Imposter Syndrome?
AKA: Self Doubt, Lack of Confidence, Impostor Phenomenon, Impostorism, Fraud Syndrome, the Impostor Experience. What? and How?
Feeling Like an Impostor Is Not a Syndrome.
It’s a part of life.
Millions of us. Both men and women are susceptible to impostor syndrome.
In fact, some of the most famous and successful people in the world have experienced those same feelings.
Some of the famous people who have spoken about their experience with this trait.
Sophia Amoruso - Founder 'Nasty Gal', 'Girlboss Media' and Author
Sophia Amoruso - “Is anyone ever 100% qualified for anything...HELL NO. I’m certainly not! ”
Maya Angelou - Civil Rights Activist, Author, Poet
Maya Angelou - “I have written eleven books, but each time I think ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out. ”
David Bowie - Rock Star
David Bowie - David Bowie said he overcame his imposter syndrome by just doing the work: “I had enormous self-image problems and very low self-esteem, which I hid behind obsessive writing and performing… I was driven to get through life very quickly. I really felt so utterly inadequate. ”
Mike Cannon-Brookes - Australian Software Mogul:
Agatha Christie - Author
Agatha Christie - “I don’t know whether other authors feel it, but I think quite a lot do- that I’m pretending to be something that I’m not, because even nowadays, I do not quite feel as though I am an author.”
Barbara Corcoran - Real Estate Mogul, "Shark Tank" TV judge.
Barbara Corcoran - "Even when I sold my business for $66 Million, I felt like an absolute fraud!”
Penelope Cruz - Actress
Penelope Cruz - “I feel every time I’m making a movie, I feel like [it’s] my first movie. Every time I have the same fear that I’m gonna be fired. And I’m not joking. Every movie, the first week, I always feel that they could fire me!”
Tina Fey - Comedian
Tina Fey - "The beauty of the impostor syndrome is you vacillate between extreme egomania, and a complete feeling of: 'I'm a fraud! Oh god, they're on to me! I'm a fraud!' ”
Jodie Foster - Actress
Jodie Foster - “I have varying degrees of confidence and self-loathing… You can have a perfectly horrible day where you doubt your talent. ”
Lady Gaga - Singer-Songwriter and Actress
Lady Gaga- “I still sometimes feel like a loser kid in high school and I just have to pick myself up and tell myself that I'm a superstar every morning so that I can get through this day and be for my fans what they need for me to be.”
Neil Gaiman - Author
Neil Gaiman - When Neil met Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon. Wrote Gaiman:
“And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did. Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for. ”
Seth Godin - Author
Seth Godin- “Yes, you’re an impostor. So am I and so is everyone else. Superman still lives on Krypton and the rest of us are just doing our best.”
Tom Hanks - Actor
Tom Hanks - “No matter what we've done, there comes a point where you think, 'How did I get here? When are they going to discover that I am, in fact, a fraud and take everything away from me? ”
Kamala Harris - Vice President of the USA
Kamala Harris - VP Harris article titled V.P. Harris and a Curious Case of Imposter Syndrome
Arianna Huffington - Author and Entrepreneur
Arianna Huffington - “I felt like there I finally was, but the minute I opened my mouth, people would know I didn’t really belong.”
“My mother taught me that fearlessness isn’t the absence of fear, but the mastery of it. I leaned into my fear by trying to get into the Cambridge Union (the debating society,) where I eventually became the first foreign president. ”
Jennifer Lopez - Singer, Actress
Jennifer Lopez - “I don’t let the opinions of others really influence how I think about myself, and that took a long time, because in the early part of my career I did and it made me feel really bad about myself. ”
Chuck Lorre - TV show Creator and Writer
Chuck Lorre - “When you go and watch a rehearsal of something you’ve written and it stinks, the natural feeling is ‘I stink.’ I’m a fraud. I need to go and hide.,'”
Michelle Obama - Lawyer, former First Lady of the United States
Michelle Obama - “I still have a little impostor syndrome… It doesn’t go away, that feeling that you shouldn’t take me that seriously. What do I know? I share that with you because we all have doubts in our abilities, about our power and what that power is. ”
Robert Pattinson - Actor
Robert Pattinson - “In a lot of ways, I’m quite proud that I’m still getting jobs. Because of falling into a job, you always feel like you’re a fraud. ”
Natalie Portman - Actress
Natalie Portman - “I’m still insecure about my own worthiness. I have to remind myself today, You are here for a reason.”
Louis Rossman - Entrepreneur, YouTube Celebrity
Jump to 14:30 for the crux of the video pertaining to Imposter Syndrome.
Sheryl Sandberg - COO at Facebook
Sheryl Sandberg - “And every time I didn't embarrass myself—or even excelled—I believed that I had fooled everyone yet again. One day soon, the jig would be up.”
Howard Schultz - Former Chairman and CEO of Starbucks Coffee
Howard Schultz - “Very few people, whether you’ve been in that job before or not, get into the seat and believe today that they are now qualified to be the CEO. They’re not going to tell you that, but it’s true. ”
Amy Schumer - Comedian/Actress
Amy Schumer - “Sometime after my brash and fearless girlhood I became convinced that I was 100 percent inept, totally overrated by friends and family and completely unqualified for adult life in every way. ”
Sonia Sotomayor - Supreme Court Justice
Sonia Sotomayor - “I am always looking over my shoulder, wondering if I measure up.”
John Steinbeck - Author
John Steinbeck - “I am not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people. ”
Meryl Streep - Actress
Meryl Streep - “You think, ‘Why would anyone want to see me again in a movie? And I don’t know how to act anyway, so why am I doing this?’ ”
Emma Watson - Actress
Emma Watson - “It’s almost like the better I do, the more my feeling of inadequacy actually increases, because I’m just going, ‘Any moment, someone’s going to find out I’m a total fraud, and that I don’t deserve any of what I’ve achieved.”
