Snippet 14: Imposter Syndrome: You’ll Never Be Qualified Enough - Rupy Aujla
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Hey friends, welcome back to the Deep Dive Snippet. This is a little clip from my interview with Dr. Rupi Ojla of The Doctor's Kitchen. Now, Rupi has had an incredible career. He started off working as a doctor, as a hospital doctor, then became a general practitioner. And now he educates people about how healthy eating and healthy living can actually be a really powerful form of medicine. And Rupi has had so many battles with imposter syndrome over the years when he was first working as a doctor, starting to put himself out there online. And so in this little clip, we're talking about the idea of imposter syndrome

how all of us have it when it comes to putting ourselves out there in any kind of capacity and how we can overcome it. So I hope you enjoy this clip. - You know, this is, it was like a real cringe-worthy moment for me back then. I was so scared about what the reaction was gonna be. So I actually, yeah, I clicked play and then I jumped on a plane to Japan and then I got all these messages from people and like, "That's amazing, that's so cool." - Why were you scared? - I was just scared at the time, dude. Like, you know, a GP talking about food as medicine

Back then, when the wellness industry wasn't as established as it is now, like seven years later, it would have been seen, at least I thought it would have been interpreted as a bit cavalier. Oh, okay. Well, like you want a qualified nutritionist, therefore, how dare you talk about food kind of vibe? Yeah, that kind of vibe, but also like just generally like,

getting in front of a camera and being a doctor on YouTube and Instagram and being that kind of person. Sometimes it does feel like that. I don't know if this was your experience when you first got on because I remember hearing that I think you did like 80 odd videos before the one that really kicked everything off. But

Yeah, I was never really into social media at the time. I wasn't like, you know, someone who followed Joe Wicks and all these other people. I found out about them after I joined myself. I hadn't really done much research in that perspective. I just knew what I wanted to talk about. So it came from a place of like, just genuinely wanting to put out good content out there.

Were you worried about what your doctor friends would think? Absolutely. That you're peddling that, oh, I'm the doctor. And you're like, oh, I'm just a recently qualified GP. And like, what the hell do I know about anything? Absolutely. Absolutely. That was definitely, and it's still to this day, if I'm being honest, there is a shred of that whenever I talk about what I do. And, you know, despite that,

completing a master's in nutritional medicine, doing all this analysis, having researchers in my team and all that kind of stuff. Like I still get all that kind of stuff. I still get that like little voice in my head saying, you don't really know what you're talking about because I guess the, maybe you've experienced this as well by doing so much research in your various domains, the more you learn, the more you realize how little, you know, and that, you know, for someone who,

doesn't really want to be misleading people or anything. The scary thing is like, what if people find out how much I, how little I know, like always that in the back of my mind, I'm not a researcher that spends like day in day out in a lab reading papers all day long. Like I've got a whole bunch of other things to do and you'll never have, I'll never have, I have to, I've got better at working through this myself.

I'm never gonna know enough to completely get rid of my imposter syndrome. I just have to sit well with how I am right now and do the things that I know are helping people as much as possible. And just, just be happy with that. Cause otherwise it's, you know, you just stop making content. Yeah.

Yeah, this is the thing I hear from like once my channel started to go well while I was still working, people would be like, oh, you know, like I had a friend who was an obstetrics registrar and, you know, he and his wife had recently gone through the whole process and he was like, you know, there's a lot of misinformation out there. You know, it would be cool to do a book as an obstetrics registrar about what it was like being sort of going through the process as a patient, educating young mothers about young mothers to be about what the process is going to be like.

But he was like, oh, but I can't do it now. I need to wait until I'm a consultant because then I'll be qualified. I was like, when you're a consultant, are you really going to think that? Or are you going to think, oh, I'm a new consultant. I need to wait until I've got a diploma in reproductive medicine and I've been a professor for 20 years before I think that. And even in that position, you're probably going to think, I'm not the world's most qualified person to talk about this. Therefore, I can't talk about it.

And I think in medicine, there is a lot of credentialism, credentialization that goes on where it's like, we feel this internally. We feel our friends are going to judge us for it. Maybe some of them do judge us for it. Be like, how dare you talk about nutrition without a PhD in nutritional medicine? Masters, anyone get a master's through that. It's just a one year thing. PhD is where it's really at. Like we have this thing where we need another badge, another certificate.

to be allowed to do a thing. - Absolutely. - And I just try my best to be like, look, you don't need any qualifications. You're being a guide. You're not being a guru. It's all good. - Yeah, absolutely. Like what you've just described there has happened to so many of my colleagues who haven't got to that consultancy status. And then when they get to that consultancy, I've spoken to so many different consultants.

who some of whom have actually been on the podcast and asked for you know the you know oh I didn't really I don't I don't think I said this right or I feel like I'm too young a consultant to say these things so I'd rather not do it that's fine that's you know I'm not going to push anything but

It's a story I hear very often and it's not just with the medicine. So I'm actually gonna call someone out here as one of my good friends, a guy called Jay who is a serial entrepreneur. He's raised millions of pounds. He has a number of different tech companies under his belt, and he really wants to put out content about conscious entrepreneurship, right? He's super qualified to talk about it. He's been in the game for well over a decade.

And he just can't get over the edge. He just can't start with his first piece of content to start the wheels in motion because there's something holding him back. I'm not qualified enough. I've only been in the game for a couple of years. I haven't raised as much money as this person. So I think that sort of credentialism is,

I'm saying that wrong, but the way that we just made up that I think holds a lot of people back beyond medicine as well. You know, I remember when I was first starting my YouTube course, which, you know, we started sort of October 2020 and, you know, it has now become by far that that has been a ridiculously profitable decision. But I remember having a zoom call with two internet friends of mine who also run courses and saying to them,

you know, I don't really feel I can do a course teaching people how to be YouTubers. Like I've only got 1.2 million subscribers. And they were just like, are you hearing yourself right now? I was like, I mean, I've only got 1.2 million subscribers. Like why would anyone sign up to a YouTube course for me? Like what the hell do I know? Like,

talk to the guy's got 20 million subscribers and they were like you have no idea what you just said yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly and it's like oh really it happens everywhere i think it happens to the best of us i think you know we downplay our own uh achievements um and it's like if you don't if you don't take a moment to actually reflect on what you've achieved then

you'll never really be happy always chasing that next thing. I actually wrote in the acknowledgements of my third book, I wrote something that might be perceived as narcissistic, but it's really trying to kick myself into the gear of like taking pause, looking back at what I've achieved up to this point, even though on the day to day, I don't really think it's a big thing or whatever. I walk around like, oh, I'm a Sunday Times bestseller, yada, yada, yada.

I wrote like, take a moment to enjoy this present piece. Just take... I can't remember exactly what I said, but it was along the lines of you're doing a good thing. Keep going and believe in yourself. And that's it. And I think...

I have to remind myself of that every day. I actually have an affirmation that I read every single day to that effect because it's very easily lost in this world where we can constantly comparing ourselves to someone who has more followers or, you know, more achievements or whatever the accolades that we compare ourselves by. And it's become more prevalent, I guess, in