I'd like to welcome Katie Ford, our first speaker, who's going to talk to us, about it starts with you creating confidence in the face of imposter thoughts. And just to tell you a bit more about Katie. Katie graduated from the University of Liverpool in 2012, and she then continued to work in small animal first opinion practise and gained her certificate in internal medicine in 2017.

When she realised the power of preventative mindset strategies through her career journey, she trained as a coach, and now teaches other professionals how to use these techniques to thrive in the vet world, and she regularly helps individuals and companies on topics such as gratitude, self-worth, and dealing with imposter syndrome. So thank you so so much, Katie, for joining us. I'm so grateful to be chairing your session, and if you could share your screen and the floor is yours.

Thank you so much, Sylvia. That is fantastic. Thank you for the lovely introduction and welcome everybody.

I am really excited to be spending the next hour with you. I realise that I do have the session after lunchtime, so maybe there is a little bit of a post-perennial lull there. So hopefully we will get everyone excited and into this topic as well and.

We'll start off with a huge thank you for gifting me the most precious thing that you have, which is your time, right? You're here on a Saturday investing that time into yourself, and I think that absolutely needs to be commended and a huge thank you to the Wiki Bet and webinar vet team for inviting me along. So we're gonna be talking about exactly what Sylvia just said.

Confidence in the face of imposter thoughts, and we're gonna dive through this, and I'm gonna talk through lots on like our learning objectives, imposter thoughts, what they are, and importantly, what we can do as well. So questions, pop them in the chat box, well in the Q&A function, and if we've got time at the end, we can dive into those, and if we don't, I'm always more than happy for you to get in touch with me on social media too, so. A quick introduction to me, Sylvia covered most of this off from the beginning.

I am also a veterinary surgeon, I did my internal medicine certificate. I certified as a coach. I, I also do a lot of mentoring.

I'm a content creator, you might see me online as Katie Ford. That I've been sharing on this topic for a good few years now, so I might be familiar to many of you. I'm currently undertaking a master's degree in emotional wellbeing therapy.

I've got a professional diploma in cognitive behaviour therapy, and I'm a director of 4 different companies too. Now, we always see these lovely bios, right, wherever we go, if we're at BSAVA, if we're at a student event, if we're looking at what our lecturers have done, but the reality is that I'm not here to impress you guys, I'm here to connect with you, I'm here to speak to you as human to human, not 10 year qualified vet that's done a certificate and all these things. Let's be real in this, and I honestly think that stories do connect us and a lot of you that have heard me speak will always know that I tell a little snippet of my story at the beginning and it's because I just think it is so important.

So to give you a little bit of background, I was at vet school between 2007 and 2012, which seems like an awfully long time ago when you put it like that, but in reality, it feels like about two minutes ago. And I spent a lot of my time while I was at vet school wondering if I really didn't deserve to be there. I could see everyone else doing really well with exams.

I felt like I studied an awful amount, and then, Would do OK. You know, I passed the exams. If I'd got a particular subject that I was good at, I felt it was just because, you know, I've, I've learned more about it.

I've been revising more on that. Or maybe it just felt like it was a fluke. So I passed my exams, got to final year, passed all the exams, and was thrown out into the big wide world and still didn't feel like I'd quite earned it.

I'd have narratives coming up going, oh well, you just got lucky on the farm questions. You probably wouldn't pass those any other time. I found a first opinion job, which, on paper, looked brilliant, in reality was super hectic.

And however good the case outcomes were, I really just didn't feel like I deserved them. I just think, oh, that was really easy. Anyone could have dealt with that.

Well, you looked that up in the textbook, didn't you? Well, you know, you did ask them at the lab about that, so that's not really your outcome. And this was getting progressively more frustrating because I kept thinking, when am I going to feel like I'm doing a good job?

I really just feel like I'm, I'm hoodwinking people here. Eventually I decided I'm going to change jobs. I went to a job where they offered me the opportunity to do my internal medicine certificate, which was music to my ears at that point, because I thought, you know, this is gonna be it.

This is gonna be the time where I do this qualification, and finally, this voice in my head that tells me that I'm deceiving everyone and that I'm not good enough and that someone will find me out, it's gonna shut up. So I did it. I did my certificate.

I was one of the youngest people at that point in my career to complete their cert AVP and sit the optic exam. But guess what? I didn't feel any different, and that was really weird to me.

And I thought, is this like, what, what now? What happens now? And actually, I don't have time to go into my full story, but thankfully, I found some people to help and some methods that really did help me realise, hang on, it was never about the extra letters.

It really did start with me, and that's why I want to share some insights, some top tips, some techniques, some signposting them. Things that we can use so that if any of you, because at some point, I can almost guarantee you will at some point think my goodness, how did I get here? Because I can tell you now, you're certainly not alone if you do.

So now I've done plenty of incredible things on this list. There are things outside of work that I'm massively proud of, and I'll tell you what, Learning that who I really am, that I'm not the negative voice in my head, and also learning a bit more about imposterism and imposter thoughts helped me do things that aligned with me. So I'm envious of you guys hearing this now as students, rather than hearing it years and years down the line, because I'll tell you.

In practise for me, this really got to a really tricky point. I was overworking, I was in work every given minute because I was really scared. I wanted to make sure that everybody thought I deserved to be there.

I made sure I saw my cases every single time because I was worried someone else was going to see them, and then go. We realised that you didn't really know what you were doing, Katie. And despite everything on the outside that I thought that would make me feel like who's doing a good job, the house, the car, the senior vet title, who was on the radio, I got the certificate, I got good case outcomes, I've got clients that wanted to see me.

It was actually reconnecting with me that made a massive difference, and I know that this extends well into our profession as well. So I'm gonna share some bits if you ever do feel like you perhaps don't deserve to be there or there's anything that comes up along that topic. So let's dive in.

So we're gonna do the learning outcomes because we have to cover those and you'll see that these are gonna come up all the way through the talk here today. So we're gonna talk a little bit about imposterism, what it is and how it might show up. We're going to explain how personal development and how personal exploration can be really useful for us, because we're all human, right, at the end of the day.

So I wish I could dive more into my story, but I realise we are a little bit pressed for time. We're gonna explain what personal core values are and how we might identify our own, and we're gonna look at some exercises that we can use to improve our confidence, right? So, Let's have a dive in.

What is imposter syndrome? And you know what we're going to do from the start of this, we're going to ban the word syndrome, and we're going to make it phenomenon or experience or imposter thoughts because you know what I have noticed, I have now spoken on this topic for the last 4 years, right? I grew a big following online talking about it, many of you might have found me already.

