I was standing in the ballroom at the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square preparing my next move. My 3 piece suit clung to my body and I could feel the sweat dripping from my forehead to my eyelids. “PLEASE stop there,” I thought.
Why was I so nervous? It was the biggest networking event of my college career. All the major firms were in town and it was our job as students to convince them to hire us.
Suddenly, I acquired my target. He was a recruiter from a big accounting firm looking out from the bar towards the crowd. “Okay,” I thought, “now is my big chance.” I hustled over to make my introduction and he immediately offered, “Why don’t we have an oyster?” Ah, I forgot to mention this was an oyster bar, not an actual bar.
At that point in my life, I’d never seen an oyster.The waiter handed us the curious looking shells, and from there I had ZERO idea how to proceed. My plan was to slyly watch the recruiter and follow his lead.
As I waited to mirror his cues, he was suddenly called over by his boss to meet with another eager student. I was now a deer in headlights. Not wanting to raise any red flags to the waiter who was watching me intently, I decided to act. “He who hesitates is lost,” I thought.
Without thinking, I bit HARD into the shell of the oyster and immediately knew I had chosen the wrong path. The rocky exterior clashed directly with my teeth, and my teeth lost this battle. Blood poured onto my 3 piece suit as onlookers gasped.
Needless to say, I wasn’t first on any company’s hiring list after this debacle. While I held gauze to my mouth as I was ushered out of the event, a familiar thought ran through my head: “I always knew I was a failure and now so does everyone else.”
At this point, I expect you’re having one of two reactions:
- You’re laughing hysterically at my stupidity, but deep down you realize that you too have made similar blunders
- You, like those in the Charles and my parents when I called them afterwards, are horrified and feel no sympathy for my stupidity
You also might be thinking to yourself. “How does a miserable oyster experience relate to imposter syndrome? Is this just another clickbait title to drum up views?” And so far, I’ve proven you right. But bear with me for just a few more moments.
For longer than I would like to admit, I carried deep feelings of shame from this event. Rather than seeing my ridiculous mistake as just that, I saw it as validation that I wasn’t good enough as a person. Validation of my status as a failure and, even worse, as a fraud.
The Harvard Business Review defines imposter syndrome as a “collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success. Basically, we “imposters” never feel good enough.
Some imposter syndrome syndromes include:
- Putting a huge amount of pressure on everything we do to be perfect because we don’t want to be “found out” as actual failures.
- Minimizing our successes or call them “lucky” and magnify our failures as examples of character flaws
I could have chosen any number of relatable failures from my life: stumbling to deliver a speech in front of 100+ people, getting a bad grade on a test, airballing free throws in the semifinal game, etc.
But the truth is that humor often makes it easier to discuss more serious issues. I hope you can have a good laugh at my oyster “failure” and also see the deeper meaning.
Let me share 4 things I’ve learned in my ongoing quest to overcome imposter syndrome:
I’m Not Alone (And Neither Are You)
Research suggests that 70% of people struggle with imposter syndrome at one time or another. 70 percent. The vast majority of people we encounter on a daily basis are probably struggling with the same inner feelings of not being good enough, smart enough, talented enough, etc.
To me, this indicates that we’re a lot more alike than different. It also makes it easier to start recognizing, naming, and overcoming imposter syndrome. I’m not abnormal for having these thoughts, and neither is anyone else.
I remember having a conversation with a couple of my best friends at Harvard one night. Keep in mind all of these people had achieved AMAZING things in one way or another already–from starting their own companies to winning prestigious fellowships to being Olympic athletes.
But, when we sat down to talk and I worked up the nerve to share some of my thoughts and feelings, I was shocked by their responses. It turns out that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM struggled with these same feelings.
We’re not alone.
Perfection is Impossible, and Boring
“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” This quote’s from Vince Lombardi, one of the winningest coaches in NFL history and the namesake for the Super Bowl trophy.
A lot of us want to be perfect, or we feel like we have to be when comparing ourselves to the filtered images and propped up lives we see of our peers on social media. But that’s not real life.
Why do we love superheroes so much? It’s not because they’re perfect; they’re not. Superman is crippled by Kroptonite, Thor is useless without his hammer, and Iron Man can’t function if his arc reactor is damaged.
We love these superheroes not despite these weaknesses, but because of them. They’re relatable. Without flaws or failures, there is no story.
Spoiler alert: none of us will never reach perfection or even come close in ANY aspects of our lives, but pursuing excellence is what counts. Continuously growing and learning from mistakes is what makes our stories interesting.
Limits of Control
I notice that a lot of the imposter syndrome symptoms crop up when I’m overly concerned with what others think. In a way, my thinking often goes like this: achieving external validation/successes is the only way that people will like or value me.
Because of this, I’m imprisoned by other people’s opinions. I now realize that there are strict limits to what we can control in our lives. It turns out that I have ZERO control over other people’s opinions of me because their opinions are all a reflection of what’s going on in their own psyches.
What happens in the external world and our own individual worlds is never going to be perfect. We can’t control that. What we can control, though, is our attitude and response to what happens. That’s pretty much it.
At first, this seems terrifying. But, it’s actually freeing if you stop and think about it. If we can’t control what other people think of us, why not let go of trying? It gives us a lot more energy to focus on our effort, not the results, while letting go of the things that hold us back.
What we see is what we get
There’s an interesting quirk to the human psyche called the confirmation bias. This is our tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of our existing beliefs.
For example, if I see myself as an “imposter” in the classroom–as someone who is tricking others into thinking I’m smart, then I’ll look for all the evidence that supports my belief. When I get a question wrong or an opinion challenged, I’ll say: “See, Shane, you were right. Shut up before others really realize you’re not smart.” And anytime I get a question right while I’m still in imposter mode, I’ll say: “Okay, Shane, you tricked them again into thinking you knew something. Now don’t talk for a while and mess it up.”
The working solution that I’ve found is to constantly practice a different kind of self-dialogue. I tell myself that my opinions are valuable even if they’re wrong, and that failure is a learning opportunity.
Reframing my thoughts like this allows me to look at situations with more perspective. I’m also treating myself like I would treat a friend–with gentle kindness.
What we see and what we say to ourselves is often what we get.
Conclusion
Overcoming imposter syndrome seems to be a lifelong journey.
If you ever feel like a total failure, know that you’re not alone. Remember: 70% of us have felt this way at one point or another. But we can reframe situations and labels. We might fail but we’re not failures. We might do poorly on a math test, but we’re not bad mathematicians.
And if that doesn’t help, just remember that it can always be worse. You could find yourself being shepherded out of a job fair with oyster juice and blood flowing onto your three piece suit…
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