The Impostor Syndrome

Listen to the interview.

I wasn’t lucky. I deserved it.~ Margaret Thatcher

Instead of thinking like Margaret, as a working woman, chances are this inter­nal monologue sounds all too familiar:
“It’s only because they like me”. “I was in the right place at the right time”. “I just work harder than the others”. “I don’t deserve this”. “It’s just a matter of time before I am found out”. “Someone must have made a terrible mistake”.

You’re not alone. From the high-achieving Ph.D. candidate convinced she’s only been admitted to the program because of a clerical error to the senior executive who worries others will find out she’s in way over her head, a shocking number of accomplished women in all ca­reer paths and at every level feel as though they are faking it—impostors in their own lives and careers.

An internationally known speaker and the author of The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women, Valerie Young has devoted her career to understanding women’s most deeply held beliefs about themselves and their success. In her decades of in-the-trenches research, she has uncovered the often surprising reasons why so many accomplished women experience this crushing self-doubt.

The impostor syndrome describes the countless millions of people who do not experience an inner sense of competence or success. Despite often overwhelming evidence of their abilities impostors dismiss them as merely a matter of luck, timing, outside help, charm–even computer error. Because people who have the impostor syndrome feel that they’ve somehow managed to slip through the system undetected, in their mind it’s just a matter of time before they’re found out.

Impostors, and women especially, have seriously misguided notions about what it takes to be competent. Bar none the fastest way to kick the impostor feeling is to adopt what Valerie calls  the “Competence Rulebook for Mere Mortals” which has as its cardinal rule, competence doesn’t mean you need to know everything, to do it all yourself, or to do everything perfectly or effortlessly. Instead competence is being able to identify the resources it takes to get the job done.

Whether it’s male bravado, denial, or, as some have argued, brain hardwiring, men generally don’t hold onto their failures and mistakes the way women do–at least not with the same intensity or longevity. Women can turn the same scene over and over in their mind. Depending on the magnitude of your alleged offense, an incident that took all of ten seconds to occur may take you days or even months to get over. Unfortunately it’s easy for women to take a man being less rattled to mean he’s more competent–or at least more confident–which to the untrained eye is often mistaken as one and the same.

Valerie says it critical to separate feelings from fact. Everyone feels stupid from time to time.  In these moments you need to remember, just because you feel stupid, does not mean you are stupid. Success can come at any stage of life. Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until she was 80 years old and that, of her over 1,500 paintings, 25 percent were produced when she was past 100. As Mary Ann Evans, better known by her pen name, George Eliot, once said, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” It’s also never too late to be the confident, self-affirming person you were meant to be. Just remember to define success on your own terms.

Do you suffer from Impostor Syndrome?  Ask yourself these questions:

Do you chalk your success up to luck, timing, or computer error?

Do you believe “if i can do it, anybody can”?

Do you agonize over the smallest flaws in your work?

Are you crushed by even constructive criticism, seeing it as evidence of your ineptness?

When you do succeed, do you secretly feel like you fooled them again?

Do you worry that it’s a matter of time before you’re “found out”?