts, and phrases that speak to your true value as a person. We'll move at a pace that's easy to digest and you can take your time with the lessons. You'll see this icon whenever we start a new activity. These activities will help you complete your class project. For your class project, you'll be creating your own pocket wallet-size card filled with truth statements you discover about yourself along the way, and you'll be able to hold onto those truths, long after you've finished this class and have made that next career move. Ready to get started? Join me in the next lesson. 2. What is imposter syndrome?: [MUSIC] Imposter syndrome. What is it? I remember when I first started hearing the term imposter syndrome and no matter how many times I heard people try to define it, I couldn't get to a place where I fully understood its meaning. That's until I began to experience it for myself. I get this new job, and I'm at work, and I'm doing my work and suddenly, I have the thought they're going to figure out that I'm not a good designer. They're going to think I shouldn't be here. They're going to wonder, what is she doing here? How did she even get this job? I looked it up again and then I fully understood. I know sometimes it's hard to find definitions with all the information out on the inter-webs, so I did it for us. I found this definition that I feel is a pretty succinct, complete, easy-to-understand definition from the Harvard Business Review and I'm going to share with you. According to Gill Corkindale from the Harvard Business Review, imposter syndrome can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persists despite evident success. "Imposters" suffer from chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence. They seem unable to internalize their accomplishments. High achieving, highly successful people often suffer. Imposter syndrome doesn't equate with low self-esteem or a lack of self-confidence. In fact, some researchers have linked it with perfectionism, especially in women and among academics. I know that's a lot. That's like a good little chunk. I pulled out some of the phrasings and the words that you saw on the screen just so that you can focus on some of these key points in this definition. It's really not always about feeling low about yourself or not really feeling like you're a successful person, but sometimes because you've been accomplished, because you have successes, you hold yourself to such high standards, and high standards are good, but to these standards that almost seem unattainable to yourself, where you're at the point where you're like, "I need to do better. I need to be the best. I need to be even better than the best." That perfectionism comes up. Some of the things when you were younger may come up. I read that for children that had parents or guardians or lived in a society where people were always like, "You need to be the best. You need to do better. You need to be 10 times, 20, 50 times better than everyone else." Those children usually grow up becoming adults who never feel as if they're achieving, who never feel as if they're doing work that's good enough to the point where they'll even question whether or not the successes that they've obtained are really great successes. Let's take it to career. You get to, like I said, this amazing job opportunity. You're the one. Out of all the interviews, out of all the candidates that they've seen, they chose you. For some reason, you're there like, "They 're going to ask me to do something that I can't do and they're going to realize that they shouldn't have hired me. Oh my gosh, I'm not fit for this job. I shouldn't be here." All of that, that thought process , that's imposter syndrome. This really has an effect on a lot of different areas of your life. In the next lesson, we're going to dig deeper on why this matters and why they should matter to you. [MUSIC] Let's go. 3. Why does it matter?: We defined what imposter syndrome is. Now let's talk about why it matters. Why should it matter to you? Imposter syndrome can affect your personal goals, your personal growth, your progress towards things that you want to do, progress in your career pursuit, progress in your relationships. Imposter syndrome can really be an unnecessary burden. I'm going to share some questions that I found for you to think about. Just takes some time. Think about it as I ask, you, think about how it applies to you. Do you agonize over even the smallest mistakes or flaws in your work? Do you attribute your success to luck or outside factors? Are you very sensitive to even constructive criticism? That's a hard one to answer because we never want to say that we're sensitive to that. We want to always say that we can take feedback but just think about it. It doesn't mean you don't receive it, but what's happening on the inside. Do you feel like you'll inevitably be found out as a phony or a fake? Do you downplay your own expertise, even in areas where you are genuinely more skilled than others? One, you have where you're in the role, you're in the midst of that accomplishment or that thing and you're like, they're going to find out that I'm an imposter and I shouldn't be here. Then you have the imposter that for fear of being found out, I'm not even going to attempt to apply for the job. I'm not going to attempt to go to the mixer or that networking event. I'm not even going to attempt to build that working relationship with someone that I believe really wants to help me as a mentor, as