Four Reminders When You Get Impostor Syndrome
Read This If You’re Bugging…
If you’re a normal human being, a creatively gifted individual, or someone with a lot to give to the world… chances are that you’ve had moments when you suddenly doubt yourself. You look through each of your accomplishments, tweets, pictures, or old conversations and say WTF.
The term “impostor syndrom” was coined in 1978 by Georgia State’s psychology professor Pauline Clance and psychologist Suzanne Imes during a study about high-achieving women. These are the moments in life when you question yourself and say “am I a fake?” or “what do I even know about this?”. It was popular enough to get its’ own feature in the dictionary and unfortuantely it happens to the best of us.
Here is a compiled list of 4 reminders to come back to whenever you feel impostor syndrome coming about. Remember, you will come back again and that it never stays dark for long.
#1 — You Don’t Have To Be Perfect
“Benign” perfectionists, who do not suffer feelings of inadequacy, derive pleasure from their achievements and don’t obsess over failures.
Perfectionism is often the trigger that leads down the rabbit hole of doubting yourself. There is no need to be perfect. If you had everything right here you would be done, isn’t it cool that we keep waking up with more time to continue being great? After all, Nipsey Hustle was not playing when he said it’s a marathon, not a race. If you’re doing something because you love to do it, try reminding yourself that it’s more about the doing then it is about the end goal.
Keep an eye out for self-saboting, downplaying your own success, and habits of downing yourself. Neurotic impostors can get creative when it comes to destroying their own success. It’s as if they don’t want to be discovered. Enjoy the journey and release the pressure from yourself. You have all the time in the world to get better at your craft, build your network, and show the world all the cool things you continue to do.
#2 — You Don’t Have To Save The World
The world doesn’t need a savor. Whether you believe in God, Buddha, or the Easter Bunny, we can all safely say that the world we live in has already been created by something greater than us. We also know that the world went on before us and will go on after us. You could fall off the face of the planet right now and the world around you will find ways to move forward. Because it’s inevitable, no matter how much we wish we could stop the world for the people we love we just can’t.
This is a beautiful thing however because it means that we can release ourselves from the pressure of wanting to help others all the time. It’s only so long we can go about putting more energy towards the needs of others than our own. The best thing that you can do for the world is create a better world for yourself. Find happiness, success, warmth, fun, joy, and peace within yourself and with the world. This is all you have to do.
#3– Learn to Clap For Yourself
From the moment we’re born, we are taught lessons and given examples to look towards the crowd for validation and approval. “If you do good on your test, you get a pizza party”, meaning “if I do bad on this test, I don’t deserve pizza”. There are so many examples of how this plays out in the long-term, mainly the development of neurosis. Neurosis can be defined as a “poor ability to adapt to your environment, an inability to modify one’s life patterns, and the inability to develop a richer, more complex, and more satisfying personality”.
The boom of social media also didn’t help us in restructuring our brain patterns. No matter how much we don’t care about the popular consensus, it’s hard to ignore the differences that are wired in your brain. Like which of your photos qualify as 10k+ likes quality and which are only 20+ likes worthy. Your brain automatically calculates and finds way to integrate this knowledge throughout your life.
While a lot of things may be working against you, you can’t give up on yourself. Not only can you not give up on yourself, but you also have to cheer yourself on! Continue rooting for you whether you get 23 likes or 5,789.
#4– You Have TIME!
The rise of humanity and technology has been the downfall of our patience. We want fast food, fast cable, and fast results. We want to start a project and complete it in a month. We want all of our success as quickly as possible. We want to know what happens at the end of the movie. This is your reminder that you have time.
You don’t have to accomplish it all today. You don’t have to be perfect today, or ever really. You don’t have to fix all of your mistakes and do all the shadow work right now. The best way to live life is to live it on your own terms. Wake up each day and pick the pace that you feel. Set goals that make sense or don’t set goals at all. My point is that you shouldn’t rush the process, this should be a fun time that you’re having while living.
