This imposter swoops in erasing confidence.
Toss in any introverted tendencies and you've got a perfect storm for discounting yourself.
3. You’d think success would quiet the doubt.
Not so.
In fact, it can get louder.
It raises the stakes with more people relying on you.
More visibility. More ways to fall.
4. A client said "Building this business from scratch I know every detail. But sitting in that room it feels like I'm pretending to be CEO." A young doctor spoke along those same lines. So did a product team manager and a strategy designer.
I've seen savvy achievers, people able to juggle multiple high stakes projects, also be adept at pulling the rug out from under themselves.
Or close down their voice.
5. As a new college teacher I once asked students to grade their own projects. Guess what happened? Students who did great work downgraded themselves.
Part of what's called the Dunning-Kruger effect, people with keen abilities often underestimate their competence.
6. Any creative is designed to question things.
Including themselves. It's inherent to the territory.
Self-doubt, in the domain of the creative, isn't a negative.
But it needs attention.
It chases you down until, turning to it, you figure out how to utilize it.
Let's not collapse self-cdoubt with creative sdoubt.
7. What I like about Imposter Syndrome is its' fleeting physical sensation -designed to get your attention.
(A cousin to deja vu?)
8. Reshape Imposter Syndrome not as a phantom but as a messenger.
Not as something to fight but a signal. A cue a new identity is making itself known.
Well-managed, self-doubt signals competence, not deficiency.
9. Here’s the reframe:
We live in gravitational tension between our past and future momentum.
Imposter Syndrome clues us in on the gap between these.
It asks us to BFF our future self more than we usually do.
10. Feelings of hesitancy don't have to be evidence of being a fraud.
It can be proof you’ve outgrown the intensity of the call to be someone else, in clothes that just aren't a fit anymore.
Consider you may feel more at home in a lab coat of your own design.
11. Imposter Syndrome has its Job-To-Be-Done, but so do you.
You showed up?
You just arrived to the moment?
The question isn't whether you belong.
The question is what will you do with the fact that you walked through that door?
12. When you feel like you don't belong, maybe you're meant to change what happens in that room.
3 PROMPTS
Next time your Imposter pipes up -
1. Pause to reframe the Imposter as Invitation.
Shift from doubt to curiousity.
2. Be ready to respond.
Talk to it.
Tell it who you are becoming.
3. Prepare what you’ll say.
Jot it down.
It will need to hear from you multiple times.
Curious what this looks like in practice→
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