Lie of the Imposter Complex #2: Successful People Don’t Experience This
Oprah says that every person she has interviewed — including Barack Obama and Béyonce herself — have asked her the same question as soon as the cameras were off:
“After every interview at some point, somebody would say, ‘How was that? Was that OK? How’d I do?’”
Even Béyonce!
Now, the Imposter Complex would like us to believe that successful people never feel like imposters.
(And I call it Imposter Complex instead of imposter syndrome for a good reason — but this is true whatever you want to call it.)
It would like us to believe that when (if) we reach a certain level of success (somewhere far beyond where we are currently, obviously), then we will know for certain that we are successful. That we are no longer imposters.
It pretends there is some bright line that separates the imposters from the truly successful.
And it colludes with Lie #1 to have us believe that the very fact that we are doubting ourselves is proof that we are imposters.
The Imposter Complex, quite frankly, is kind of like a traveling companion. The more you do, the more places you succeed, the more opportunities it will find to point out all you still don't know… and other places in your life that you may not be living up to its incredibly high standards.
In fact, it's the reason so many of us don't climb too high in the first place; we’re afraid of falling (or failing). Staying close to the ground is insurance against getting hurt. You don’t want to shine too bright, or you’ll be cut down.
And yet, the desire to climb is palpable (and your birthright).
How successful identity and the Imposter Complex might manifest
Depending on which of the six behavioural traits of the Imposter Complex you most often experience, you might experience Lie #2 a little differently:
If you’re a people-pleaser, you will probably find yourself wondering how you got invited to the cool kids’ table at some point, convinced that none of them are wondering the same thing and that they only invited you to be nice, after all.
If you have leaky boundaries, you may defer to other people’s opinions about you, your abilities, and your worth instead of standing in your own knowledge and power.
If you tend to compare, this lie is all you, baby! You are comparing yourself to those you perceive to be more successful and are certain you don’t measure up.
If you’re a perfectionist, you’ll probably be telling yourself that those people you perceive as more successful than you could have, would have done it better (completely ignoring how well you did it in the first place).
If you’re a procrastinator, you’ll spend time thinking and worrying about those “more successful” people instead of getting busy with your own (amazing) work.
If you tend to diminish, welp… doubting your capacity, or at least DIMINISHING your capacity is what this lie is all about.
No matter which behavioural trait is keeping your belief about your capacity at bay, the best and only way to wriggle free is by deepening into the TRUTH: that successful people absolutely do experience this.
That’s why I take such delight in collecting stories of the great and the good who feel the same way you do.
And if you find yourself thinking, “Yeah, but…,” here is one more charming illustration that successful people absolutely do experience the Imposter Complex as acutely as anyone, from bestselling author Neil Gaiman (emphasis mine):
Some years ago, I was lucky enough to be invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realize that I didn’t qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things.
On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.”
And I said, “Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something.”
And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did. Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for.
Amen, Neil(s). Cosigned 100%.
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Five ICONIC shifts leaders use to overcome Imposter Complex.