Episode 48: Answering Your Questions on Imposter Syndrome
Do you wonder if you suffer from imposter syndrome? Think your work and life should be in balance? Many people ask me questions about these topics so I put together a podcast to address them and many others.
This week is all about getting your questions answered.
What You’ll Learn:
- The definition of imposter syndrome
- Why striving for excellence rather than perfection is the way to go
- How men and women experience imposter syndrome differently
- How to release the grip of self-doubt
Listen to the episode above or stream it on your favorite podcast app:
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Episode 48: Answering Your Imposter Syndrome Questions (Transcript)
This episode is a little different this week. I get many people reaching out to me via social media and email asking me questions about imposter syndrome and I thought it would be a good idea to address them here with you.
I took the most popular ones and am going to dive deeper into them. So grab a pen and something to write on, OK?
The first question is:
What is imposter syndrome?
This one got asked a lot and I’m glad because it’s been watered down over the last few years and has become a buzzword for self-doubt and that’s not what it is.
Let me give you a little history.
It was first called Imposter Phenomenon by the doctors who did the research among high achieving women and wrote their paper on it in 1978 – Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes – both PhDs.
It is NOT a psychological disorder and there is no diagnosis for it.
Syndrome replaced phenomenon in the early ‘80s. A syndrome is defined as: a set of concurrent things (such as emotions or actions) that usually form an identifiable pattern.
Imposter syndrome is part of a larger pattern.
- The belief we’re not as intelligent, capable, qualified or talented as other people think we are
- Despite clear evidence of abilities and past accomplishments. We can see the degree or high sales or promotion.
- Externalize our success: discount them, dismiss them, we explain them in terms of outside factors – luck or timing (right place right time), “Simplicity” (If I can do it, how hard can it be?), connections/help (family business and got foot in the door) or personality (praised because they like me)
Broadly based in the workplace environments.
Industries: Law, medicine, energy, higher education, tech, commercial real estate, policing, manufacturing, engineering, consulting, financial planning, healthcare, finance/banking…
Professions: scientists, programmers, doctors, professors, chemists, researchers, judges, attorneys, executives, entrepreneurs, psychologists, engineers, HR professionals… No profession is off-limits.
The fear around IS is that we’ll be found out. They’ll discover that we aren’t as good as they thought we were. Hence the FRAUD part.
Why is perfectionism so bad?
Perfectionism isn’t what it seems. If you’re baking and trying to make a “perfect” pie because you want it to look appetizing to your guests – no harm no foul. It’s a single situation.
It’s when it becomes the way you do everything in life, that it can become a problem.
Perfection is about not putting your work out into the world until it is perfect. There are a lot of delays and checking with others for their opinions. There’s redoing and editing and telling your team they have to do better and work harder. There’s a lot of micromanaging and doing things your way…
Done is good enough – said no perfectionist – ever.
Perfectionists raise the bar to an unreachable level and set themselves up to never measure up.
To be clear, perfection doesn’t exist in humans. It exists in math, science, engineering – these are all places where it’s a good thing. We don’t want leftover pieces when we assemble airplanes, right?
Perfection holds you back. It helps you hide, and it requires a standard that can’t be achieved. It’s a no win for all.
Do I still have imposter syndrome if I don’t feel like an imposter?
Let’s go back to what it is:
- The belief we’re not as intelligent, capable, qualified or talented as other people think we are
- Despite clear evidence of abilities and past accomplishments = can see the degree or high sales or promotion. DISMISS
- Externalize our success: discount them, dismiss them, we explain them in terms of outside factors – luck or timing (right place right time), “Simplicity” (If I can do it, how hard can it be?), connections/help (family business and got foot in the door) or personality (praised because they like me
If none of those exist, then I would say no, you don’t. People confuse imposter syndrome with any self-doubt they may feel. They are not interchangeable. Self-doubt is such a normal part of the human experience, especially if you are attempting to do something you’ve never done.
