Imposter Syndrome

Around 70 percent of adults may experience imposter syndrome at least once in their lifetime

and 25 to 30 percent of high achievers may suffer from imposter syndrome.

It is likely you have felt it or are going through it frequently. but less likely for you to be an high achiever if you don’t know how to navigate through it.

Imposter syndrome is when other peoples views of your competence exceeds your confidence.

While you might think this doesn’t help, being overly confident might also prevent you from working well enough because you won’t commit to it enough.

One of Adam Grant’s guiding principles is to argue like he's right and listen like he's wrong.

You can use imposter syndrome to your advantage if you understand it.

It is usually related to a task related achievement that requires certain competence, which comes with Anxiety, self doubt and worry about failure if you are not confident enough.

Despite the adversity of self talk, you still go ahead and do it, you go through what it is called as the imposter Cycle:

Taking you to two different paths:

• Either you over-prepare which leads you to feel not talented enough because you had to work hard to achieve it.
• Or you left it to the last minute and through a frenzied preparation you sill delivered it but that made you feel, you just got lucky.

Either way you achieved but failed to dully recognize it and you are keep an unhelpful feeling that will just feed your insecurities.

Imposter Syndrome is just not something you remove, it might not go away, specially if you are ambitious, because it is part of the self development journey of putting ourselves in places where we aren’t 100% confident.

What you shouldn’t be doing is freezing and not doing anything, because that way, you will never achieve and live to your real potential.

When you engage in the activity and what it represents instead of focusing solely on the results, you might be surprised with the outcome and your anxiety levels all around.

You don’t change this from one day to the other either, because likely it has been engrained within you for such a long time already…

When I made it to one of the top engineering schools, I didn’t feel I was even worthy to be there. School wasn’t that hard for me as I used to procrastinate and study hard at last minute and got great results.

When I got to the university, I felt I didn't belong there and didn’t do my best, I was afraid of discovering I was not good enough and finding out I didn’t have what it took.

So, I didn’t give it my best, so I failed at some subjects and the other ones, I just thought I was lucky.

It wasn’t until when I had a self talk about what I had to do that I took a path. Either I gave it all or I would quit. I proceeded to study hard and actually fell in love with the process of overnight studying that I made it out, it wasn’t conventional but it worked for me and the group of colleagues I bonded which I cherish as long lasting friends till today.

It was detrimental for me recognizing the efforts and the results I achieved and getting validation from a small audience which were my peers back then.

I am going back to university times, something that happened more than 20 years ago, because this imposter syndrome is usually fostered in our young years. By constant competition and comparing ourselves with others, this is very must enticed by our schools, parents and society in general suggest that is paving this phenomenon from our childhood.

Do you see these types of behaviors around you?

There are a few ways that you can use imposter syndrome towards your benefit.

1. Don’t ignore those insecurities, they propel you forward, to work on them. recognize them and don’t freeze.
2. Talk with yourself about accomplishing like you are talking withe someone else. this reinforcing behavior helps us with the boost needed.
3. Compare yourself with your past self, it’s about your progress, it is your story and live, not anyone else. You don’t know what others are going through.
4. While external validation might seem relevant, validate yourself with a selected audience, be honest about it but remember that you can’t please everyone, not matter how good you are.
5. You don’t need to be the best, you need to give your best.
6. Failure is needed for success but failing doesn’t mean you are a failure. being in a secure environment, helps you with that. Make sure you surround with people that care about you.

It is supposed to be hard if you are achieving something that is worth it. By not starting you might be preventing someone from your potential. what if you could impact someone? wouldn’t you do it? only way to figure that out, is taking the first step…

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