Confessions Of An Impostor – Smashing Magazine

Simply put, impostor syndrome is the feeling of being a fraud, despite all evidence to the contrary. It’s an inability to internalize your own achievements, which results in a feeling of being less competent than the rest of the world believes you to be.

Every year, charisma coach and persuasion expert Olivia Fox Cabane asks the incoming class at Stanford Business School, “How many of you in here feel that you are the one mistake that the admissions committee made?” Every year, two thirds of the class instantly raise their hands. How can Stanford students, passing such an intensive admissions process, being selected from among thousands of applicants, with a long list of documented achievements and accomplishments behind them, possibly feel that somehow they don’t belong there?

In our community, impostor syndrome causes us to criticize ourselves constantly, because a lot of the problems we try to solve for ourselves have already been solved by others. In environments like that, it’s easy to feel that you aren’t smart enough. This feeds the syndrome and compels us to try to catch up on everything going on in our industry, so that we feel competent in whatever we’re doing. And we all know how much information there is to catch up on: This feeling is well known to all of us.