a colleague, or a partner. You could have started the studio or this amazing brand deal or entrepreneurial endeavor with someone, and because you didn't want to be found out as an impostor. You didn't even link up with them, you didn't even try, and that could have been the answer to everything that you've been hoping for that you've been dreaming about this whole time. This is the effect that imposter syndrome can have on us as individuals and this is why it matters. It matters that we know it so that when we see it or that when we feel it or think those things, we can combat it and we can make sure that we're attending to it properly. [MUSIC] Sometimes the statements of things that we've received externally and even that inner critic, those are the things that cause us to really have this heightened version of imposter syndrome. We'll go into that more next lesson. 4. False Statements & Your Inner Critic: [MUSIC] I'm excited for this lesson. We are going to dive deep. As you've seen in the title, this lesson is all about talking about the false statements that have been fed to us by people, social media, society, just a plethora of areas are a part of the statements that we receive, the messaging that we receive on a daily basis can really have an effect on how we see ourselves and our inner critic. Let's just define this inner critic real quick. Good Therapy says the inner critic refers to an inner voice that judges, criticizes, or demeans a person whether or not the self-criticism is objectively justified. A highly active inner critic can take a toll on one's emotional well-being and self-esteem. In some cases, people who struggle with frequent or debilitating self-criticism will seek help from a therapist or a counselor to change their thought patterns. The inner critic can weigh heavily on us as individuals, emotionally, physically, socially, psychologically, and if you're experiencing inner criticism to the point where it's debilitating and it's stifling, I definitely encourage you to talk to someone. It could be a counselor, it could be a therapist. There's no shame in that. I just want to call that out because sometimes in our society we make things like mental health taboo, but it's not, it's a part of our overall health. We want to be healthy mentally, physically, socially, emotionally, spiritually. Why not? If there's something that's a little off or that's really causing you to struggle, seek help. That's my disclaimer. Back to the lesson. These false statements that come to us on a daily basis really play a role in how we see ourselves and how we think others are seeing us too. Also to the point why we would think that someone would think that we're an impostor. We let in some of these phrases, specifically, phrases that connect with not being successful or being a failure and we hold onto those phrases so much and so tightly, we hold onto those phrases tighter than we do the positive statements which we're going to go into in the next lesson. Our first activity is going to be writing down some of these false statements, these negative statements, these things that do not encourage, motivate, or inspire at all. We're going to write those things out. Instead of allowing them to pop up in our mind situationally, let's get them out, let's see them, let's understand what we're dealing with from the beginning, and let's take control of it. [NOISE] Right now as you can see, I'm writing in my book, so I'm going to do this right along with you. You can take a moment, you'll pause, and have time to yourself to really think through these things and just write them out and know that this may feel a little bit heavy, but we're going to go from the heavy to the light in the next lesson. We won't stay in this heavy place, but sometimes we have to deal with what's uncomfortable so that we can get to the comfortable place or the better, higher place. I'm going to start writing in my book and some of the things that I've seen or heard for myself, failure; I've been told that I am a failure and that I'm not going to amount to anything. Maybe I can put no future or not going to amount to anything. I've been called lazy. I've been called self-centered. You'll continue writing, continue to just get it out, think through, sit with it, write these things out and just keep writing when you feel like you got to that place where it's a little bit uncomfortable, take a breather, pause for a moment, take a few deep breaths and continue writing because I don't want this lingering in your mind, I want it out on paper. Then we're going to pause there. We're going to move on to the positive statements and the true statements in the next lesson. Later on, we're going to look at both and start to realize what makes these statements, these negative statements false. We're going to see it for ourselves. It's going to be the most beautiful awakening that you're going to experience in this class, but it's going to take time. First, step let's write out these negative statements. [MUSIC] Next step in the next lesson, we're going to go into the positive ones and realize some of the truths. Next step after that we're going to process everything. Let's go into the next lesson. [MUSIC] 5. Write Your Truth Statements: How are you feeling? I know that last lesson was a little bit heavy and it's okay. Let's embrace it so that we can move forward, because now we have an activity. This activity is going to give us the opportunity to write out those positive statements. Things