So often when we hear the word syndrome, because we're medics, right, we hear it and we're like, oh my goodness, this is a condition that I have and it's a fault with me, and there's something wrong with me. The reality is that the word syndrome actually means signs that come up at the same time, and so often that's feeling like we don't fit in or feeling like we haven't earned it or feeling like a fraud. When we've got a challenge, or when we've had growth, or when we've had, say, an accolade or an exam result or something has happened, but we're going to step back from the word syndrome for now, because so many of us are going to experience this differently.

Sometimes it's gonna be like a little impostor moment. Sometimes it's going to be a set of thoughts that pop up, and for some people it's gonna feel like it's there in the background for a little bit longer too. But I'm here to signpost and to help you understand it a bit more so that you don't end up at the point that I was doing where I was just trying to work harder and harder and harder and make it shut up that way as well.

So what actually is it now we have ditched the word syndrome for today. So when we dive to the dictionary, it is the persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills. So, like with my story, despite the fact that I had the case outcomes, inside, I thought, oh my goodness, it can't be me, it must be because I've asked the specialist.

All the same for my exams in vet school, you know, I thought, oh, I've only passed because I revised 3 times as much as everybody else did. All the questions were just right on the day, like, does this sound familiar? Maybe.

Essentially it was first documented in the 1970s by two psychologists, Pauline Klanz and Suzanne Imes. They looked at high achieving women and started to realise that so many of them were experiencing these thoughts, despite having all these external achievements, and it's since been shown across genders as well. It's not just in high achieving women anymore.

Upwards of 70% of the population have started to have these worries, oh my goodness, do I deserve to be here? Is someone gonna find me out? Is someone gonna realise that I actually don't know what I'm doing?

So if we do experience that, we're not alone, and on a personal note, I think that actually it's probably well higher than 70%. Especially in our industry. So again, we said, how's that gonna look?

I've shared a little bit of my stories. Maybe it's an inability to internalise our achievements. We didn't feel like we earned them, right?

Maybe we're discounting compliments, self-doubting, we, we feel fearful of, of failure, maybe fearful of being found out, and we worry, perhaps we look. Under confident from the outside. But also there's a flip side of that.

You know, right, my appearance in practise, or 4 or 5 years qualified was everyone thought externally, I was doing an amazing job, because I would go in the quiet evenings and I'd stand and I'd talk about dental disease and I'd tell them all the things that they wanted to hear, and then Afterwards I'd go and think, oh my goodness, you got away with that one again. So everyone's gonna appear differently with this, so that really lends itself to us treating everybody with kindness as well, right, because we never know what's going on for someone behind the scenes. So how might that look in our careers?

So obviously, as students at the moment, this might be something to have on your radar, or it might be something that you're starting to notice little bits of it from time to time, because you're human, right? We all, we all sometimes get it. I say that was my story.

But still, I have times where I doubt myself because I'm human, right? And so many people that you look up to do. But what's this gonna look like?

Maybe it's that feeling that someone's gonna find us out that we're not good enough. We wonder how did I get here? Sometimes that's got knock-on effects, sometimes it does make us overwork or it makes us procrastinate, like, oh no, I don't, I don't want to do it cause I'm worried about failing.

Maybe it makes us feel like our success was just down to luck. I just got lucky on that one. Maybe it makes us feel like if I've made a mistake, someone's gonna realise that I don't actually know what I'm doing.

And in that moment, we forget all the reasons why we have earned it. It might be that we don't put ourselves through opportunities, or maybe we do and we put ourselves forward and we achieve it, and we still don't feel like we earned it. Maybe we're asking ourselves, like who am I to do this?

Or not accepting compliments. And as we said already as vet students, it might be going, oh, I got lucky with that exam result, or I don't think I'll ever feel like I'm, I deserve to be here. Or everybody else seems to be doing better, and they all seem to have it figured out, and maybe I don't deserve to be here.

Maybe I've I've fluked my way and maybe I scammed somebody. So if this is starting to feel familiar. The first thing that I wanna say is welcome to the club.

Right. I definitely have felt like this, and still some days do, right? Because I'm human too, but so have many of your colleagues, the clinical directors and the practises that you work at, the specialists, the locum vets, nurses, people on social media, celebrities, right?

If we want to wonder whether having astronomical global fame and success will eventually make that voice quieten down and disappear completely, let's go to Google and find some celebrities that experience imposter thoughts because there's loads of them. Your lecturers at university, especially students and everyone in between, it is OK. I get it but it's uncomfortable.

This isn't us saying, oh, you know, everyone feels it, so it won't feel uncomfortable and we just have to get over it. It's just acknowledging, you know, guys, if you ever do feel like that, you're not alone, and it's not just because you're a student, you know, actually, as humans, sometimes we all have these moments that pop up where we doubt ourselves and understanding them can really be the key, and that's gonna look different for everybody, right? And I have worked and coached individually, hundreds of people in this profession from all experiences, whether that's specialists, whether that's lecturers, whether that's clinical directors, whether that's CEOs, whether that's students, whether that's veterinary nurses, whether that's practise managers.

So I just want to let you know, if you do ever feel like, oh my goodness, did I own my space here? I want to remind you that all of you absolutely did, even though in a moment it might not feel like it. And especially these last few years of being a student, like, be immensely proud of yourselves.

You know, you have done many hard things and you've done many incredible things to date as well. But just to reassure you, you're not the only one that feels like that. When I first started talking about this, nobody was talking about it.

I just saw everybody with diplomas and certificates thinking, well, they've got it sorted, so when I get there, I'm gonna feel different. But actually, it's understanding navigating it and being a bit gentler with ourselves. So how do we actually define it?

We've said already, we don't want to call it a syndrome. Obviously, I still talk about syndrome a lot because that is a searchable term. That's how we know it.

But it's just to give yourselves permission to know if it does come up, it's like the weather. Sometimes it's gonna come along, sometimes it's gonna hang around for a little bit. It's not a personal fault with you.

I can guarantee to you that nearly everybody that you look up to at some point has wondered whether they deserve to be where they are in that moment. So how do we actually define it? Technically, in psychology terms we call it a reaction to a set of stimuli.

And often that's a set of growth. So that might be when we've just done exams, when we've had an achievement, and we'll come on to sort of the different areas for that shortly. But it's not actually a clinical condition.

It's not you have impostor syndrome, this is a condition that you've been given. Sometimes it can progress and it can have comorbidities with it. So understandably, sometimes if people experience a lot of anxiety, sometimes that can go hand in hand with feeling like an imposter because we feel like we're gonna get found out, right?

