What if it's not "imposter syndrome" after all?

What if it's not "imposter syndrome" after all?

What if it’s not “imposter syndrome”? What if it’s your gut telling you that your skills are woefully inadequate to complete the task you’ve taken on? Here's my cautionary tale.

 

I see lots of articles on LinkedIn about “powering through imposter syndrome”. “Everyone feels imposter syndrome at first,” they say, “But you’ve got this!”

 

True. True. But hold on a second. It’s normal to feel like you’re bluffing when you do something for the first time. But pushing yourself to do something that you’re not 100% confident about isn’t the same thing as jumping into something too early when you haven’t got a clue what you’re doing. Let me tell you how I found that out.

 

My first job in advertising was in a little agency in Leeds. It was around 1996/97. The internet was changing the world, but lots of stuff was still done offline. So juniors regularly got asked to do things like pick up contact sheets from photographers or deliver things to the Post Office.

 

I was the most eager junior in the world, bounding around like a puppy for helpful tasks I could perform. So when I was asked if I could go and deliver some photos to the Yorkshire Post building in town I said, “Yes. Of course. What do you need taking?”

 

Except… I wasn’t a very confident driver. In fact, I was a nervous driver. And when I went out to the car park the only pool car available was a 2-seater Mazda RX-7. A sports car. The likes of which I’d never driven before in my life.

 

Now, at this point, what I should have done was turn around, walk back inside and say, “I don’t feel confident driving that and I’m worried I’ll have an accident.” But, of course, I didn’t. I pushed back on that imposter syndrome, powered through my fear, faced a new challenge and drove it straight into the back of a sodding Land Rover.

 

So, feel free to keep pushing yourself into new territory. Accept that everyone feels uncomfortable when they try something new. But FFS, if someone asks you to take the wheel of something you shouldn’t be driving, it’s a fool who doesn’t say, “I’m not ready for that at the moment. Perhaps someone else should do it this time.”

 

 

Adam Richardson

Freelance Creative | Art Director | Creative Director

1mo

I wish I had a time machine to go back and work for an RX7 owning agency!

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