that we've heard from people, things that we've learned about ourselves, because of the environments that we've been in or the situations that we've been in. One thing that I found that was challenging for me to do, it was actually challenging for me to write out a good list of things that I felt were positive about myself. It's so weird. It's the easiest thing to spew out, they said this about me, I felt this, the inner critic is so loud sometimes and we can fill that page. But when it comes to the good, when it comes to being more positive about yourself, maybe for others, it's like I can talk about them all day, but for yourself, maybe we've been taught that we shouldn't be boastful or we need to be more modest, or we don't want to seem arrogant or cocky, and so we limit the amount of good things we say about ourselves. But today I'm giving you permission to boast, to just big up yourself, to just be, to promote yourself in all the great things that you've done, and the great person and the awesome individual that you are. I'm going to also start asking questions while we're doing this to help you out. Because sometimes, you need that cheerleader or that coach to help you along the way and that's what I'm here to do. For example, what's something that you have been complimented for? Something that someone said, wow, you're such a great hugger. You're so thoughtful. You're the best when it comes to helping me decide on something. What are those things? Start to think about it. Think about it. Think about it. You can't get through this activity writing nothing down. You're going to realize that there's so much more than you even thought could be said about yourself in a good way. For me, a lot of friends would reach out to me when they're trying to make decisions, and I didn't realize that I was so helpful in helping people finalize things that come up with a decision or go in one direction or another. I didn't realize that I was that person until I started listening and paying attention. I share my thoughts, they're like, yeah, that's such a great decision. That's why I always call you because you're able to help me decide. That kept happening for me. Because it kept happening, I realized something, I'm great at helping people make decisions, [LAUGHTER] and that's something that I'm going to write down in my personal list. Continue to think about these positive things. Are you the person that makes people laugh a lot? Are you the person that motivates people? Are you the encourager? Are you the one that is just so neat? You're just so neat and organized and you help people fix their lives, fix their office spaces, maybe you're good at interior design. Maybe you're good at just giving people a woosah moment. You are coming to the spirit, to the soul of the person. You're just a calming presence. People like to be around you. Maybe you're good at being assertive. If something needs to happen, to take place, you're like listen, we have to do this, that, that and that, we need to get it together, and this is how we're going to do it. You're the one that structures everything. I'm just asking and talking to help you as you're writing, keep writing those things out. You have the best model, you light up the room. What is it? Whatever it is, write those things down, fill those pages, front, back. If you have more paper left, start a new page. The cool thing is as you grow as a person, as you grow as an individual, you will never exhaust the amount of positive things that can be said about you because you're going to add to that list. You're going to add to the repertoire of who you are as an individual and how you show up in this world. I'm excited to see those lists. Share them in our project gallery, share them and encourage someone else because all those things, whether you see it as small or large, they have beauty in them, that they are skills that jobs are looking for that are tucked into these things that we're writing. We're going to talk more about them as we process in the next lesson. Keep writing those positive things and then meet me over in the next lesson when you're done with your list. Let's go. 6. Process Your Discoveries: We've written out these negative statements that we receive from society, from people, from social media, from all these external factors, and then we've also talked through what the inner critic does. There's so much more we can dig deeper, but just to be aware of the things that come from the inside and also the outside. Then we went into these positives statements, we realize that the same way that we receive messaging from the external world in a negative sense, we also are always receiving messaging from the external world in a positive sense. We need to be mindful that is happening all the time as well and we need to hold on tightly to those things the same way we, hopefully at the end of this class, used to hold on to those negative things. We wrote out our list for the negative, we wrote our list for the positive and I've been using negative and false versus positive and truth interchangeably, and you'll see why in this lesson where we process these discoveries. I had failure as one of the things on my negative statements or false statements lists. It was true to me at first because it was said enough to me, being young and growing up into adulthood that I started to believe it to the point where I will still be successful in life, but that was always that nagging failure, you're going to be a failure. I