So everyone will experience this on slightly different scales, as it were, but it's just to remind you, if you identify with any of this, this is not a fault, you're a human, but at the same time there are various things that people will find helpful. So what can make this pipe up? What can make that little imposter voice that we all have within us at some point pipe up?

Maybe it's exams and achievements in your vet school. Perhaps it's when you're going into a new job, maybe it's when you graduate, maybe it's when you've got challenging cases or something that you maybe had something that theoretically has not gone to plan. Maybe it's getting certificates or diplomas, winning awards, promotions, any time we're doing big things, quite often it's gonna pipe up and that will make total sense in a few minutes when we dive further into that as well.

Hopefully this really resonates with everyone too. And I thought a really good opportune thing for us to do in this moment would be for us just to define, so we're really clear on it what an imposter is, because I just want to remind all of you that you're definitely not one. An imposter is actually a person who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive others, especially for fraudulent gain, right?

None of you are criminals, so often we're like, oh my goodness, I'm deceiving someone here. We're not. Sometimes it's more about us dropping some pressures on ourselves, which will come.

In so that was just your reminder to see that you were never an imposter, whatever that little voice tries to tell you, like we haven't hoodwinked anyone. Let's start to understand it a little bit differently. So we just touched a second ago on the fact that quite often we put different pressures on ourselves, right?

And we'll come to where they've come from theoretically very shortly. But in the 1980s, Valerie Young, who was, one of the researchers and published a lot of work on the imposter experience, as it was first called, she found five different ar. Types that people experience imposter thoughts around.

And this isn't a labelling exercise. This isn't like one of those little quizzes that we see online where it's like, oh, which one am I? Because the reality is, at most points, we're probably gonna hear thoughts from a few of them.

What these 5 different types are is just a really useful identifier for us to notice. OK. What, what pressures am I putting myself under here?

What am I noticing? What are those first thoughts that are coming up? So let me run through them and this will make more sense.

So these were the 5 different types that she outlined and they illustrate the pressures really well. So the first one is the perfectionist. This is where we feel like a fraud or an imposter if we haven't got 100%.

Right, we feel because we've been taught at some point that we should aim for perfection, or maybe we've been the type of person that has always achieved highly, and we thought we really need to make sure we get 10 out of 10, 100 out of 100 every single time, and if we haven't, we are an imposter. So we, are we asking ourselves to do things perfectly? Because at the end of the day, perfect is a mind-made construct that doesn't actually exist, certainly not within this profession, because there's so many different ways to do things, and certainly not every patient is going to read the textbook, right?

Then we've got the super person. This is the person that feels like they have to balance every single role with speed and ease, and they have to do it really easily and kind of be seen to juggle. I don't know if this is familiar to people, but I certainly resonated a lot with this one.

They feel like they should be able to just keep up with anything that's thrown at them, or we're an imposter. The soloist, this is a big one I find for new and recent graduates, is we really feel like we are only a real vet or a real veterinary nurse when we can do everything on our own. Or we're an imposter.

The reality is, in practise, there are very few things that you can do completely, completely on your own, and even 40 years qualified, there are going to have to be things that you ask for another opinion on, or that you're gonna have to get someone to come and give you some assistance with, and that is totally OK. But this is another narrative that quite often we're listening to, right, and we're doing new things. Oh well, you didn't do it completely on your own, so you must have like hoodwinked them all.

Fourth one, the natural genius, how often are people within this profession, the ones that were the gifted children when they were younger, that were quick and good at everything that was thrown at them, and then quickly they begin to think that unless we do everything with speed and ease. We're not doing it right. So actually, this is another thing.

Am I asking myself to be brilliant at this immediately, or do I need to give myself permission to be a beginner and be at the beginning of the path with it? And then we've got the, the expert, which essentially is the knowledge version of the perfectionist one, where we're asking ourselves to know everything. So success is measured in the amount of knowledge.

And again, however long we are in this profession, we are never going to get to the point where we know absolutely everything. And I know this because I've worked with plenty of specialists. So let's take that pressure off where we can do.

So these are super helpful for us just to look at and say, right, here are 5 different ways that imposter thoughts might pop up just to help us identify them. OK, I'm, I'm noticing quite a lot of pressure. Actually, when we sit back and we think about it, would we ever ask any of our friends to know absolutely everything?

No. Would we forgive that person that we look up to for not knowing everything? 100%.

So what is our story so far as we traverse our way through this session on it starts with you and we'll come to the you be very shortly as well. Experiencing imposter thoughts is common, right? I've told you, we can give you so many different examples, we've not got time for it here, and the plenty of sessions that I've done where we've used case studies and examples of people in all places in this profession.

None of us are actually impostors. We've defined what an impostor actually is. There are different types that we can use to recognise it, but they're not labels for us to own, right?

We don't have to go, I am the perfectionist, and that is me. It's just for us to notice, OK, that's a pattern that I've noticed before. So what now?

What I find is super helpful in this circumstance is for us to consider where this could have come from, right? And we are all different. I have to caveat this, but quite often there are some common narratives.

So I'm gonna start by saying our mind is a super complex thing, right? But essentially, we come into the world, we don't know a huge amount about the world. And we are handed different beliefs, either the things that have been repeated to us again and again, or things that we've seen in a particularly, I don't know, emotionally charged situation.

And that might come from our primary caregivers, that might come from school, that might come from experiences where we start to learn things about failure, maybe being scary. We start to learn things about success and what success actually is or isn't. So that might be we've been told that success is only getting 100% in something.

We've also been given a whole set of standards that we've internalised that quite often end up being these really high bars to get over that we'd never put onto anybody else. Equally, we've been taught to compare, to compete, to fit in. And these quite often philtres that we end up putting on the world.

Pauline Clan and Suzanne Imes, when they first talked in the 1970s about imposter phenomenon, said they noticed that quite often people that had been taught as younger people that actually they were the natural geniuses, they did everything with speed and ease and were always praised for that, that they had to do everything. Way, or they weren't a success. Maybe another thing that she'd seen was that actually quite often we'll compare with somebody else, that might be an older sibling, it might be a friend.

And however good we get, we compare to them and we go, Well, you know, I'll never be as good as them. So I'm just, I'm, I'm making it up as I go along, or I'm scamming somebody or I'm being a fraud. And the third one is we get handed a set of societal stereotypes, right?

So we're told what we think a vet should do or look or act like, what the rules are that we think that we should go into in society. And that goes across the board, stereotypes. So when we've got that in our head and we cross reference ourselves, to go, oh my goodness, I, I, I, I don't fit in because I'm not XYZ, because we've been given this stereotype.

