Is imposter syndrome just bad math?
Imposter syndrome + self doubt =/= truth
Self-doubt is the voice in your head that says, who am I to claim this authority? To call myself an expert? To write a book and expect people to care?
When we experience what we perceive as failure, we feel self-doubt. To address the feeling, we might try comparing ourselves to others to see if the self-doubt is valid.
Then, imposter syndrome takes the measure of a room and says, everyone else in this space is more qualified than I am, and, I haven’t earned this respect, or, I don’t deserve to be here.
And the two feed off each other, creating a vicious cycle.
Here’s the funny thing about imposter syndrome – just like abusers never think they’re abusers, actual imposters never even suspect they might be an imposter.
And here’s the other thing – imposter syndrome has nothing to do with your worth. The feeling comes from using the wrong metric to measure your value and track your success.
Imposter syndrome happens when you dream about something you want to accomplish and, naturally, look to the people who already have what you want. You see a friend or colleague with a shiny new published book or award and maybe think something like, I should also be published by now. (or have finished my 2nd, 3rd, 4th book, etc.) I’m so far behind, even though I’m working so hard on this every day. Maybe it’s because I just don’t have what it takes. Maybe they’re just a better writer than me.
But the truth is we’ll never really know the whole story behind that book, or that award, or that moment of success. We’ll never hear the heartless criticism they got from an editor or critique group, we’ll never experience the times they scrapped a book and started over, we’ll never know how many times that book was rejected by agents, or how many awards they were up for and didn't win. We’ll never see all the books they dreamed of that never made it this far.
When you compare yourself to people you admire you inevitably come up short because you don’t have the whole picture and you never can. The practice of measuring your value or tracking your progress using someone else’s journey is inherently flawed. There will always be too much you can never know about how they got where they are.
It’s like you’re trying to measure out liters of water with a yardstick – doomed to fail because you can’t hold water in a yardstick– and part of you knows that.
It’s just bad math.
Because the only person whose journey you will ever be able to witness with clarity is your own.
In my next post, I’ll talk about why we ever start to compare ourselves to other people in the first place. For now, keep writing.
