Dealing with Imposter syndrome

Are you questioning whether your success is well-deserved? You are not alone with this feeling.

Imposter syndrome comes with doubt in your abilities, whether your accomplishments are deserved, and at times you may feel like a fraud. If you have these experiences, chances are that you are a high-achieving professional, who finds it hard to accept you are doing great at what you do. Many people find it challenging to accept and internalise their success – this challenge may also come with the need to let go perfectionism (we have another blog post which deals with this), and believing that we are good enough and lovable, even when early life experiences may show a different pattern.

A few steps that can help you to deal with imposter feelings:

(1) to be able to identify and acknowledge them;

(2) seek support from trusted peers and supporting professionals who encourage your efforts to develop your skills;

(3) search for facts – is there anything that supports your beliefs? Are you maybe being to harsh on yourself? Would you evaluate the circumstances similarly if someone else were in your situation?;

(4) wherever possible, it is more helpful to compare your current self with your previous self instead of comparing yourself to others – every person is unique;

(5) plan for and visualise positive outcomes – it is usually more manageable to reach them compared to letting the fear of failure take over.

Finally, you could ask yourself the question of how certain narratives can be rewritten. For instance, when everyone in your team has great skills, instead of worrying about when they will find out that you may not (yet) be at the same level, you may well conclude instead how lucky you are to be part of this team and acknowledge that there is much to be learnt by working with them.

Some more insights on the imposter syndrome can be found here.