So hopefully this is making sense to people because Our mind, as we said, wants to, is, is very complex, and essentially it wants to keep us safe, right? And we've got our conscious mind, which is what we're thinking in that moment, can only hold a few things. Our subconscious mind, where all our beliefs live, is massive.

So sometimes when a situation happens, it gets filtered based on what's happened to us in the past and throws up thoughts and feelings that might not always be specifically true, but actually fit in with what's happened previously. So we talk a lot about like that imposter narrative or that little imposter voice. You'll hear a lot of people call that the inner critic.

And essentially the reason behind that inner critic was to try and keep us safe, keep us away from danger. We've learned that failing is dangerous. And this is where our comfort zones come into this as well.

So bearing in mind that often that inner critic wants to keep us safe, that we've been handed loads of beliefs that we never chose, and we'll give an example of that in a minute. That actually there's no wonder that sometimes as we're doing bigger things and doing new things, that it's gonna pipe up to us and it's gonna say someone's gonna find you out. So as we move forward, I wanted to give you a quick example of how this might work.

So imagine this is the blank slate, which is you guys. As we come into the world, yes, there are a certain number of things that are going to be pre-programmed as it were, but there's lots that we learn. So what might we learn?

Failing is bad. We might learn that maybe we're, we're not deserving. We might learn that we're not that type of person, like, you're the shy one, this is what you always do.

We might learn that our grades are our whole value. I certainly learnt this one, I was always praised for doing well at school, you know, aren't you clever, aren't you clever, the minute that I didn't know something, I thought, oh my goodness, like maybe I'm not clever anymore. That success is speed and ease only, like we've only done a good job if we could do it quickly and easily.

Perhaps we've been given those stereotypes, or we've been told that, you know, we're, we're not good enough. I think to our core, a lot of humans, certainly, I know it still comes up for me sometimes, we, we feel like we're not good enough. So what's this look like in action?

We said our beliefs that we never chose quite often philtre the world, and many of those were formed when we were younger. When we weren't even aware of it, we couldn't make a conscious choice. We had a very malleable brain and we've been told that failing is scary.

We've been told success is only if we do things quickly and easily or completely on our own. How often does that stop us owning something that we have done and we have put the work into? So let me show you how that actually looks.

So let's say you're at vet school, you pass an exam, right? Maybe we've got a belief that we've been given that we never chose that says belief is only if you do it easily and quickly. Success is only if you've done it on your own, so what are the first thoughts that are gonna pop up for us?

First thoughts might be, you worked harder than everybody else, or maybe you don't deserve it, or you had help so it wasn't earned. There'll be different narratives for everyone, right, because we're all different. We've said already, we all have different experiences, so we're all gonna have different belief systems, but there will be some common ones, and the ones around success and the ones around failure tend to be fairly similar.

So what does that result in? Because however we're, what we're thinking about and the story we're listening to is gonna impact how we feel in that moment. So we start feeling like a fraud.

Is this making sense, guys? Because so often. We have those first beliefs that have screened the situation and say, oh you didn't earn it, you didn't deserve it, oh my goodness, you're a fraud, and we start buying into this bigger and bigger story.

So what can we actually look at doing, right? I'm gonna give you some tools to have a think about. Obviously we are all different.

So these are just suggestions that will be different things that help different people, OK? And the will, as you're doing big things, it would not surprise me if sometimes we get thoughts that come up and go, do you really deserve this? How did you get here?

And let's be gentle with ourselves when they do, so let's see what we can do guys. So I want you to imagine we've had an exam result or we've had a challenge that's come up, or maybe it's a comparison, because we're all great at that, right? We scroll through Instagram and then suddenly we see someone that's in our year and they've done however much on clinical EMS or they've done something on a placement or they've got an achievement and we think, oh they're so good at it.

Do I even deserve to be in this spot? And before we know it, like our heart rate's going and we're starting to feel worried and we feel a little bit irrational around it. So what's important is, in that moment just to notice.

Notice what those first thoughts are, and remember that they're not facts. That negative voice in our head isn't us, it's just based on what's previously happened, based on past experiences, and quite often it's trying to keep us safe. It's just not always doing a very good job at it, right?

So let's notice, OK, I'm noticing that I'm asking myself to know everything or I'm an impostor. How can we meet ourselves with kindness and compassion in that moment, and I'm gonna tell you about something that is an absolute game changer now, right? When we are put in a situation where we are scared or fearful, our mind is getting us ready for fight or flight, right?

It wants us to run. Our sympathetic nervous system that we all learn about is getting ready for us to run from the scary thing, because that's what it does, right? It keeps us away from things that are scary.

Imposter imposter thoughts coming up are often fear-based. Someone's going to find you out. You've done something wrong, you're not good enough to be here.

Someone's going to unmask you and realise that you're not doing a good enough job. So we start to feel fearful because we're listening to that little negative voice that we didn't choose. It comes up and says, Oh, this is going to happen and this is going to happen, and they're going to find you out.

In that instance when we feel scared and our sympathetic nervous system has kicked in. Quite often it is a part of our brain called our amygdala, which is part of our reptilian brain that wants to get ready for us to fight or flight. In that moment, our logical rational part of our brain in our prefrontal cortex has gone offline.

It is like, it is not connected at that point. So that's why sometimes we're like, Oh my goodness, rationally I know that I'm doing a good job and I do deserve it. And in that moment as we're feeling that, all our mind is going to show us, right, is stories of why we don't deserve to be there.

So a really powerful thing we can do in that second. Is actually choose some of the techniques to try and ground ourselves a little bit more and get our, our nervous system back on our side, essentially, and it's always been on our side, cos it was trying to keep you safe, but it just misread the situation a little bit. So what can we do to do that?

Essentially, one of the powerful things that we can do, and we do this a lot at Bet Empowered, which is one of the companies that I co-founded, is one of my business partners is a breathwork instructor. Our breath is one of our most powerful tools for our sympathetic nervous system, so sometimes it is literally a case of. Slowing our breathing back down, I won't share particular techniques on the call, but I can signpost you to some of them.

So for example, box breathing, it's worth bearing in mind your own individual circumstances because there are lots of people out there listening to this call that I don't know your medical backgrounds and things like that. But we can look at things like meditation, like yoga. Breathwork is probably the most accessible, free and easy thing that we can do in that moment, just to try and help get our nervous system back on side, because in that second, quite often what we do, oh my goodness, they're going to find me out when we buy into more and more stories.

