3 Techniques to fight imposter syndrome

Throw away your self doubts and build your self esteem.

Imposter syndrome

What’s Inside ?

• A post about how to fight imposter syndrome

• Interesting “thing” of the week

Did you know what is common between Tom Hanks, Emma Watson, Maya Angelou and Jacinda Ardern ?

Apart from being good and hugely popular for their work, they have all reported dealing with “Imposter syndrome“.

In simple words, translated to “Self Doubt“, this syndrome is not something that you face on rare occasions or before making big decisions, Self-Doubt, is more complicated and inherently internal battle of confidence.

Lets first look at what exactly is it ?

What is it ?

According to Cambridge dictionary, it is defined as

Breaking it down, it is a feeling that you don’t qualify to deserve what you have achieved and essentially a rejection of your capabilities and their outcomes.

Let’s take an example - Imagine you just cleared an examination and scored a first class distinction, you look at the scores and the first thing that comes to your mind is - “Is it real ?” - Yes, this is Imposter syndrome.

Let’s take another one - You worked hard and prepared really well for an interview to your dream company. You have cleared 3 rounds of interview and just completed the fourth round, you don’t know if there is yet another one and you are waiting for the outcome of the last one.

At this moment, you start thinking any of the following

1) “wait, I have killed 3 rounds, may be that’s already a good achievement and going past the fourth one is really not my capability”.

2) “May be, it was just luck that I came this far”

3) “What if I don’t clear the next one having come this far !”

It really does not matter what your thought process was, having one of the above thoughts shows that you are affected by this syndrome.

On the topic of interview, you can checkout my other article on acing your interviews here

Why is self-doubt a problem for me?

You might ask this question, my answer is that - I consider Imposter syndrome as one of the most underrated and often ignored reason behind communication blackouts or even hesitation to grab opportunities. Let me explain this in detail,

Communication blackouts

I am sure many of you have experienced instances where you went in-front of a crowd/on stage and just completely forgot what you had to speak !!

or you were part of a group discussion, and as it progressed, you felt overwhelmed at not getting a chance, you subdued yourself and went silent !

All these could be because of the inherent problem of self-doubt. You doubt that you would fluently make it through the speech or you would communicate your point of view clearly, this is why you take an easy way out - you stay silent.

Hesitation to accept opportunities and challenges

The number one reason which differentiates successful people and normal people is the willingness of the former to grab opportunities and make a career around them. A normal person, affected by self-doubt, seldom looks at challenges as opportunities but instead with fear, a fear of failure. Hence receding to a safe path, the one with lesser “probability” of failure, the “road often taken“ and not the “road not taken”.

Now, you tell me using this short poll, did you ever face this situation ?

What are the reasons behind this phenomenon ?

Now that you know how pertinent this issue is, you would be happy to note that it is not an individual situation. Research suggests that nearly 70% of individuals will experience signs and symptoms of imposter phenomenon at least once in their life.

Depending on the situation, circumstances and the individual itself, there are numerous reasons why this can occur, but I have identified a few important ones that you can read about

1) New Environment/Experience

I consider this as one of most applicable reason that people can identify to.

Having never been in an environment or having not experienced something, could cause you to underestimate your abilities.

a new job, a new country, a new social setting are all some examples of these different circumstances.

Did you know, even the great Larry King just froze on his first talk show that he could not even introduce himself ?

If it can happen to one of greatest communicators, you can be sure that it is natural.

2) Lack of preparation

This is another reason that could trouble your confidence and raise self-doubt. When you not prepared, you naturally won’t be in a position to speak, answer or act in a way that exudes confidence which eventually leads to the situation of self-doubt.

3) Individual behaviour

It is possible that a few people with certain behaviour type and personal circumstances are more prone to self-doubt than others but this is something that can be changed over the course of time with adequate external help.

Having looked at why this happens and what are its effects, lets look at some simple to follow techniques that you can use to fight this

Technique 1: Be honest

This is the tip, I practice and have taken a cue from Larry King himself - just be honest of your current situation.

It is simple, lets say you are stuck in this self-doubt cycle and are just going down this deep hole, take hold of your thoughts, pause for a moment and start talking to yourself about the current situation you are in and be honest and casual about your current situation.

Lets go back to the example of the interview - you are now waiting for an outcome of your previous round with a growing feeling of self-doubt, this is when, you should pause for a moment and start talking to yourself, something like - “well you see, I just smashed my last round, the questions I answered where just like the way I prepared, I even answered a few just based on my capability”.

You don’t have to go overboard trying to motivate yourself, if you do, you will realise that it will leave a fake impression, just talk through you current situation (positive/negative) and be honest.

In another way, it could be something like - “ Okay, I did answer 2 of the 4 questions, pretty accurately, but the other 2 were potentially wrong, so If I would be selected, that would be based on my approach of the correct 2 answers”.

Do you see the impact of this approach ? Practice this technique and you can thank me later.

Being honest also helps to draw a “True” picture of yourself.

Technique 2 : Think about your past glories

Every individual has a number of “glory“ moments, times when you felt “proud” of yourself, use them as a leverage against self-doubt.

The technique is to just play them in your mind. The mind is incredibly powerful in recreating the pictures and situations with striking detail from the past. so much detail and with evoking emotions that you would be blown away and would be bound to strike away the thoughts of self-doubt .

Past glories also have an additional benefit of generating positive thoughts and vibes.

Technique 3 : Connect with higher power

If the first two techniques were directed in-ward, this one is more “outward”.

If you are believer in God, there is no better technique than connecting with the Higher power. This therapeutic step puts a lot of perspective in a number of divine ways that your current situation will appear very minuscule and in turn boost your confidence.

You can try meditation, which helps connects you to your inner self and unlock you hidden potential.

Conclusion

In times, when faking takes centre stage, it is very important to present a strong, confident and honest picture of oneself and winning over self-doubt helps us gain this advantage.

Interesting “thing“ of the week

In today’s interesting “thing”, I would like to share this very nice tweet I did last week.

I will leave it to you to ponder, reflect and practice.