found myself being this uber overachiever trying to make sure that that wouldn't be the case. I'm sure that some of you can relate to the story that I'm sharing and I want to be vulnerable. I want to make sure that you understand that I'm not coming from a place of someone speaking at you, but we're doing this together like I'm speaking with you. Although I may have overcome impostor syndrome in one area, maybe it'll come up in another area, but I'm mindful enough now to know and to recognize what those signs are as they're happening, and I know how to overcome and combat it in the same moment too, and that's what I want to make sure we end up with. Let's continue processing. I had failure on my negatives list, someone that's not going to amount to anything, and then on my positives list, I had things like action-oriented, passionate, driven, proactive, outgoing. These are not the things that sound like they exist in the same individual as the failure, lazy, not going to amount to anything individual. I had to look at them side-by-side and realize that something is off here, how can I be driven and passionate and action-oriented and proactive while also being lazy and a failure and not going to amount to anything? That doesn't add up and if these are active things that I'm being called because people are seeing it acted out in my life, then that must mean that this is false, and that's where we get to these statements being false statements versus the truth. I decided I am going to let go of those false statements and embrace the truth. Embrace the fact that these active words that people are saying about me, and these things are coming from managers, they are coming from colleagues, people that I'll meet at workshops and seminars and events. There's no way that this can be happening and then the false statements be true at the same time, no way, so I need to almost destroy and tear down the power and the effects that those negative things had over me, and embrace and hold tightly to those truths statements, and I'm going to be repetitive because I had to do it for myself too, so that we can all understand and start to really embrace the truth about who we are as individuals. Continue to process, look at those lists side-by-side. Let's take our negatives list, and then let's take our positives list, and then let's bring them together side-by-side and start to look at these things, and you'll notice, I am so confident of this, you'll notice that these positives are going to negate or cancel out the negatives and you're going to be left with the truth. I'm so excited for us, so let us talk in the discussion, let's see what's coming up for you as you're processing what was coming up for you? What did you find out about yourself? What are you from this point on deciding to not hold onto any longer because you've seen them side-by-side and you've realized the truth? That's not all, we have an activity and I am excited for this activity. This is a good one, this activity is going to take a little bit of physical effort, but not too much. For some, this may be a complete cathartic experience, for others, maybe you've done something like this before and you're excited to do it again. I call this activity, destroying the negative, destroying the false statements, let's just destroy it. This is all about being destructive in the best way we possibly can be. You're going to take your list of negatives, and if you didn't write it down on paper and you chose a digital approach, that's okay, but if you want to, for those who did approach their list digitally, maybe you want to take this moment to write them out on paper so that we can all take part in this destruction. Sounds so weird saying it like that. Take the paper of negatives, the things that you realize are false, and we're going to find whatever your preferred method of destruction is, in a safe space, you can rip this up. If you have a shredder, you can put it through your paper shredder. If you want to safely burn the paper and watch it burn away and have the ashes left, you can do that. If you want to just take a pen or a marker and just strike through all those things that you've realized we're not true and are not true, at least not now, the present you, these things are not true and you would just want to write, mark through, whatever you want to do go ahead and do it. I'm giving you permission to be destructive in this moment because those things are false, so if they're false, why continue holding onto them? Let's get rid of them today and then you can join me in the next lesson. 7. What is a healthy career journey?: What is a healthy career journey? This is not a pre-existing term, and if it is, I just don't know. But it's something that I've coined because we pursue these careers, and we go on this journey to pursue these careers. But I took it a step further and I'm like, but I want it to be healthy. I don't want it to be overrun with stress and the feeling of this weight, this burden of I must be great and just agonizing over needing to be this specific type of person or needing for it to look like this specific type of journey. Everyone's journey is different, and we understand that. What's really important is that we approach our journeys in a healthy manner. That's why I call it a healthy career journey. A healthy career journey is one where you are pursuing different goals, dreams. It could be the aspiration for a career, pursuing a certain skill set, a degree, a trade, a vocation, a