I put a journal at the top because sometimes even just writing down what thoughts are coming up for us can be useful for us to just gain a little bit of space. What we do when we create spaces, we can look at them more objectively. So you know if we've got thoughts saying oh I don't deserve to be here because of this, this and this, if we've got them on a pen and paper in front of us, we can go hang on one second.

That's not strictly true. How could we meet ourselves with a bit more kindness and compassion? And talking about it as well, if there's someone that you trust that is a safe space for you, that you know will listen to you and will support you, and you've got a session with Sheedy coming up next about how to support colleagues, like having someone that will honour how you're feeling in that moment and actually hold that space for you can be really valuable.

But I cannot stress enough how useful it can be to sometimes just reconnect with our breath, give ourselves a minute, maybe it's going outside and having a gentle walk. There's lots of regulating resources and techniques we can use in that moment. And then what do we do?

Essentially, we can look at reframing the situation a little bit. So how could we look at this differently? What are those pressures that we've noticed?

So we've taken a moment to notice, and we always notice, right, without judgement. And this is a big piece of really listening on this. So often we criticise ourselves about criticising ourselves.

So actually let's look and just without judgement look and say, OK, no, I have been asking myself to do everything perfectly here, or maybe I have been asking myself to do it without any help or completely on my own, or I've been asking something on myself, or that, you know, critica's been asking something on me that I'd never ask a friend to do. How often do we do that? So that's a really powerful question that we can ask ourselves as we release those pressures.

OK, so the imposter thoughts have come up, we've reconnected to our breath, or maybe we've gone for a short walk, whatever situation works best for you, done some yoga, written it down, whichever thing helps you in that moment, cos you're an individual, then how can we start to look at this differently? What would I say to a friend? Would we remind ourselves, look, I have actually worked hard for this.

Look, here's all the evidence. There's always more to learn, right? In this profession, there's always more to learn.

We know that you've sat through clinical lectures already today. There's always more to learn. I'm 10 years out, and there is always more to learn.

Getting help is OK. We work in teams. And this is a practise, right?

This is a muscle that we flex. I still get kidnapped by impostor stories from time to time. And then the minute that I notice them, I try and grab myself again and just look at how we can speak to ourselves more kindly because with time, as we start to speak to ourselves and consciously choose how we're gonna talk to ourselves, it's gonna start to make us feel more proud.

And that's a muscle, we're gonna have to flex it and we're gonna have to practise it. And this brings us to the question because we said it starts with you. So we've given a few tools and techniques and things we can do that to bring ourselves back to this moment if we're feeling like an imposter because it's a fear, right?

How we can be gentle with ourselves. Some of the tools and the techniques that we can use in that moment, how we can look at it differently. But how can we use personal development and exploration as a professional.

So underneath all those beliefs that you never chose, right, is still a valuable, unique human being. So often we've been given stipulations saying you're only valuable if you can do this or this, you're only valuable if you've achieved all these things. Actually, let's detach ourselves from the job title just for a minute and realise you are valuable, is a full sentence.

This was a big part of my story and so many that I coaches that were like, I'll be valuable when. And if we always keep it something out of sight, we're not gonna feel it, so I want you all to remember you are all valuable as you are right now, even with the flaws, even with the things that don't go to plan. And interestingly, and I love this, and I share this every time, there was a study from Benazar at Harvard Uni in 2017 where they looked at the odds of us being born as us, right?

And they looked at the odds of our parents meeting and like them having a child and gamete formation. And again, we're all different, we realise this, but it came out as the odds of you being you were 1 in 400 trillion. Like 1 in 400 trillion.

Like, that is absolutely mind blowing. And yes, it's random, but so is winning the lottery and we'd be pretty pleased if we won the lottery. So sometimes it's just remembering like we, we are valuable and this is our path to forge.

We, we can make this work in the way that we want to, that aligns with us. So let's treat ourselves like that. And yes, we've been given all these stereotypes of what we should be and what we should do and how life should look and what our career path should look like and and how much we should have achieved by how many years graduated and all these things.

But what if we actually got to know ourselves? And what we enjoy, and how we treat ourselves and what's important to us as professionals and as individuals too. Cause this is your story within this profession, right?

So often we've been handed this is what your career path should look like, and it doesn't look like that, then you are an imposter or you are a fraud. Let's gently step away from that and start to be curious, like what do I value? What areas of practise do I enjoy?

Is it that I'm more curious about some of the non-clinical stuff? Is it that I really love neurology? Is it that dermatology lights me up and actually all my friends have told me this, this and this about it, but actually when I sit back into what I enjoy, that's what I wanna do.

Is it that you want to pursue a specialist route? That's OK. Is it that you want to be an absolute like kickass first opinion vet?

Also OK, but giving ourselves permission to learn about us and stepping away from what everybody else wants us to do as well. I have got more out of personal development than any clinical CPD that I have ever done, right, and that is no knock to clinical CPD because it is also so brilliant, but please don't underestimate giving yourself the time to learn about you. As an individual, and this isn't like a panic worthy existential, oh my goodness, who am I, who am I?

It's giving yourself permission to be curious as a student, like which topics do I enjoy, what really lights me up? What is like that little kind of voice that goes, oh, it's really exciting. I'd really like to have a look at that.

But maybe we've not done it because we've been scared of what other people are gonna think, or what our colleagues are doing and what our peers are doing, and maybe we've gone, oh no, you won't be a real bet if you're doing this. Give yourself permission to have a look at it, learn more about it. So as an opposite of imposter, I wanted to bring this definition to you to really solidify home what we've just spoken about there.

And that is authentic. And the definition of authentic is of undisputed origin, not a copy, genuine. So as we said, you're allowed to be you, you're worth getting to know.

Underneath all those beliefs that you never chose, you're enough. So often we feel like an impostor because we feel like we're showing up and pretending to be someone else. Let's tune back into what we want and what's important to us.

And then that means in that process that we talked about, when we're reframing, we can start going, OK, what, how am I choosing to look at this when we've got that rational part of our brain back online? How am I choosing to look at this? And a really valuable thing that we can do is start to look at what our core values are.

Now I realise in this call, core values could be their own complete webinar, right? I'm more than happy to give you resources if you drop me a message on my Instagram account, I can send them across to you, but our core values are essentially. What we want to make our life about, what are the important concepts in our life.

And this might be things like freedom, love, family, security, and they're all gonna mean different things to you as an individual. And knowing what's super important to us at our core, giving ourselves a chance to think about it means that as we make decisions, we can make decisions aligned with what is important to us. And that's inside and out of work, because as much as getting to know ourselves about the clinical side of things, it's worth getting to know ourselves outside of work too, because we're a whole human, far more than a job title or a job badge.

