💡 Impostor Syndrome Is Lying to You (Issue 146)
Don't let someone else determine your value
“If you have impostor syndrome, you're probably not very good at your job.”
— Recent post from an internet stranger
Sorry, stranger, that’s just not true. I completely disagree with that sentiment. The research shows that it isn't the case. In fact, it’s usually the clueless people who never suffer from impostor syndrome.
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
— Bertrand Russell
The condition was first identified in 1978 by the psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes. It has been estimated that 70% of people feel like an impostor at some point in their careers.
I know that I’ve experienced impostor syndrome before. However, looking back on my corporate career objectively, I must have been doing something right. I worked at some of the best tech companies in the world (e.g., Apple, IBM), and I was once promoted six times in six years (from a Senior Designer to a Vice President of Consumer Products). Yet, I still doubted myself at times.
Looking back and looking around, I can now see that I was damn good at my job. I’m not saying that to brag. My point is that this internet stranger is full of crap. People can be good at their jobs and still suffer from self-doubt occasionally.
So, if you have ever experienced impostor syndrome, you’re not alone, and you are actually probably good at what you do. It just means that you’re self-aware. It probably also means you have high expectations of yourself. These aren’t bad things if you can keep them under control, recognize when impostor syndrome is kicking in, and regain your confidence.
In their book, If I’m So Successful, Why Do I Feel Like a Fake? The Impostor Phenomenon, Harvey and Katz called out three indicators of imposter syndrome:
Believing that one has fooled others into overestimating one’s own abilities.
Attributing personal success to factors other than one’s ability or intelligence, such as luck, extra work, charisma, or an evaluator’s misjudgment.
Fearing exposure as an imposter.
The cycle of feeling like an impostor and dismissing your successes often follows this pattern (does it sound familiar?):
You’re faced with an important task.
You doubt yourself and your ability to succeed at this task.
You’re a perfectionist and fear failing the task.
So, you procrastinate because you feel overwhelmed.
But you pull it together at the last minute and work like crazy to get it done under immense time pressure, stress, and anxiety.
Surprisingly, everything turns out well, and you’re successful.
But you don’t believe that you deserve success. It only happened because you worked like crazy at the last minute and got lucky.
You feel like there is no way you can repeat this success, so the cycle starts again with the next task.
Battling my own impostor syndrome
I’ve been on a journey of personal career transformation ever since I quit my last corporate exec job in Silicon Valley Tech in 2010. I would like to tell you I left my impostor syndrome behind when I left the corporate world behind, but that’s not true. Unfortunately.
Instead, it accelerated and climbed to all-new heights as I began pursuing a new career as a strategic advisor and founding my own tech startup. I raised $1.3M in funding, incorporated the company, became the CEO, hired a team, and immediately experienced the crushing weight of feeling like I was in over my head.
Of course, I really was (as any honest startup founder will tell you). But the impostor syndrome made the gut-wrenching fear, doubt, and anxiety almost unbearable. The good news is the startup failed (good news?).
Well, that failure certainly didn’t feel good at the time. Believe me, shutting down the startup was one of the saddest moments in my life. I went through a long period of darkness, as many founders do. I should have been honest about that and talked with someone, but I didn’t.
Let me take a moment and tell you that you shouldn’t suffer through something like that alone, and you don’t need to at all. There are online resources to get help.
The silver lining of this experience (i.e., the good news) is that it forced me to reevaluate my career and life goals completely. I was at a crossroads:
Should I try again and spin up another startup? That’s the Silicon Valley Cinderella story we all love to read.
Should I even stay in tech at all? I had invested over two decades in that career path, so leaving it seemed insane.
Or, should I set that all aside and go deep on what I really wanted for my life, if I could live anywhere I wanted and do what I really wanted to do?
I came face to face with myself, looked deep inside, and thought long and hard about who I really was. Not who I wanted to be. Not who I may have aspired to be, or even pretended to be. Not the layers upon layers of “me” that I had developed since childhood.
I dug deep until I got to who I really am at my core. What I’ve always enjoyed doing. What I’ve always been good at doing. Who I was before people began telling me who I should be. Also, admitting what I suck at doing, and what I simply don’t enjoy doing. Ever. No more pretending.