talent. You're growing in a space that you're already in, maybe pursuing promotional opportunities, changing industries, whatever it is, you're pursuing something, but you want to make sure that your mindset and your overall well-being is very healthy when you're pursuing this. I want to give you an example of one part of my career journey where I went from something that could've been not so healthy to something that ended up being really healthy, and in that health, I found so much freedom. [LAUGHTER] As always, I'm going to be as vulnerable and transparent as possible so that we can be a part of this together. I was applying for many jobs. [LAUGHTER] I was looking for the next thing. I was at my then job for about, at the time, it was seven-plus years. While I was there, I was also freelancing. I was working for different companies. I was working with different individuals. I was even working with freelancers working for companies, [LAUGHTER] so I was just doing so much. I was starting my own business. I was starting my own initiatives, human rights initiatives that utilize my communication skills, my design skills, and all that jazz. But something was missing in my day to day. I had what you would call a nine-to-five. Even though I didn't work during those hours, I had a consistent job that you'd go to about 4-6 days a week. As I'm working, I started to realize, you know what, I'm not using the majority of my time throughout the week doing what I went to school for, doing what I desired to do with my time. When you're not doing what you feel really passionate about, where you feel cool to do, it can weigh heavily on your chest. It can really start to damper your mood, your days. You start to question a whole bunch of stuff. What am I doing here? Should I even be here in this place? Should I just quit everything? Should I just try and start over? [LAUGHTER] What can I do to feel better about myself in this experience? I loved my company, I loved my coworkers, but I still felt like I wanted more, I wasn't being fulfilled. I had to do something about it. I decided getting another job was the best thing. But this time, let me look for something that was strictly, strictly, strictly design. I started going on LinkedIn, shout out to LinkedIn, not sponsored, [LAUGHTER] but shout out to LinkedIn. I started going on LinkedIn and just typing in my location, like how you can filter my location, keywords like designer, illustrator, writer, communication designer. I even typed in things like human rights communication designer , human rights illustration, non-profit illustrator or designer, just anything that I thought would connect with what I really wanted to do in this season of my life. I started finding things, and I read the job descriptions, and before, being mindful, if I didn't fit 100 percent of the job description, I would not apply. This time, if I didn't fit 88, 90 percent, then it would turn me off a little bit, but I still apply. [LAUGHTER] I really have grown in that aspect in the past like 1-2 years. But going back to this process on this career journey, I was just saving. On LinkedIn, you have the ability to save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, I was just saving all these applications or all these job opportunities, and then I would go back and start applying. I'd open up my list, click, apply. Sometimes you have the ability to quick apply if you've already submitted your resume. I'm applying, applying. That looks cool, apply. I may have to move across the country. Apply, apply, apply. At first, I was doing that. Then one day, I don't know if it was a message I heard from a motivational speaker or if it was different conversations I was having with people or a combination of all of the above, I had this long list of companies to apply to and I was applying to them. Then something clicked after all these messages and the things that I was beginning to pay more and more attention to, I realized that I wasn't intentionally applying, I was just applying for the sake of applying. That's not the healthiest way to go about the job application process. So I said, let me just take a step back, let me look at this list from top to bottom, all the things that I've been saving, and let me compare it with what matters to me. What are my values? Where do I actually want to be? Do I want to be in this big-time corporate tech world? Do I want to be in this smaller non-profit world, larger non-profit world? What is it that I actually want? What do I care about? Do I care about the team more than anything? I started to apply based on my desires, my goals, and my passion points in life. I realized after intentionally applying, they weren't great fits. Where I needed to go, where I needed to work, who I was working with, the type of work that I was doing, the scope of the work, what was expected of me, all of that, they weren't really aligned with me as an individual and what would be the healthiest career experience for me. I started crossing them out or unsaving them, and I got down to three to five places. Now for these three to five places, I looked so close. I looked deeper into these three to five places and really, really asked these hard questions, and I got down to three places. These were the final three places. I decided I'm going to apply to these three places and I'm going to make sure I'm putting my best foot forward with the cover letter, with the arrangement of my resume and how the information shows up and what I'm