I didn’t think I could make a chocolate soufflé until I made one. But I didn’t secretly fear that anyone would find out I’m not a culinary whiz in the kitchen.
What’s the difference between confidence and self-confidence?
This is how I define them:
Confidence comes from being able to do something well.
You’ve done it over and over again, with some mishaps along the way, but eventually, you’ve gotten to the point where you don’t think about it. Confidence draws on evidence of things you’ve been able to do or achieve in the past.
You drink a glass of water pretty confidently, right? You don’t worry that it will dribble all over the front of your shirt.
You drive a car.
Make your meals.
Text and use a computer.
You’ve done all these things in the past, so if I asked you to make dinner for me, you’d feel confident doing it.
Self-confidence is what you think about yourself.
I define self-confidence as being secure in yourself and your abilities. That no matter what happens in your world, you have your own back.
If you believe you can only do things you’ve accomplished before, how do you expect to create new results in your future? You have to rely on your self-confidence.
You’ll notice that when babies learn to walk, they don’t just pop up on their feet and walk. They’ve never done that before. They have crawled. They have scooted. They have pulled themselves up and possibly taken a few steps around the room while holding onto furniture.
That’s confidence. They don’t have the language for it – but it’s confidence because they’ve already done these things.
So when they want to walk and try to take a couple of steps, that requires self-confidence because they are attempting something they haven’t before and believe in themselves that they can do it.
Have you ever seen a toddler try to walk and plop down? Do they say “Oh I can’t do it. I’ll never be able to walk. I’ll be a crawler my whole life.”
No.
And seriously, I wish there was a thought bubble above their head. Wouldn’t that be so amazing to know what they were thinking!
Where does confidence come from? Self-confidence?
We need to expand on the other question.
It comes from you – yourself. What you think about yourself. This is key because so many people have such difficulties with their self-doubt. They believe everything that their brain tells them.
My first piece of advice on that is this: Don’t believe everything you think.
Our brains have between 60K and 100K thoughts pass through on a daily basis and the majority of them are negative. AND 85% of those thoughts are just a repeat of the thoughts of yesterday, last month and a year ago.
We’re just recycling our old, negative thoughts without questioning them.
We need to notice what we’re thinking and become an observer of our thoughts. That’s the only way to make shifts.
You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge.
How do you release the grip of self-doubt?
There’s no magic pill that will get rid of self-doubt once and for all. I’m sorry to be the bearer of that news. But there is good news, too. You have the power to reduce the amount of self-doubt you carry anytime.
Our brains are hardwired to pay attention to negative things more than positive things. That’s why it’s so hard for some people to see the glass as half full.
Our primitive brains, in the back of the skull, let us know we should be scared – fight, flight, freeze or fawn – and we make decisions based on that.
You don’t go for a promotion because your primitive brain comes up with all the reasons why it’s not “safe” for you to do so: being seen more, larger scope of the job, more responsibilities, leadership – perhaps things you don’t have much experience in.
It’s when we hop up to the prefrontal cortex – the part of our brain that’s behind the forehead – that we may feel the fear, but we move ahead anyway. We trust ourselves and our abilities.
Left unattended, self-doubt can wreak havoc and turn into crippling fear.
Fear keeps you stuck. Keeps you playing small. Fear holds you back from creating the career and life you crave.
You need to notice what you’re thinking. That’s the first step. Notice what your brain is dishing up as fuel for your day. Is it negative? Self-defeating? Worry?
Document all those thoughts and decide if any are high-value or useful.
(If it’s self-doubt, the answer will be a big fat no to all of them)
Then you choose a new thought that has value and will help you move forward. Be sure to choose one that is believable to you, nothing that’s too much of a stretch.
Example: I don’t know enough. I’m no expert
This thought might hold you back from speaking at your company’s annual conference or taking the lead on a project.
You can’t choose a new thought like: “I know everything about this and I’m an expert” because your brain will shoot back all the evidence to prove that wrong so fast that you won’t recognize it’s trying to keep you in a box.
So choose a thought like, “It’s possible I know enough about this.”
