put-together Rachel with her master’s degree in behavioral marketing and her knowledge of every obscure term in the field doesn’t have it “figured out.” Even though she’s always at the office ten minutes early, has a super smart answer for everything, and seems like she has an extra ten years of experience in the field, I promise you, she doesn’t actually know what she’s doing, either. Because no one does.
We’re constantly overestimating other people and their level of competence because we can’t see what’s going on in their minds, and we often really overestimate the value of formal education and “credentials” more than resourcefulness, practical knowledge, and the courage to just go for it. We can’t see how little a certificate or even an advanced degree really prepares (or doesn’t prepare) someone for the difficulties of real-world application. Frankly, because only we see our deepest fears, we think life’s easier for other people. Their fears and insecurities are invisible to us. But they exist. They make mistakes, too (funny how the mistakes don’t show up on Facebook or Instagram).
Impostor Syndrome
Impostor syndrome is what we experience when we feel we don’t deserve our accomplishments, and it happens to basically everybody who stretches outside their comfort zone. We feel like we’ve fooled others into thinking we’re capable and therefore attribute our achievements to blind luck or good timing. Our inability to accept our gifts means we end up feeling like a fraud or an impostor — and on our worst days, we even feel like we’re waiting to be exposed.
When I was a kid back in England, visiting one of my friends in a “nice, normal” house, I’d feel like an impostor. Like, if they saw where I lived and what my family was like, they probably wouldn’t want to be friends anymore. Among the “nice, normal” people, I’d feel a bit like a wind-up doll: Smile! Be cheerful! Say the right things and never forget to be over-the-top with the thank-yous! Don’t screw it up with these nice people!
Impostor syndrome not only prevents us from enjoying our lives and success, it also massively limits our potential. When someone feels like a fake, they often find themselves turning down wonderful new opportunities and creative ideas. Or sabotaging the success they’ve already had. It’s the killer of many what-might-have-beens. And it’s especially common among high-achieving women. I’m not entirely sure why that is, but I think it’s because men don’t question themselves as much and women are simply socialized to think smaller. As the poet John Greenleaf Whittier said, “For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’”
I mean, can we be open for a sec to acknowledging this universal self-sabotaging cover-up we’re all a part of? It’s hilarious, in a macabre kinda way. We’re so obsessed with telling ourselves that other people have it all together, and pretending to have it all together ourselves, when in reality, nobody has it all together.
Still not certain? Let’s test it! Think of someone who seems to have it all. Maybe people like Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, and Michelle Obama come to mind.
Well.
Martha Stewart went to jail for insider trading. Oprah’s openly struggled with her weight for decades. Michelle Obama felt shame over her miscarriages for years, thinking she was the only one. Celebrities — they’re just like us!
There’s even some evidence that Winston Churchill’s whole illustrious career was really just an effort to try to please his mother, Jennie, an American socialite. She was fairly neglectful of him when he was a child and adolescent but very approving of and heavily involved in his political career. He loved his mother but could only admire her from a distance, “like a northern star,” he once wrote. Churchill was also very disappointed about not being able to please his father enough. And he was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, when he led Britain to victory in the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955.
Hero Inventory
I dare you to research someone famous you look up to. Go a little deeper than a Wikipedia page — biographies are amazing for this — and I guarantee you’ll find stumbles, lack of confidence, failures, and despair peppering their path. If not, sue me.
Write down your hero’s name, and then discover what their flaws are. List it out in a journal so that it looks like this:
Say Yes to Opportunity
Next time an opportunity arises but you question your ability to meet it, what do you say? You say yes. Think Jim Carrey in Yes Man. Then learn as you go. On the job! That’s how you succeed, by saying yes to life and learning as you go. That’s what we’re all doing. Because no one is born with a life directory. We’re just thrown into the void and left there. Like, “There ya go — now, remember you need to pay rent and taxes!”
If you have dreams and big ambitions, know this: other people are out there going for theirs. They might be less talented than you, less qualified, less many things. But they’re saying yes to life and getting on with it. They’re achieving your goals simply because they’re willing to go for it, even though they don’t know everything. They know that they’re in good company with every other just-figuring-it-out-along-the-way human being. They decide to believe in themselves, and that makes all the difference.
Embrace Uncertainty
Even people with unfailing conviction don’t know what they’re doing for sure because there are no guarantees in this world. They don’t know what the outcome of their actions will be, but that just doesn’t stop them. That’s all. They’re more courageous amid the uncertainty of it all. And what in life is certain, exactly?
Remember that story I told you in the introduction about the morning of my first wedding, speeding to the ceremony with my mother-in-law, feeling certain and right about everything?
Yeah. There’s an old saying that only death and taxes are certain. And honestly, that might just be true. The fact is, you might not even live until the end of today. I know it may seem a bit morbid, but let’s face it: dying today is a legit possibility. So what makes you think you can control or truly know anything else, if you can’t even guarantee that you’ll see another sunrise?
We need to learn how to be okay with not knowing 100 percent that what we’re doing is “correct.” There are multiple ways to do any one thing, and there are far fewer mistakes than we fear. But feeling clueless and scared are among the most common experiences on earth. Think about it for a moment — isn’t that true?
I once coached a NASA employee who was scared to seek a relationship because she thought, “Other women are so natural and confident — how do they know how to be like that? I’m so awkward. I can’t date.”
The CEO of a marketing firm I worked with called me right before he would be speaking at a thousand-person conference and said, “The last speaker was so good. I want to fake food poisoning right now. I don’t know a thing about leadership!” At that point, he had seventeen years in leadership and was an expert on the subject.
Once, the editor in chief of a large, influential magazine told me, “I feel like they give me so much responsibility, not knowing my heart beats so fast every time my boss calls my cell. I always think I’m gonna get fired because I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
Here’s the thing: none of us ever really knows what we’re doing. So can you relax and enjoy the not-knowing a little more? Because it’s all there is and ever will be. The world isn’t simply