including versus not including. I'm making sure that my portfolio and my website has everything that is necessary to prove to these people that I'm a good fit for this job. Guess what happened? I got responses from these places. More than that, I got hired by one of my favorite places on my very shortlist. I believe it was a combination of things, but definitely being intentional about who I am and what I want in pursuing this career, but pursuing it in a very healthy way, on my own healthy career journey. We're going to define what your healthy career journey is in the next lesson so that you can be very intentional and mindful as you pursue your next career move. Let's do it. 8. Define Your Healthy Career Journey: Now we're going to dig deeper into defining your own career journey. For this lesson, we do have an activity, and this activity is going to be all about the factors that play into defining your healthy career journey. I'm going to start it off for you, but again, you're going to just pause and continue writing out these answers for yourself and anything else that may come to mind, write it down as well. I strongly encourage you to write it down. Some of the main areas that factor into your healthy career journey are your skills, your values, your interests, and the environment that you want to work in. Begin writing down the answers to some of these questions. What skill set do you want to use in this new career? What are some of your interests? What are you interested in? Like, what makes you tick? What makes you smile when you think about it? What gets you excited? What's going on in your mind when someone mentions, fill in the blank? What do you dream about? What do you wake up thinking about? What do you go to bed thinking about? What do you think about throughout the middle of the day when someone even mentions it, your mind goes into this faraway place and you're like, I would love to be in a position like that? What is that for you? Another big question is, what environment do you want to be in? Where do you want to work? Do you want to travel the world? Do you want to work from home? Would you like to work in a company that has a whole bunch of offices and cubicles, window offices? Would you like to be in a small boutique company, a company with 0-50 people or 100-500 people? Would you like to work on a small team within a larger company, or would you just like the whole company to just be five people, everyone knows each other really well and everyone is really supported, and that's it? What is that for you? Start answering these questions for yourself. Start thinking about what are the values that matter most to you. Do you value teamwork? Do you value open communication and transparency? Do you value family time? Do you value holidays and weekends and having extreme amounts of work-life balance? Or do you value being go, go, go, go, go with your job and you don't mind working the majority of the week? Does your salary matter more than anything else? Or does a full, well-rounded benefits package matter most to you? Write these things down and really start to see yourself on the page. That way, when you're applying and when you're pursuing your next career move, you know what's connecting with you and what's not and whatever is not, you can just put that to the side. I encourage you to continue writing what's coming up for you with your values, your interests, your skills, the environment you want to work in, and anything else that you'd come up with. Continue to write it down and define your healthy career journey. [MUSIC] Then we'll meet back again in the next lesson where we start to create our truth cards. Let's do it. 9. Create Your Truth Card: Hello everyone. We've done so much. I commend you for all the work that you've been doing. Now, let's get to the part where we create. I'm so excited to create something right now. I get a little extra excited, but I'm really excited for us to create these truths cards. That is a project that I've mentioned from the beginning of this class. I'm going to switch places. I'm going to hop over and work on my computer. You'll walk through the whole creative process with me. I'll be working in Adobe Illustrator, but I'm also going to encourage you to use Canva if you don't have Adobe Illustrator or any other design software or even just Tactile. Some of you are amazing artists, amazing hand lettering and you are able to do all of this from cutting out a piece of paper and writing by hand and coloring and using watercolors and paints. I encourage you to do whatever your heart desires, but whatever it is, let's make sure we create these cards that will live on with us in our daily lives. Let's switch places. First I have Illustrator open. I'm going to title this file truth card. The width I already have it in. It says 3.5 inches wide by the height of two inches. It's like the standard business card size. The bleed is 1/8 of an inch or 0.125. The color mode, we have seen MYK, that's the best for printing. High-quality, 300 PPI, and click Create. When you come in, you'll see the view is large, but if you scroll down in view and go to Actual Size, you'll see that that's the real size of the business card. That's what we'll really see. Let's Command 0, make it big again and let's continue. First things first, we're going to create a shape. You can hit the rectangle tool on the left or the letter M for the rectangle tool shortcut, and we're going to see the crosshairs. We're going to go up to