Here’s a little quiz for you: Are you a high achiever who worries you’re a complete fraud who has bamboozled your way to success? Do you believe all the career accomplishments you’ve racked up are due to lucky breaks? Do you become uncomfortable when your superiors praise your work and live in fear that one day you’ll be exposed as an incompetent failure?
If you answered yes to all three questions, it may give you comfort to know this: psychologists estimate that 70 per cent of the population feels the same way on occasion. Tina Fey, Sheryl Sandberg, Maya Angelou and Meryl Streep are but a few of the women who’ve admitted to feeling like imposters at one time or another. So you’re in good company.
Imposter syndrome isn’t just a pop psychology term. It’s a real thing. Two American psychologists identified the syndrome during the ‘70s and theorized that it uniquely affected women. Since then researchers have found it to be an equal-opportunity malady that affects people in all walks of life and refers to anyone who believes their success is due to luck as opposed to talent and has trouble owning it.
Among its sufferers are perfectionists who set such high standards for themselves that one little mistake can send them into fits of self-flagellation, during which they question their entire value and competency, and superwomen and men types who push themselves to out-work everyone in every sphere of their lives then freak out when they start falling short in one area, which they inevitably do. While psychologists say there are many reasons that can cause people to feel like imposters, often the feelings boil down to one theme: their need to be loved or feel lovable is tied in some way to achievement.
I’ve certainly felt like an imposter at different times in my career, and over the years I’ve mentored enough talented women who privately doubt their own worth to know how debilitating (and ultimately self-sabotaging) imposter feelings can be.
So, what’s the cure?
One solution that has worked for me is to acknowledge that I’m having the feelings in the first place. Then I observe those feelings and make a conscious decision about whether indulging them will help or hurt me. I learned to choose my feelings, thoughts and attitudes each morning in the same way I choose my outfits, and I definitely got better at deciding which ones I was going to indulge and which ones I was going to ignore through the practice of meditation.
Over the years I’ve become a huge proponent of training myself to choose the feelings I want to have instead of allowing the ones that aren’t going to do me any good to victimize me. Of course learning to choose your feelings takes mental discipline, but if you suffer from imposter syndrome, I can promise you that learning how to think like a non-imposter will be well worth the effort.
Try it the next time those debilitating feelings hit. Let’s say you’re in the middle of a performance review and your boss is giving you constructive criticism. Training yourself to see his or her input as something separate from you, as valuable advice that can help you grow instead of proof positive that you’re a total faker, is the first step towards talking yourself down from the imposter ledge. If the feeling persists, ask yourself what makes you think you’re any less qualified for the job than anyone else, then make a list of all the reasons why you’re actually more qualified. If the feeling still lingers, visualize yourself killing it. Then visualize that scenario again and again. If you still can’t shake the feeling, try the scientific method: compile all the evidence that proves you’re an imposter and all the evidence that proves you’re a hugely accomplished success story, then line that evidence up side by side and analyze it.
I have a feeling you’re going to come out on top.