Below, I will share my five core truths/strengths/talents to explain why I think that accepting these and centering my career on them made my impostor syndrome vanish. Obviously, we all have different natural talents, strengths, and interests. Your core truths about who you are will be unique to you. So, don’t focus too much on what mine are.
But here is the key point: someone else’s recognition or praise does not generate the core truths about yourself. They can’t be taken away by someone else’s criticism either. Failure doesn’t affect them.
They are neither good nor bad. They don’t have some sort of rating or score associated with them.
They simply exist.
They simply are.
1. I’m an explorer
I enjoy the “new.” I’ve always explored and wanted to keep going farther and farther. I’ve never thought to score or rate myself as an explorer. Is that even a thing? I don’t know. I don’t care. It simply gives me joy.
It’s been a part of who I am from a very young age. I remember going on field trips with my grade school class and getting in trouble with my teacher. I would get too far ahead of the group. I would go too far. I wouldn’t want to turn back when it was time to leave.
Now, whenever I travel and land in a new city, I drop off my bags, and I start walking the streets. I stroll and explore, with no particular destination. I walk for hours and hours, sometimes until very late at night. I just want to explore and experience the city: the real city.
2. I’m a learner
I’m not saying that I’m a good learner or a bad learner. I simply enjoy learning, and it is what I can’t help but do every day (in some way). It is what I’ve always done, as far back as I can remember.
I’m a voracious reader. I have eclectic interests. I’m a jack of all trades. I just like to learn new things. It isn’t subject to someone else’s approval. It isn’t a good or bad thing.
Yes, I was that weird kid who would walk to the library through the snow and spend hours reading, sitting in a big chair by the fireplace. I was the kid who always had too many books checked out.
I’m that adult who is seriously considering going back to college again. I enjoyed the experience of learning that much. Maybe that makes me a freak. But, I’m at the point in my life that I no longer care if people think I’m a freak.
3. I’m relentless
I’m persistent to the point of being quite stubborn (just ask my wife). When I discover something new and start learning it, I can’t stop. I go deep. I become obsessed. I want to learn everything I can about it. It’s probably why I ended up with a Ph.D. in psychology. I’ve always been fascinated by how human beings think and behave.
This persistence has made me relentless with my work and problem-solving, too. There have been times I simply couldn’t stop working on something until I solved the problem. I would forget to eat. I wouldn’t sleep.
Many people might see this as a bad thing. Some might see it as a good thing. In the end, it doesn’t matter. It’s just who I am. I’ve accepted that it won’t change, and no one can take it away from me.
4. I’m a teacher
Until recently, I never would have described myself as a “teacher.” I’ve never had a professional job as a teacher, and it has never been an official part of my past roles. But it has certainly become central to what I do now as a career, business, and life coach. I guess that it’s always been there waiting for me, but it took me decades to recognize and embrace it.
Of course, people can be considered to be excellent or poor instructors. But that’s not the point. It’s just something I’ve always done in my personal life, and it always crept into my life at school and work too.
I can’t help myself.
I explore, learn, go deep, and then I want to tell others what I’ve discovered. I want to teach people what I’ve learned. I’ve found that this is useful and interesting for some people, who appreciate and need help.
I know that my behavior is extremely annoying for other people who don’t want to hear about my latest discovery and don’t want to be “taught.” Again, ask my wife about this.
She’s been the unfortunate recipient of this behavior for over 35 years. But, she’s also the one who helped me recognize what I should do with this core truth about myself.
5. I seek justice
No, I’m not Batman (I wish). I’m not talking about pursuing criminals and delivering swift justice. And I have no desire to become a lawyer or judge.
I’m talking about the justice and fairness we witness in our daily lives. I deeply believe that good, decent, and kind people deserve better. I also believe that malicious, manipulative, and deceitful people don’t deserve to profit from their selfish behavior.
This was one of the biggest problems I had with working in large corporations. It drove me crazy to witness the political maneuvering of the Machiavellians in the office, using deceit and exploitation to get ahead.
Now, I get to work with good people who have run into issues with the bad ones at work. They struggle to be recognized and to succeed. It makes me angry when good people like this have to deal with a string of bad bosses and toxic coworkers.