And that's really empowering as you move forward too, because that certainly means that if we've got challenges in one area of our life, we know who we are in the remainder of it as well, so we can bring ourselves that kindness. So core values are just looking at, OK, what are the most important things to me in my life, and how would that look played out in actions. So an example might be, OK, I've realised I've looked through, because generally you get a list of core values and you look through which ones resonate with you most, and then we try and group them together.

So again, I can send resources out. And we say, maybe one of my top values is security. Now, to one person's security might mean finances, to another person's security might mean like actual physical job security, being in one place, knowing what's happening over the next year or so.

And that means that they can start to play out, oh, OK, so when I'm going for my first job. Maybe I'm gonna make a decision based on this. And that's very true in lots of different cir circumstances.

I realise I am flying through core values, which is a very important piece, and it really deserves its own session altogether. But getting to know what you want your life to be about, and how do things align with that? Because this is your path, right guys?

This is your story to write. I don't want to throw this one in here because We said this again, this is your path. So often I see people in this profession going, I should have done this by now.

There's no shuts, there's no path, there's no ladder. I know it was, I think it was Isa Robson said it's more like a climbing wall, right? We can head in whichever direction that we want.

There are amazing opportunities for you. As long as we start to tune into what we want to do as individuals and looking at what lights you up, what are you interested in, and giving yourself permission to try that out if you're not entirely sure. Because I actually am 10 years graduated this time around.

And I'll tell you, I've spoken to 5 different people from my year who've all done completely different things. And they didn't think they'd achieved enough until we spoke. Now, there's two stories to that.

Either 2012 was a really rubbish year for vets, and they didn't do a very good job at training us, or do we think the answer didn't actually lie in achievement and setting standards of what we should all do and making them more of a what we could all do? And then looking at what we want to align with, like, what's important to us? Because all of you on this call can start thinking about, OK, what's, what's my path gonna look like?

What do I want from life moving forward? What am I interested in within, outside of this career? And then sometimes that can help us with the imposter side of things because we're not trying to be someone else that we feel like we should be putting on a show to be.

We can be us, right? Making sense. So I wanted to touch on as we're coming to the last sort of 15 minutes of this, building confidence.

And I think what a really important thing for us to start with doing here is for us to actually define confidence. Because so often, I know for years I used to think confidence was something that I was just going to wake up and feel, or it was something that I did or didn't have. It was a skill that I either owned or that I didn't own.

And the reality is that quite often confidence is us choosing to take action on something that we want to do. Even if we're not 100% sure of what the outcome's gonna be. And again, in context, this isn't us saying, oh, you know what, I'm going to be confident and do the spinal surgery when I'm in my first week in practise.

This is actually us saying, you know what, I'm gonna gather my resources, I'm gonna do as much as I can do, and I'm gonna take that first step in a digestible size. And confidence is also knowing that even if something doesn't go to plan, you'll do your best and you'll learn from it. Seeing everything as an opportunity to grow, we're gonna go on to growth mindset very shortly.

It's knowing that we are all unique, one off, we're not in competition. It's understandable for us sometimes to feel that when we've been told that at school all the time, and it can be really easy to fall into that comparison trap. But actually confidence sometimes is us accepting ourselves, our strengths, our perceived flaws, knowing that we're always worthy regardless, but actually backing ourselves to take that step.

But perfect, we said already perfect doesn't exist, right? We're like oh I'll only do it if I do it perfectly, perfectly is that mind-made construct. And a game changer is that confidence isn't comfort.

It's not the same thing as comfort. We're not always gonna feel comfortable doing things. Confidence is sometimes feeling uncomfortable and just like that stretch uncomfortable rather than that panic uncomfortable, and still taking action and saying, you know what, actually I'm backing myself to do this.

I'm gonna ask for help where I need it. And we can make that choice to be confident in certain situations, but it takes practise. You know, sometimes if we don't feel like we're a confident person, it's probably that we've been given a belief at some point in our life, maybe when we were younger, that we didn't choose, that told us that we are not confident.

And we can start to slowly change that. We can start to use our support systems, we can start to take those bits of action. So sometimes confidence is more as saying, You know what?

I do deserve to do this. I'm just gonna take it a little step at a time. I'm gonna use my support systems where I can do.

I'm gonna move forward incrementally rather than that huge pressure that we have sometimes to make that big quantum leap and feel like we don't deserve to be there. So what does that actually look like in practise? The first thing, and it sounds really simple, and people have heard me share this a lot, but it's actually saving our wins.

Save the staff where we get the compliments, the cards, the good stuff, because in those moments where we feel like an imposter, it's good to have a visual reminder. We've said already, while we're, we're calming down, well, we're activating our parasympathetic nervous system with our breathing techniques. Having something that we can say, oh no, actually, here is some evidence.

Here are some nice screenshots. Maybe it is that at the end of the day, and this is a super powerful tool, it's just to write down like 3 things that you were proud of yourself for during that day. And these don't have to be massive.

So often we fall into the trap that they have to be these huge big wins, Oscar wins, but actually it can be just where you did take a little bit of action, even when you didn't feel absolutely like 110% with it. And again, we do this in context, we've said this already. Reflective tools, you might find it helpful to actually reflect back on situations where you felt confident before, this might be journaling, this might actually be spending some time speaking with perhaps a coach or a mentor.

Taking things small step at a time, how often do we have those internalised super high standards where we're like, well if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna have to do it like at this level. Sometimes it's giving ourselves permission to do it a little bit at a time. Practising self-compassion, as we're building confidence is an absolute game changer.

And again, this could be a whole session in itself. Self-compassion is a huge amount of work by Doctor Kristin Neff that talks about meeting ourselves with the same kindness and understanding that we do with other people, right? So knowing that we are human and at some point we are going to have mistakes and we're gonna have things that don't go to plan.

It's not a pity party of us saying, Oh my goodness, why does this always happen to me? It's just going, this is really hard right now, I'm really sorry. You've made a mistake, you're human, that's gonna happen, what can we learn from it after we've given ourselves this grace period?

Adopt a growth mindset. We've said this all the way through, but actually quite often we've been handed a very fixed mindset. We've been told that we're either intelligent or we're not.

We've been told that either we're brilliant and we do things really quickly and easily, or for some reason we're not good enough. This is us sitting back and saying, actually, we're all capable of growth. Sometimes we just need to take a little bit of that pressure off.

So as we notice, and we've said this previously, let's start to notice what those narratives are that come up for us. Am I listening to or feeling this pressure that I should be able to know everything? Am I asking myself to do everything on my own?

