After all, you are worthy of this. How to defeat the impostor syndrome and stop doubting yourself

Why did you get the idea that you are worthy to manage the company? Who are you to call yourself an expert? If these questions sometimes ask you others, this is normal. But if you yourself constantly ask them, this is definitely a problem. How to solve it, explains our friends from the Reminder project.

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What is an impostor syndrome?

“There are days when I wake up with such a feeling as if I am an impostor who has not been taking its place.” What kind of failure does this say ? Cheryl Sandberg, member of the board of directors Facebook, who worked in the Google leadership and the US Department of Finance, No. 9 on the list of the 100 most influential people in the world according to Time magazine in 2012.

“The inability to adopt your achievements internally” - this is the definition that the Psychologists Polin Rose Clans and Suzan Aims, who opened this phenomenon in 1978, were given to the Syndrome of the impostor when working with business women. Despite success, many of them showed a typical set of symptoms:

• They doubted their professional fit;
• They did not believe that they were worthy of their status;
• It was believed that they were obliged to success, not talents and efforts;
• They felt like a deceiver who could be exposed in case of error.

At first, it was believed that the impostor syndrome is characteristic only for women and representatives of social groups, which are subjected to direct or indirect discrimination. But then it turned out that the problem is wider. Such successful men as the Guru’s effectiveness Tim Ferris and the famous entrepreneur Seth Godin are also familiar with her firsthand. The Hollywood star Tom Hanks most accurately formulated the essence of the problem: “Whatever you achieve, there is a moment when you start to think: someday everyone will definitely understand that in fact you just deceive them and take everything away from you.”

Why is the impostor's syndrome dangerous?

“You pretend that you know what you are doing, but you are always afraid that you will be revealed,” Steve Jobs admitted .

The syndrome manifests itself cyclically: you take up the task - immediately begin to doubt that you can fulfill it - you have a fear of exposure - you work for wear to avoid failure - achieve success or not. The result does not change anything, because the next time the entire sequence is repeated and at each stage of the cycle causes characteristic harm. In the phase of anxiety, these are psychosomatic symptoms, sleep disturbances, panic attacks. In the phase of the load - burnout, physical and mental overwork. As a result, the risk of developing depression and anxious disorder, low self -esteem. Studies show that in a long -term perspective, the impostor syndrome interferes with career growth and manifestation of leadership qualities, creates a feeling of inability to creativity and innovation.

Why does the impostor syndrome occur?

“I am not a real writer, I just deceive myself and others,” wrote in his diary the Pulitzer and Nobel laureate, the lifetime classic of American literature John Steinbek.

Hard competition, discrimination, unhealthy atmosphere at the workplace are only the external causes of the impostor syndrome. More important - internal. According to one version, this is primarily children's experience and education. If your parents were too demanding of you, and the brothers and sisters were superior to their achievements, you learn the stereotype: to love me, I need to constantly prove my viability. But many of the impostor suffering from Steinbeck had a happy childhood.

There is another theory: an impostor syndrome can be just a special mental state to which we all are prone. This idea is reinforced by one scientific fact, marked by the social psychologist Amy Gaddy. The brain simply does not have enough resources to combine self -monitoring with a complete concentration on a difficult task. Normally, the execution of the assignment should be carried out, ideally, cause a stream state, but if you connect self -criticism too early, it slows down the creative process, and you have the feeling that you are not capable of anything.

How to stop feeling an impostor?

The impostor syndrome, although it sounds like a medical term, is actually not an officially recognized mental disorder. This is a specific model of perception, which requires not treatment, but correction. We selected six universal strategies that allow us to conduct the fact that the impostor’s syndrome expert Valerie Young calls the refresh of self -consumption.

• Do not get hung up on what others think of you. Objectively, you cannot know about it. These are just negative fantasies. Perhaps the listener in the front row at your master class grimaced simply because his tooth hurts. As the investment specialist Karl Richards explains, if you really took possession of some skill, it seems so natural to you that you cannot imagine what impression it makes on others. In fact, others, as a rule, evaluate your work better than you, because they do not know which of your ideas you managed to realize and which ones are not.
• Concentrate on your achievements. The famous blogger Kyle Eshenroder advises to make a special diary for this, where you can record all the positive reviews received. This will help you focus on your strength. Sociopsychologist Dahra Keltner proves that a sense of own power gives us a sense of security. A sense of helplessness, on the contrary, activates the "braking system", which "acts similarly to the reaction of the body to the threat."
• If you doubt that the task is on your shoulder, use the recommendation of designer Debbie Millman from the podcast Tim Ferris. Ask yourself what is more important for you to fulfill the task or prove to yourself that you are capable of something. If the result is important to you, not self -affirmation, you will not perceive failure as evidence of your failure.
• Get rid of the cargo of past ideas about yourself. Another idea of ​​Kyle Eshenroder. You are not the same teenager-sociophobe from a sleeping area who could not even dream of such a career. You are appreciated not for your past, but for what you have achieved now.
• Think that you are not an impostor, but a beginner, even if you have a lot of experience behind your shoulders. In every business for which you take, there is something new. The author of the “American gods” Neil Gaiman in the podcast Magic Lessons recalls how, after the end of the book, he told the science fiction on Gina Wulf that he finally learned to write novels, and he replied: “You can’t learn to write novels, you can only learn to write the novel that you are working on now.” We become real impostors only when we stop studying.
• And finally, the best advice from Kochch Kate Hoshi: perceive the impostor syndrome as a sign of success. If your own achievements seem so significant to you that it is difficult for you to believe how good you are, then everything is fine with you. If you had not achieved anything, you would not feel like an impostor.

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