Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

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“You think that adulthood will hit and you’ll suddenly be more capable. But that doesn’t happen, ever, does it?”~ Sally Hawkins

“You’re not very good at taking compliments,” a friend recently told me. I wanted to object, but I knew she was right and there’s really no use fighting an obvious truth. I just shrugged awkwardly. “I’m just not sure what to do with them,” I answered. As if a compliment were a tangible object, a knick-knack I never wanted or needed. It could be that I don’t think I deserve a compliment, but that explanation feels a bit shallow. I recently read that ~70% of adults feel some degree of imposter syndrome at least once in their lifetime. People experiencing imposter syndrome believe that they are undeserving of their achievements or that they aren’t as competent or intelligent as others might think.

For example, if I do well at work, I might chalk it up to luck. If I do well in a race, I might downplay the amount of work and hours of training that went into my performance. And if someone, or even a lot of people, compliment something I write, I still usually hate it. We are our own worst critics, after all.

I’m fairly affluent in a few disciplines, but I’m also baldly aware of how much I don’t know. So much so that the things I’m quite sure about…