Am I asking myself to be perfect at this? Where can we release those pressures and lean back into that growth side? What's actually still being gentle with ourselves and realising that comfort zones being pushed sometimes feel scary, so what can we do to help ourselves?

Anchor into the facts. So often when that little imposter voice comes up, it kidnaps us. It tells us all sorts of stories, right?

It started with one thought and it becomes 15 different stories about why we don't deserve to be there. Let's sit back, let's look at the facts. Like someone let us into vet school.

There was no mistake. I'm not doubting their abilities to know who deserves to have admissions to this vet school. I tried my best on the day and that's all that we can do.

Like, let's look at the actual facts. Give yourself permission to be a beginner, and a massive one is to use your support systems, right, and especially as we go into those first roles, we do need support, we do need someone to actually help us if we need it. We need someone to soundboard ideas off as well and value yourself enough that if you feel like you're not getting that, to be able to know there are other options and there are conversations that can be had, and to know what you need to help you thrive and you to grow.

And on that growth side of things, so we've touched a little bit on this already, but the idea of fixing a growth mindset is essentially a work of Carol Dweck from . Stanford University, she's a psychologist. And she started to notice that intelligence and success, we talked about IQ for a long time, but actually, maybe it was more around a growth or a fixed mindset.

And we're not going to just have one or the other, right? In different areas of our lives, we might have a growth mindset in some areas of our life, we might have a fixed mindset in others, and that is totally normal, like you were human, OK? It's just starting to notice sometimes, without judgement, what narrative was I listening to?

And what, what might I choose to look at that instead? What's going to be a more empowering way to look at it? And as we said, if we start to feel quite scared or quite nervous around that, using those techniques where we can, and we'll come to other sources of help as well in a minute.

But just looking here, like fixed is that intelligence is fixed, that failure is shameful, that some people are just naturally brilliant, that we take feedback personally, that maybe we're discouraged and we believe everything that inner critic says to us in that moment. A growth mindset is us knowing that we've got potential that can be unlocked. You know, there's growth in everything.

Failure is growth as well. There's opportunity and failure. People are good at things because they've built them.

Like you guys have all put so much effort in. It's easy to forget when you get so far along your own journeys that you go, oh no, actually, you know, I don't deserve to be here. Let's look back and realise all the work that you did put in there.

To learn, to reflect, to look back, we've said about reflective tools might be journaling, it might be speaking with a mentor or a coach, or just having a conversation with a friend where you do look like, what are the different ways that I could look back and see this? How could I look at this through more empowering eyes? And being our own cheer.

Leader, because I'll tell you now, I have achieved far more in my own life and with my coaching clients by us adopting that side of things, being compassionate, being kind, and being encouraging to ourselves, than having that fear motivator, which so often, again, without judgement, we slip into because we've been handed that, right? So who else can help us? This is a big one.

Everybody is different, right? And I just want to really hammer this home, that for some people, feeling like an imposter is gonna be a little thought, it's gonna be a little moment, an imposter moment that comes along when something happens. And we can use some of the things that we've got here.

We can be like, Oh, that's interesting. Let's be curious rather than critical. That's coming up.

What do I need in this moment? How can I use my support systems? Can I write these thoughts down?

Can I look at how I actually did get here? Can I realise that actually all the people that I've looked up to at some point in my life will probably felt this, and maybe this is because I'm growing. Maybe this is because I'm pushing comfort zones.

For other people, sometimes, if this becomes a narrative that's really compounded with lots of other things and it's causing a big problem on a daily basis for you, sometimes the kindest thing that we can do is reach out and speak to someone else to talk through that. Sometimes that's speaking to a counsellor or even a therapist if it's that we've had a particular incident that we want to work through and want to understand. Maybe it's that we've got big things that we want to do in our careers and actually we're like, I really want to do it, but I want someone there to help hold that mirror up, remind me who I am and challenge some of these impost thoughts as they come along.

Maybe we need a coach on board with us. You've got lots of support, I imagine, around all of your individual vet scores. And not forgetting that if you've got friends that you really trust and you all have a conversation around it as well and just say, oh, yeah, sometimes we all doubt ourselves.

Let's be in this together. Can we make this a we thing rather than a me thing and say, look, how can we support each other? How can we not shame each other if we don't know an answer?

How can we all embrace that we're all going to have different paths and look at that process. So just know there is help and support out there. If this is you and you think, oh my goodness, this affects me daily.

There is support out there and if you're not sure like which direction to head in, please do drop me a message and I can help you signpost some the resources and some of the people that are out there too, but. I wanted to just come to the end, finishing up here as well, bye. Saying how we'd started, essentially saying it starts with you, right?

And that's says learning about ourselves. It's just learning to value ourselves. It's remembering that we don't have to know everything, but we're always capable of growing.

It's remembering we're not our thoughts. You know, so often when we do new and scary things, sometimes it's going to feel new and scary. What do we most need in that moment?

How do we treat ourselves in the same way that we would do with friends? How can we learn about how we want our careers to look like in those moments where it says, you don't deserve to be here? I can tell you hand on heart, you absolutely do.

And the biggest lesson that I ever had in all of this because I spent a really long time looking to do something external to make me feel like I was good enough, and more importantly that I was enough, is that each and every one of you. We're always enough. And that isn't us saying to ourselves, oh, actually, you're always enough, therefore you can definitely do this brand new thing that you've never done before.

It's saying, Let's give ourselves the permission to be at the start with this. Let's give ourselves some credit for where we already are with this and the work that we've put on to get to this point. Let's be gentle with ourselves if We do feel sometimes like an imposter and remind ourselves that we're not, but we get it.

It's uncomfortable sometimes, that everyone that we've looked up to has felt like that, to use your support systems and to look after yourselves. And as we said, like, personal development and personal discovery is an absolute game changer. So give yourself permission to learn about you because you are totally, totally worth it.

Each and every one of you is valuable. I'd love to see some of you on socials. I'm at Katie Fordbet.

If you do have questions, you can ping them over to me. If you wanted more resources around values exercises, you absolutely can have those as well. And there are certainly a lot more sessions going on.

I know VSGD are supporting this event, and Webinar vet and Wikiett are kindly supporting the VSGD live event that's got loads of student sessions in October as well, and we'll be there live. So I'd love to come and meet some of you if you have watched this session as well. So, I'd love to see if anyone's got questions.

I realised we've got about 5 minutes left, and hopefully this was helpful. Thank you so much for having me and for your time. And just to know if sometimes you do think, oh my goodness, do I deserve to be here?

