Do you have Imposter Syndrome?
I thought I was just an imposter
When I was getting a PhD in linguistics, we were all told about imposter syndrome. They told us everybody has it, so don’t worry!
That didn’t help me at all. One of my classmates and I would just talk about how maybe everybody else had imposter syndrome, but we were actually imposters.
But perhaps I wasn’t an imposter, because when I defended my dissertation, and my committee deliberated, they came back out and called for “Dr. Pizzo.”
I dedicated this dissertation to “the impostors,” as you can see in this screenshot.1 Why not to “the people with imposter syndrome?” I wanted the people who thought they were actually imposters to be able to be sure, for once, that something was intended for them.
So it’s no surprise to me now that one of the most common questions I get as a coach for people with imposter syndrome is, “do I have imposter syndrome, or am I actually an imposter?”
I know it would be nice if I could look into your mind and measure it and test it and tell you once and for all that you are Good Enough. But that’s not how it works. And you know that; that’s why your friends telling you how smart you are hasn’t helped yet.
I can’t assess how good you are at your job, but I can do you one better. Keep reading, or skip to the punchline: my Confidence Check-In.
A better question to ask
Instead of asking “Is it true that I’m underqualified?” let’s ask “Are my thoughts and feelings holding me back?”
Because the truth is, you can have imposter thoughts and imposter feelings regardless of how good you are at your job, and they will hold you back either way.
If you’re underskilled and you have imposter thoughts and feelings, it’s going to be painful for you to study your mistakes long enough to learn from them. It’s going to be threatening to you to open up to potential mentors enough to benefit from their help. It’ll be easier to hide in the shadows and stagnate.
If you’re highly skilled and you have imposter thoughts and feelings, you’ll be at risk of passing up opportunities that you’re actually ready for, and burning yourself out by overpreparing for things that you have well in hand.
Regardless of your skill level, being secure in yourself sets you up for better performance and better quality of life.
What about overconfidence?
But wait — if you just increase your confidence, without knowing whether you’re an imposter or not, isn’t it possible that you’ll overshoot and become overconfident?
I love when people have this concern, because it shows how much they care about being a kind and honest person. But in my system, it’s not a problem. Let me explain.
It’s natural to subscribe to what I call the spectrum model of confidence, where there’s just one kind of confidence and people fall along a spectrum of how much of it they have. So a person with imposter syndrome has too little confidence, a healthy person has a medium amount, and an arrogant person has too much confidence.
That’s a valid way of defining confidence as something like “how often you believe you’re right.”2
But I define confidence differently. To me, confidence is the wherewithal to stand the fact that there are no guarantees in life. It’s a blend of self-worth and security. This means that a truly confident person does not believe they are always right; they believe that they can deal with the fact that they are sometimes wrong.
So then what’s the deal with those blustering arrogant people? They definitely exist! To me, they are compensating for a lack of true confidence with an abundance of fake confidence. So underconfident people and arrogant people are both out of touch with their true confidence, but they handle it in different ways.
For instance, an underconfident person might cope with the fact that they are sometimes wrong by not asserting an opinion at all. An overconfident person might cope with the fact that they are sometimes wrong by asserting their opinion so strongly that people are afraid to disagree with them.
A truly confident person, on the other hand, feels secure and good about themselves even when they are wrong, so they don’t have to censor themselves, and they don’t have to intimidate others. They can take risks, and they can take feedback. They can take a stand, and they can learn from mistakes.
How to find true confidence
When you believe in the spectrum model of confidence, then the obvious way to increase your confidence is with pep talks and affirmations. You tell yourself that you’re great, and other people tell you that you’re great, and you scooch up the scale.
But if there’s a difference between true confidence and fake confidence, then how do you go from imposter syndrome to true confidence — and make sure you don’t accidentally go into fake confidence?
The key is to turn towards your imposter thoughts and feelings and work through them instead of running away from them. If you run away from them, you either run deeper into imposter syndrome, or in the direction of fake confidence.
But if you work with your imposter thoughts and feelings, using proper precautions to avoid getting flooded by them, then you can find the authentic confidence that lives underneath them. The journey to authentic confidence is not a journey of escape, and it’s not the climbing of a ladder; it’s a journey to the center of yourself.
Are imposter thoughts and feelings getting in your way?
To find out, you can take my free Confidence Check-In here.
If you submit it, I’ll subscribe you to my newsletter and sent you a personalized response about what seems to be blocking your authentic confidence and where to start on unblocking it.