the top left and click and drag our rectangle tool to the bottom right corner. Perfect. I already have this layer titled background. That will be our background. Now, at the top, you see the selection tool, that if you click on any object, you can move it around. Great. Next, I'm going to show you the color area. You can see that white box or at the bottom left of the toolbar, that's another area you could change the color. I'm just going to change the color, pick any color right now. Great. It's like this reddish-orange. File, Place, allows me to place something that I've already created in the background. See this background I have from the class. I'm going to choose Place and then I'll click anywhere you see the 1/1, is just one image to place. Well, it's really big. I'm going to shrink it by clicking Shift and then dragging my cursor in. Command plus to make it larger again. Let's see a different view. I have the left side with that shape. My shape is a square. I'm just going to Shift and click and stretch from one of those outside anchor boxes, these little white boxes you see. I can pull my cursor and that's it. If you want to use an image like this, I'll show you exactly what to do to make sure the image is clipped from the box. Let's look forward-facing. We have our layer panel, the rectangle, if you click there, and then linked file, if you click there. Linked file is the image, rectangle is the shape that I drew earlier. Now we want to move the rectangle in front of the image. See rectangle in front of the linked file. Now we're going to select both by Shift-click. Now, both of these areas are selected. You could also click the background layer if you want to select both. I'm going to click Off, click the background, and then it selects both. We're going to do a keyboard shortcut of Command or Control if you have PC and the number seven. Press Command 7. It looks so nice. Now if you click the drop-down by clip group, you still see that these two objects still exist separately. They're just grouped together with a clipping mask and that's what you see there. Now, we're going to create a new layer. Lock the background and let's title these words truth statements, and that's what this is all about. I'm going to go to the type tool or click the letter T. The background is locked, so I'm good to go. Now I'll click below, click the cursor. Then you see Lorem ipsum in. Again, I will go up to the selection tool or click the letter V and then drag this over so you can see. The thing with this is, this stretches. This is similar to how you would think of an object or an image when you just click. Now, another way that you can get more texts in this phase is by going back to the text tool or the type tool, click and then you drag, drag a little bit more. Then you'll see that this text box will be filled with more dummy copy. You can left align, center align, right align, justify, whatever you want. Now, let's type into this text box here and you'll see how it wraps. I am typing in this text box to show the lovely people how this wraps. Click the selection tool again, drag down. Now when I stretch left, pull back to the right, left, right, left, right, it just wraps around. Totally different than the one-click text box. That's something you can choose to do whichever direction you want to go in. When more thing I want to show you, cool little tip. If you wanted to change where this is placed, the image is placed, you can unclick the background, drop down, drop down the clip group. Then you would select the link file because that's the actual image, and you want to move it towards the top, towards the bottom, but keep it clicked. Let's see. We're going to click this area that's this blue x within a blue rectangle. Select length of the file, drag up. I can drag to the left, drag to the right, drag up and round. You see the boundary of that rectangle is still maintaining its shape. That's pretty. You want it to be more purple, less green with some cream, you can do that. I'm just going to leave it how I had it. Now, this is free experimentation. Have fun. I'm just going to draw some rectangles. Let's change the color. I use purple in this class a lot, like lavender lilac. I think I'm going to go back around. Yeah, that's a nice one. That's a nice color. Perfect. Now, to copy instead of copy and paste, you can click Option, draw the shape wherever you want, and then you'll see a copy. Do it again, Option, click and move the shape wherever you want and then you'll see more copies. You can see my book here. You have your truth statements out right next to you while you're creating. You can also do this in Canva. You'll see the same thing. You can choose a shape. You can choose different shapes, change the color of the shape. I also have the template, so you can use that. You can really get funky, change around the type, the text, the typeface, the font, whichever word you want to use. Font and typeface are pretty much interchangeable. Now, you just see me going through this really quickly, playing around with my truth statements and my positive words, and just moving things around, seeing what fits here, what fits there. It may not be in the exact order I wrote it down in my book, but it'll definitely make it onto the truth card. [LAUGHTER] Still some judging here and there. This is so much fun to look at. It's simple but also geometric and fun. Play around with the font size. Let's keep rearranging until you feel good about it. You can even change