This post was originally published as an episode of the Effective Faith Podcast. You can listen to that episode here but I am revisiting it for the blog because of some things I have seen recently on Social Media. This version therefore has some new elements. The question is what is imposter syndrome? How to overcome imposter syndrome and how not to overcome imposter syndrome.
Specifically I came across a tweet where the author suggested a small trick to increase engagement with you posts. Add the phrase “Psychology says” at the beginning of your tweet. The argument is that this is relevant to any content that may boost mental health or performance. Some of the comments suggest that this is a great hook for your tweets. This is important for the discussion of imposter syndrome. None of us are the finished article and we are all works in progress. In any area or discipline that you may want to speak into, we will all have some experience and some qualification and none of us will be an inerrant authority on the subject with nothing left to learn. Imposters are those who pretend to be something they are not. Imposter Syndrome is when we fear that we are not something that we are. Therefore, I do not believe that claiming an authority that we do not have is a good thing to do, and it is not the antidote to Imposter Syndrome.
But anyway – lets get to the post.
My name is Frank William Abagnale.
From 1964 to 1967 I successfully impersonated an airline pilot for Pan Am Airways and I flew over two million miles for free. During that time, I was also the chief resident paediatrician at a Georgia hospital and an assistant attorney general for the State of Louisiana.
It’s one of the opening lines from a favourite film of mine – Catch me if You can. The film, based on the real life of Frank William Abagnale Jr tells the story of a man who is perhaps one of the most notorious imposters in modern history. He impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor and a lawyer despite having no training or experience for any of these roles. In each case he took on the role, but he was a fake, he wasn’t the real deal.
Imposter Syndrome is something that can plague us all to a certain degree. It’s the feeling that we are a fake and fraud. Whatever role we have, whatever we are setting out to do and achieve, we convince ourselves that we are not qualified and we do not fit in. That we are out of place.
Where it really becomes destructive is when we believe that it is only a matter of time before we are found out and then that will be a disaster. Have you ever experienced this? It can happen in many places and for many reasons. It is something I suffer from a lot and so today I want to share my reflections on this, how it destroys our effectiveness if we let it, how to overcome it and how not to overcome it.
Maybe you are starting a new job somewhere or you got a promotion and you fear that you aren’t really ready to step in to the role and deliver what’s expected. Maybe you have just started going to the gym or a kicked off a new running plan. You know you are a little out of shape, that’s why you are doing it. But everybody else you notice is running much faster, for much longer and is in much better shape than you. You feel out of place – a fraud. You don’t belong in the gym you tell yourself. Maybe, you are launching a blog, or a podcast, a YouTube channel or some kind of consultancy or coaching business. You feel unqualified, unskilled and like you are unsure what you have to say that is of value and you have this anxiety that you have no idea why anyone would read your stuff or listen to what your perspective.
We feel out of depth as parent, a husband or a wife. Like we don’t know what we are doing.
Each of these things is a form of imposter syndrome. We look at other people around us, in our workplace, in the gym, on YouTube or wherever and we convince ourselves that these people are the real deal. These are the people who know what they are doing. These are the people who have something to say. These are the people who everyone should be listening to. Not me. I’m a fake. I’m an imposter. I am pretending to be like them, trying to convince people that I am like them. But deep down, I know I am not.
Imposter syndrome is a lie.
The source of that lie is the feeling of what we should be like and because we are not like that we are unqualified. Because we are unqualified, if we take any action – we are a fake.
So we look at some other person and feel that in order to be qualified – we need to be like them. We build up a picture in our mind of what we should be like, or the results we should be getting in order to be the real deal. We convince ourselves that until we feel totally confident in our ideas, our skills, our abilities and our performance and our output – we are just pretending.
Imposter syndrome becomes destructive when it causes us to give up or worse to not get started to begin with.
Maybe we don’t get started so we never apply for the job, we never go to the gym, we never hit publish, never even put pen to paper.
Maybe we start, but never achieve consistency and just stop. Our video doesn’t get the views we expected and so we don’t produce another. We can’t get over the awkwardness of not really knowing what we are doing in the gym. We make a start, but a lack of obvious, tangible results causes those fears and anxieties to grow and become louder and louder and so we stop.
Or maybe we keep going but we always play it safe. We stick to the machines we know and that we convince ourselves are comfortable options. We stick to writing about topics where we feel safe and don’t push the boat out on to areas that we really want to get into.
In each of these scenarios, our effectiveness is hampered or destroyed. We cannot be effective as we never get going or we give up.
The lie is powerful because it is based on a truth – you are not perfect. Whoever you are, you are not perfect and you never will be.
So, even the most successful people in their field feel out of their depth to a degree. The best parents and husbands I know are deeply aware of their flaws, faults and failures. I’ve spoken with some of the most well known evangelists, preachers and public speakers in the UK and they shared with me that they still regularly get panic attacks before they speak.
The truth is that we are not perfect. The danger of the lie is that it takes this truth and adds to it. It takes this truth and twists it. Because you are not perfect, you are an imposter.
The truth is that you are not perfect and acknowledging this truth makes you the real deal.
There are two ways to respond to this lie. The wrong way and the right way.
The wrong way is the way I have been taught for many many years. The wrong way is the way I have believed and followed for many years.
In effect, the wrong way is to be an imposter. To put on confidence, bravado, and even arrogance. To convince and persuade people that you know exactly what you are doing. That you’ve got it sorted and sussed. To put on a kind of dishonest triumphalism that tells the world that everything is great, that everything is going from strength to strength to strength. There are no issues, problems, flaws or weaknesses. People won’t back you, unless you are 100% confident in everything that you are doing.