Serena Williams - Pro Tennis Champion
Serena Williams - “There were two Venus Williamses in our family. It was crazy… my parents would make me order first, but once she ordered, I’d change my mind. It was tough for me to stop being Venus and become the person I am.”
Kate Winslet - Actor
Kate Winslet - “Sometimes I wake up in the morning before going off to a shoot, and I think, ‘I can’t do this. I’m a fraud. ”
There is no shame in self-doubt. We all experience self doubt, a lack of confidence. Impostor syndrome may be accompanied by anxiety, stress, or depression. It is associated with thoughts like:
“I feel like a fake”
“I feel like a fraud”
“I’m a loser”
“I’m just lucky”
“They are going to find out that I can’t do this”
“I’m going to fail”
“I’m different from these people”
“I’m way out of my depth here”
I propose that we have all experienced it. 😩
One way to overcome it is with a change in mindset. You must figure out the way that you can change your feelings of inadequacy to feelings of confidence.
All any of us can do in our day to day lives is to strive to do the best that we can with the resources we have. Never do an important task half ass. Always give it full ass. 😂
If that then doesn’t live up to someone else’s standards, then that’s on them, not us. I really don’t care much what others think about my own actions, the way that I live with my standards.
Valerie Young, author of ‘The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women’ reveals:
The only way to stop feeling like an impostor is to stop thinking like an impostor.
Today I give my audiences three simple but non-negotiable strategies. And they’re much happier.
(You can hear about them in a super short 6-minute TED talk I gave at TED headquarters in New York.)
However, over the years people have asked about my original ten steps. So, here you go!
Break the silence. Shame keeps a lot of people from “fessing up” about their fraudulent feelings. Knowing there’s a name for these feelings and that you are not alone can be tremendously freeing.
Separate feelings from fact. There are times you’ll feel stupid. It happens to everyone from time to time. Realize that just because you may feel stupid, doesn’t mean you are.
Recognize when you should feel fraudulent. A sense of belonging fosters confidence. If you’re the only or one of a few people in a meeting, classroom, field, or workplace who look or sound like you or are much older or younger, then it’s only natural you’d sometimes feel like you don’t totally fit in. Plus if you’re the first woman, people of color, or person with a disability to achieve something in your world, e.g. first VP, astronaut, judge, supervisor, firefighter, honoree, etc. there’s that added pressure to represent your entire group. Instead of taking your self-doubt as a sign of your ineptness, recognize that it might be a normal response to being on the receiving end of social stereotypes about competence and intelligence.
Accentuate the positive. The good news is being a perfectionist means you care deeply about the quality of your work. The key is to continue to strive for excellence when it matters most, but don’t persevere over routine tasks and forgive yourself when the inevitable mistake happens.
Develop a healthy response to failure and mistake making. Henry Ford once said, “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” Instead of beating yourself up for falling short, do what players on the losing sports team do and glean the learning value from the loss and move on reminding yourself, “I’ll get ’em next time.”
Right the rules. If you’ve been operating under misguided rules like, “I should always know the answer,” or “Never ask for help” start asserting your rights. Recognize that you have just as much right as the next person to be wrong, have an off-day, or ask for assistance.
Develop a new script. Become consciously aware of the conversation going on in your head when you’re in a situation that triggers your Impostor feelings. This is your internal script. Then instead of thinking, “Wait till they find out I have no idea what I’m doing,” tell yourself “Everyone who starts something new feels off-base in the beginning. I may not know all the answers but I’m smart enough to find them out.” Instead of looking around the room and thinking, “Oh my God everyone here is brilliant…. and I’m not” go with “Wow, everyone here is brilliant – I’m really going to learn a lot!”
Visualize success. Do what professional athletes do. Spend time beforehand picturing yourself making a successful presentation or calmly posing your question in class. It sure beats picturing impending disaster and will help with performance-related stress.
Reward yourself. Break the cycle of continually seeking °© and then dismissing °© validation outside of yourself by learning to pat yourself on the back.
Fake it ‘til you make it. Now and then we all have to fly by the seat of our pants. Instead of considering “winging it” as proof of your ineptness, learn to do what many high achievers do and view it as a skill. The point of the worn-out phrase, fake it til you make it, still stands: Don’t wait until you feel confident to start putting yourself out there. Courage comes from taking risks. Change your behavior first and allow your confidence to build.
Permission was obtained to republish the above article.
About Valerie Young
Impostor Syndrome Institute co-founder Valerie Young, Ed.D. is widely recognized as the leading expert on impostor syndrome, Starting in 1985 Valerie has delivered her highly solution-oriented and surprisingly upbeat message to over half a million people around the world at such diverse organizations as Google, Pfizer, IBM, Boeing, YUM!, Carrier, Microsoft, Intel, Chrysler, PWC (UK), Facebook, BP, TRowe Price, McDonald's (Europe), Liberty Mutual, Dell, NASA, and the National Cancer Institute as well as at over 100 universites in the US, Canada, Japan, Europe, and the UK including Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and Oxford. Her career-related advice has been featured in Time, Newsweek, Science, The Wall Street Journal, BBC radio, and other business and popular media around the world. Her award-winning book The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It (Crown Business) is available in six languages.
See more Links, Books, Podcasts, YouTube Videos below⬇
Dive Deeper
Guest Blog: Impostor Syndrome Or How Sigourney Weaver Taught Me How To Stop Fearing Success
Feeling Like an Impostor Is Not a Syndrome
Podcasts:
Just search Spotify for ‘Imposter Syndrome’ and you will find days worth of podcasts to listen to and learn more about this common human trait.
Video:
Books:
10 Books article:
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