where you put your shapes. This is looking good. Just a few more things. Both Canva and Illustrator give you help with those guides. Here are some finished cards that I did while playing around if you tried out a few different typefaces, different backgrounds, and text. How was that for you? Did you have fun while creating? Did you find it a little bit challenging because you're wondering, where should I place this or where should I place this word? Whatever it is, remember that this is all about being intentional and reminding yourself about the truth, who you are and how you show up in this world. Whoever it is that you're going to work for or work with will be so happy to have you. You just need to remember why they're happy to have you because you're great. This card is going to remind you when you're taken off guard and you have to do a quick elevator pitch for someone. Peek at this card real quick and then you're like, yeah, I am action-oriented, I am pretty organized, I am that person that people come to for decision-making, I am really passionate. Whatever it is you'll remember. I'm excited. There's so much more to come for you in your life and there's a little bit more to come in this class. We're getting closer and closer to the end. But I'm so glad you stuck it out and you're here. I look forward to seeing all your truth cards in our project gallery. Like other people's projects and encourage one another in the discussion. 10. Record Your Truth Card: [MUSIC] Bonus. We are going to record. This is not mandatory, is not something you have to do, of course but I strongly encourage you to do this. I think hearing things is great the same way we listen to songs over and over, and it gets in our system, or sometimes we hear things, and it's stuck in our mind and we don't even know why like where is this song coming from? Oh, it's something I heard while I was walking through the mall one day or someone was whistling this tune and then now it's stuck in my head. That happens. Let's do it on purpose. I want you to take your truth statement or your truth card, open up a recorder. It could be your phone and voice memos, it can be an app that's a voice recording app, whatever it is. I know almost every smart device now records audio. You're going to take your truth card or your truth statements, and you're just going to read it out to yourself. Passionate, loving. I'm not sure why I'm looking down on my hand. Pretend there's a phone here [LAUGHTER]. Pretend there's a phone here, and this is what you're going to do. Passionate, loving, caring, thoughtful, considerate, organized, detailed. Read out those things that you listed. Read out that card so that you have the physical card, but then you have the audible card as well. If you want to get all snazzy, you can put music to it, instead of that inner critic that we mentioned earlier on in this class, that inner critic will start to change. The voice of that inner critic will actually become that inner encourager, that inner motivator, you know what I'm saying? That inner inspirational speaker. Because you'll be hearing yourself back saying these words, these amazing, beautiful life reading words. Let us know in the discussion, how did you feel hearing yourself say these positive truth statements? What was coming up for you? After you do it for a few days, come back and let us know what's changed if anything, did anything change? Did you start realizing that that voice started to combat and fight with the inner critic that you had before? Let us know, write it down and encourage someone else. You've done an amazing job, I look forward to seeing it all. [MUSIC] 11. Final Thoughts: I am so proud of all that you've accomplished throughout this class. You've dug deep. You wrote out a whole bunch of statements that didn't feel good, that came from external factors, and also your inner credit. You wrote out a whole bunch of positive statements about yourself that also came from external factors and you realize that inside there's way more to you than you may have led on and on top of that, you were able to jump over a hurdle and destroy the page filled with negative statements which symbolizes you letting go of those things that were not serving you, were not helping you move forward in your healthy career journey. You've decided to be intentional and define that healthy career journey for yourself. You wrote out your interests, your values, the things that you want and don't want in a career or in a company, or in your own personal business. You have taken step after step to come to a place where your mind is falling in line with your desire, and that is awesome. I couldn't have ask for a better group of people to share this experience with. Then to round it up, you decided to put that down on paper and create your own truth cards. You've done it all. You've been so intentional and I want to commend you again for being legends. Then on top of that, you decided to, I'm just going to put this to audio. I'm going to record myself, and I'm going to hear this repeatedly. If I don't believe it now, I'm going to listen to it until I believe it, and I commend you for that as well. Let me know what you would like to see next as you pursue your next career move. Remember to share your projects in the project gallery, and encourage and uplift and help someone else as they're going through this class as well. I look forward to seeing everything that you've created. Later. We did it. You did it. I am so happy for us.