I like to use this with my clients – It’s possible…
Then they get to fill in the blank on what’s possible for them.
How do men and women experience imposter syndrome differently?
Here’s an interesting fact. Men and women experience it equally, but women are 20 times more likely to talk about it than men are.
Males were 5x more likely to turn to drugs or alcohol to deal with it, to push it down.
Men tend to toughen up and push through the fear despite the huge emotional and mental and physical costs that came up.
Women tend to wait until they tick every box and get input, not take credit for achievements.
Imposter syndrome is one of the hidden drivers of the gender pay gap. Women are holding back. As they move up, they get retriggered with imposter syndrome and may leave the company rather than deal with it.
Men will go after a job even though they only have 3 out of 10 qualifications.
Our society grooms men and women for success differently. Men are groomed to move up, be the breadwinners, be strong, brag on their accomplishments, etc. Look at sports. Women are groomed to be caregivers, nurturers, AND have a high level job, but don’t talk about how good you are at any of that. They shouldn’t brag.
What a contrast.
Both are afraid to fail, but…
The majority of women (81% on one study by KPMG) believe they put more pressure on themselves not to fail than men do.
That more men are admitting to imposter syndrome reflects a growing awareness that the costs of impostor syndrome extend beyond them as an individual. That organizations also pay a price when bright people play small, procrastinate, become workaholics or perfectionists or any other behaviors “impostors” use to cope with the anxiety of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
This means leaders of both genders need to understand how to manage, mentor, and support their employees and peers who struggle with impostor feelings.
When did working hard become a bad thing?
I’m not sure it has. I think the definition of working hard has changed for employees, but possibly not for leaders.
Since the 1980’s, the expectation of the length of the workweek has changed dramatically. It used to be that you went to work for 8 hours and then went home.
We didn’t have computers at home in the early days 1960’s and 1970’s, but that all changed in the eighties when home computers became more commonplace.
Fun fact – home PCs cost between $1500 for a basic model to $3000 for the full model. It was clunky and definitely not portable.
We used to have a 40-hour work week and since the economic boom of the eighties, companies continued to increase the workload and expectations of long hours each day.
Increasingly, workers are being stretched and expected to complete work within an 8-hour workday that really takes more like 2 days. So now we have people who are burned out because they take work home.
A typical day for my clients looks like this:
- 5:00 am Wake up, gym
- 6:00-shower
- 6:30-hop on laptop to get a jumpstart
- 7:30-get kids off to school
- 7:45-hop back on computer or begin commute.
- 6:30 – leave work
- 7:00-dinner
- 7:30 or 8:00 – back at work on their laptop trying to complete what is possible
- 11:00 or 12M-bed
That isn’t sustainable for anyone. Our health – mental and physical – suffers. What you’re seeing now is a revolt against a very old and outdated norm that overworks people and doesn’t account for the human factor.
We all need to have a life. There’s no such thing as work/life balance. That would indicate that things are balanced – equally, never moving. And we all know life doesn’t stand still.
Nothing does. Molecules and atoms are moving.
So I like to say we’re balancing work and life because that’s more fluid and accounts for the unexpected.
Final Thoughts & Next Steps
OK – whew! That was a lot of information and I hope that helped you have a better understanding of imposter syndrome – what it is and what it isn’t. I also want to hear from you on how you plan to stop allowing it to derail your success.
Which of The 4 Derailers™ do you have? If you’re not familiar with that concept, you’ll be excited to learn that I’m coming out with a brand new video and workbook combo that will walk you through them and how to release their grip on your mindset. It’s a game-changer for sure. Stay tuned! That’s coming out by the end of January. SO excited to share it with you!
If you are ready to partner with me to create the kind of year you’ve been dreaming about, let’s get after it. Schedule a Discovery Call with me today. It’s the first step to creating the career and life you crave. No more waiting. Just do it.
Alright, that’s a wrap. Keep those questions coming. I love hearing from you.
And until next time, remember:
I believe in you.