You're not the only one, and it's not because you're an imposter. Let's take some pressure off and look at the fact that we can all grow, you're all valuable, and you are all already enough. There'll be a.

Wow. Thank you so much, Katie, for your talk. I always find it so amazing listening to you because I always pick up something different from every talk.

So, I know. So thank you very much. And I'm sure that, all of the attendees found it super, super, helpful as well.

I have a quick couple of questions just before we, let's see if we can squeeze them in, shall we? And, for whoever else has questions, please pop them onto the, into the Q&A. TNA box, we have some wonderful comments here from somebody loving your energy, enthusiasm, etc.

So, brilliant, yeah, lots of thank you, and definitely I felt it come through as well, so that's why I enjoy listening to you after dinner as well, after dinner. Really, so yeah, could you, could you give us some maybe 2 or 3 examples of what are maybe some of the commonest things that vets have imposed their thoughts about? I'd say the first one is any time that they're stepping into a new role, so that might be as a new graduate, it might be when you're coming back from maternity leave, it might be if we change something completely, so we go from.

I don't know, we're completely in a cat clinic to we're going into a mixed small animal or a small animal practise. That will be the first thing is, do I still deserve to be here? The second one will be with challenging cases, when something doesn't go to plan, we forget in that moment that we're all human and we're gonna have things that don't go to plan, however much we do our best in that moment.

There might be something to learn from it. It might just be that the animal didn't read the textbook and it would be a total fluke, and nobody would have seen it coming. But I see so many in that moment go, this has gone wrong, I don't deserve to be here.

I must have done something that's, I must have scammed someone. I must not be a real vet. I must not be good enough at my job because this has not gone to plan.

And that sometimes is stepping back and giving ourselves permission again to be human. Being meet ourselves with some kindness because yeah it's uncomfortable and it hurts, and then gently looking like, how can I grow from this? And sometimes that's having someone else help you to do that.

The third thing I'd say alongside that is probably, In terms of when they do have they come to do an extra qualification or there's an achievement or something goes well. Not internalising it and thinking, well, I've done all the work and I still don't feel it. And sometimes that's because we forget all the work that we've done.

We see the certificate in front of us and we forget that it's been a gradual process of learning, building up to that. So we've just not seen it and it hasn't happened as suddenly as we thought, but reflecting that can be helpful. So hopefully that helps for 33 main ones I see.

Fantastic. No, thank you very much. And a bit of a follow-up question.

From Paul asking what tips or encouragements do you have for soul charge vets? I know that you can apply many of the things in many sort of scenarios, but any tips for soul charge bets? Yeah, I think the first one is, remember that you are never truly completely on your own there.

There is always like specialists that you can reach out to. There's always the lab, there's always like support forums. We feel so often if we're in sole charge, we're completely on our own and that can add pressure to it.

But even listing out, like, who are my resources? Who else could I actually speak to? So we alleviate that pressure because I worked in practise for years.

I was, obviously a medicine cert holder. I've got lots of specialists that used to come and visit the practise, and it's easy sometimes to think, I I have to do all of this on my own, because you're physically the only one there. But yeah, I just remind yourself, you've got all the support systems.

And to put yourself in environments where you're able to maybe discuss cases with others from other practises, because essentially we end up being a combination of the 5 people we spend most time around, right? So, let's look at, who do we want to bring into that circle with us? It's not about getting rid of people.

So often when I say that people are like, Oh, do I have to have a friend call? No, you don't need to, you don't need to put people out. It's more about who do I want to bring in.

So actually giving yourself that space to be around others, to sound board your ideas, but to remind yourself, like, there is always support and there's back up there. We're never truly on our own as much as sometimes our mind might persuade us that we are. And I think that's super important what you said about pre-thinking and listing out what your resources are because just as a quick example, when I started in practise, my first job as a new graduate was me and the boss, and sometimes, oftentimes the boss wasn't there, and literally I was on the call to the RVC where I graduated from every other day, but I just remember somebody saying in one lecture, one of the lectures, one of the professors saying we're always here for you.

Even if you leave and graduate, etc. You can always call us. And, and I actually did.

And that's something that stuck in my head, and they were so happy to help. And I, it, it was just, you know, that was a pre-thought. So totally can align with that.

And I think sort of reflecting and having done very similar as well, Sylvie and myself, actually, they were the times we learned loads. I was always on the phone to specialists, even when I had a medicine certificate, and I'd always have an insight that I picked up from them. About a case that then I could use moving forward as well, because just like I was explaining at the beginning of my story, so often we'll say, oh, I asked for help, so I don't deserve it.

The reality is like, you did the work, they just gave you like that little nudge. They gave you a little bit of direction, which, which is fine. And also, when we're Vet school we learn where the reliable sources of information are.

Like we don't end up just putting out the whole of our Instagram or Facebook, what should I do with this? We, we say, oh, you know what, actually, who, who are the sources of information that are gonna give me trusted reliable information, and it's gonna be here, here and here. And in that moment when you're panicking, if you've maybe got that list like Sylvia said, it's pre-formed, you can go, you know what, maybe I'll give them a ring.

I'll speak to somebody else as well because there's always someone that's going to be there to support you and still give ourselves credit even if we ask for the help with it because that's fine. We're all human, right, so thank you, Sylvia. Absolutely.

And just to quickly wrap up then, . Do you have any sort of sentences that you that you tell yourself when you are feeling maybe those kind of thoughts popping up, and this is something that I personally ask a lot of my friends, and so I'm almost building a list of what works for who, and it's just beautiful to see that everybody has something different, and you touched on failure, and one of my go to is failure, success and progress. Yeah.

You know, from Albert Einstein. So what is it, what is it for you? Oh, Sylvia, there are a lot of quotes in my head right now, but the first one that comes to mind, because my biggest thing for me when I was in practise feeling like an impostor was always about cases, and it's a quote from one of my own mentors, Richard Wilkins, and it's every genuine mistake was just a good intention that didn't go according to plan.

Because in that moment where there's a mistake, so often that narrative piles in saying you did this on purpose, you're a bad fat, you're not good at your job. And actually, it brings you back to knowing that in that moment, you did your best with the resources that you had, and that's gonna look different every single day. So that quote used to be written on my desk at work and had that there for years just as a.

You know what, yes, you can grow from it, but in that moment you did it with a good intention, right? We all practise veterinary medicine with good intentions with kindness, like we're here because we want to do good. So I love that one.

I feel like I'll come up with about another 10 that I'll have to message you afterwards, Sylvia. Sounds fantastic and a very nice conclusion to our chat, so, and to your presentation. So thank you very much again, Katie.

Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, fantastic.