This is also why I now offer life coaching. Good people encounter bad people in their personal lives as well.
Accepting this justice-seeking truth about myself also helped eliminate my impostor syndrome. I no longer have to pretend to be a heartless exec who is okay with good people getting laid off while some jackass gets promoted. Working with good people 100% on their behalf allows me to embrace this core truth about myself and live up to it.
Does talking about my truths seem like I’m bragging about them? I hope not. I don’t see them as anything special. In fact, many people in my life have complained about them. I didn’t ask for them. I didn’t cultivate them. They’ve just been a part of me for my entire life.
I set them aside, ignored them, and didn’t even recognize them until recently. But looking deep inside and recognizing these truths changed me. I stopped trying to be what I was not, and would never be. Instead, I focused on creating a life and career that could be centered on them.
Why my impostor syndrome eventually disappeared
You’ll notice that none of my core truths were about being some genius, a wildly successful billionaire, or the world’s greatest leader. No one would ever compare me to Albert Einstein, Richard Branson, or Steve Jobs. Most importantly, I no longer compare myself to someone like that either. Or anyone else, for that matter.
My core truths are just what they are, flaws and all. They aren’t particularly impressive. I don’t need to prop them up. I’m honest about them.
Impostor syndrome exists when you fear that someone else will discover your lack of amazing talent or abilities.
Maybe it’s part of growing older. Maybe it’s part of leaving my past career behind. But, I no longer fear being exposed as lacking talent, because I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the smartest or most talented person in the room. I’m okay with that. That’s not the value I bring to my relationships with others.
I’ve survived. I’ve made mistakes, and I’ve learned from them. I’ve found my way around obstacles to achieve goals (that relentless thing again). I’ve had enough success that even I finally had to admit that it couldn’t all be because of luck.
I’ve had a good life, and I’m happy. I’ve figured out how this crazy working world works, and now I really just want to help others navigate it so that they can be happy, too.
How to deal with your impostor syndrome
It’s not unlikely that 70% of you reading this have suffered from impostor syndrome. Maybe it comes and goes. Maybe it makes you feel sick to your stomach every time you achieve some success, and you still feel like the whole facade is going to come crashing down.
If you feel this way, I’m going to ask you to take some time to invest in understanding yourself.
Stop defining yourself by who you think you should be, or the expectations that others have placed on you. Stop letting yourself be judged by talents and skills that you secretly feel you don’t really have.
Instead, center yourself on the deep truths that have been core to who you are for as long as you can remember. Think back on your life.
Reach back to your childhood to see the patterns. Talk with friends and loved ones who have known you for a very, very long time.
Your truths will reveal themselves as consistent threads that keep cropping up in how you work, live, and interact with others. They are part of defining you as “you.”
They aren’t necessarily good or bad.
They aren’t granted by anyone else.
They can’t be assessed or measured by anyone else.
They just are.
And that is the secret to eliminating impostor syndrome. Center yourself on who you truly are. Be radically honest about your strengths, talents, weaknesses, and flaws. It’s okay to be a normal human being. Really, it is!
Discard the labels and assessments being used to measure you by what you really are not. You can’t be revealed as an impostor for something you no longer define yourself as being. It is incredibly liberating!
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
I’m not saying that you don’t need other knowledge, skills, and experience to do your job well. Of course, you do. We all do. But they don’t have to define you. That’s an important distinction.
Your manager’s assessment of these skills (good or bad) should have no impact on your own sense of worth. The knowledge and skills are helpful and useful tools. But they are not who you are.
I’m also not saying that you don’t need to make a good impression on others to get hired for a new job. But you don’t need to be fake.
Being fake might get you in the door, but maintaining that facade will make you miserable. You’ll be much happier in your next role when it aligns with your core truths and your true self.
If you have any other tips for managing and eliminating impostor syndrome, please share them in the comments. There’s no reason for any of us to suffer with it any longer.
Want to uncover your core truths? Schedule a complimentary call with me and let’s chat!
I’m Larry Cornett, Ph.D., an Empowerment Coach who works with ambitious professionals to help them reclaim their power, become more invincible, and create better opportunities for their work and lives. Do more of what you love and less of what you hate!
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