In this way you seek to convince yourself and everyone else that you have arrived. That you are the person everyone should be listening to. That you should be the person doing all of the talking.
In a sense – be an imposter. I want to be clear, you can achieve some success this way and many will back you. The problems with this are that first and foremost you are being dishonest, arrogant and proud.
Second, you vastly limit your willingness to learn, and grow and thus bridge the gap between where you are and where you present yourself to be. And ultimately, this lack of humility limits your effectiveness in the long run. As you believe the lie that you are already ‘there’ and as others believe it too, and therefore because you are not learning and growing, your ability to teach, train, perform and help others will be stunted.
You become an imposter. You convince everyone that you are the real deal, but you are not.
This is where the trend I am seeing on social media comes in. It is the danger of the internet and content creation in general. Claiming an authority that we do not have. For example, putting ‘Psychology says’ at the start of your tweets. This places the authority of an entire discipline of study and research behind your content. But it is not real. Now, if you’ve read a psychology paper or books or even gathered information second hand from a reliable source that has conducted some research, then you are more justified here.
Thomas Frank is a good example of the right way to do this. Thomas Frank is not a professional psychologist. Nor would he claim to be. But, if you watch some of his videos, he will draw conclusions and applications based on human psychology. He always references his sources for this. Most often this is from a book he has read or an article. He doesn’t claim any authority in psychology himself, but references those who’s training, study and experience would give them some authority in the subject. Thus he can speak into this area with authenticity and reliability.
Putting “psychology says” at the start of your tweet, or in a blog post or YouTube video, might be a great hook to get more views and increase engagement, but it isn’t being authentic.
The other example on social media that I see is the now infamous tweets about the many things that are apparently essential for a fruitful life but that 98% of us are doing it wrong or know nothing about it. This grabs attention not only by claiming authority in a subject, but in addition making that authority unique by claiming that everyone else does not have authority.
These approaches are not the solution to imposter syndrome. These kind of tweets actually do two things:
- They make us an imposter
- They risk triggering imposter syndrome in others.
And this is the danger of it. If an imposter is someone who pretends to be something they are not, then claiming authority that we do not have or somehow claiming a unique authority make us an imposter. If imposter syndrome is fearing that we are not something that we actually are then perpetuating the lie and behaving as if you cannot speak into an area unless you have some kind of grand, specific and unique authority will risk triggering this in others. It means that being able to speak about things you are learning as you do so or being able to share your perspective on something is ruled out unless you can claim that your perspective is authoritatively right and others will be wrong.
But, beyond that, living under the rule of the belief that drives imposter syndrome is all part of the mindset that drives that Toxic Productivity and can lead to burnout.
To me, this is the wrong way. To me, this is just being an imposter.
Then there is the right way. To be the real deal. Being the real deal doesn’t mean that you have arrived or that you are perfect. It means that you are honest. It means that you have humility. In being honest with yourself and with everyone else that you are still are a work in progress, still learning, still growing it sets you up in the following ways.
Firstly, in acknowledging flaws, weaknesses and failures, in acknowledging that you still have lots to learn and plenty of room to grow, that’s just called being honest, truthful and humble. And in this you open yourself up to growth. And as you do so, you become much more able to help others grow as well. It is said that failure is the best teacher and in being open about failure, you open yourself up to that teacher and can bring that to bear in your teaching of others. This is true in parenting and family, in ministry, in coaching, in content creation, in leadership.
Second, the imposter portrays the world as being split into two camps – those who don’t know what they are doing and are unqualified and those who do know and are qualified. This just isn’t true. Every single person is somewhere on the line between knowing and understand nothing and with no skills and nothing to say and knowing and understanding everything, highly skilled and with everything to say. No one is at either extreme and so presenting yourself honestly as on that line, along with everyone else, with things to say and things to learn, we actually are much more relatable and far more able to help and be helped as we go.
Lastly, in Romans ch 12, we are to consider ourselves with sober self judgement. This is a command to be honest and open and humble about our state before God and to others. It is a command about how we think of ourselves. In 1 & 2 Corinthians, the apostle Paul gives a lot of time to considering his weakness and how his weaknesses display the magnificence of Jesus Christ. Whatever our ministry is, whether its in marriage, family and parenting, whether small group leading, preaching, leadership or evangelism in our workplace or chatting with people after church on a Sunday.
The imposter is the person who presents their own strengths and their own power. As someone who has everything sorted. This showcases their own glory. The real deal is the person who is honest, considers themselves with sober self judgement, acknowledging their weaknesses and failings and this showcases the glory of God.
Here is the big point.
If you respond to your own weakness and fallibility by presenting a false confidence or claiming a false authority all you are doing is believing and perpetuating the lie that you need to be perfect and sorted in order for people to listen to you, respect you and follow your advice, wisdom or leadership.
If you respond to your own weakness and fallibility by presenting this honestly and authentically then you are believing the truth that none of us are perfect and dispelling the lie that any mere human being might need to be.
A last couple of points to make here. This doesn’t give us a full and total licence to speak about anything that we genuinely have zero understanding of and to speak it with authority of someone who would have a lot of knowledge. The point about being the real deal precludes this. Being honest about what we learning, how we put things into practice, the mistakes we’ve made and how we have learned from them will not allow us to do this. But secondly, it does mean we can speak and act with confidence, not because we taking upon ourselves an authority that we do not have, but because we are being genuinely honest. And if we are being genuinely honest, then we need not be afraid that we are an imposter. Because that’s called being the real deal.
I leave you today with one of Frank William Abagnale Jr’s most famous quotes, that he lived by as he convinced and persuaded people that he was things that he wasn’t – An honest man has nothing to fear, so I am trying hard not to be afraid.
