Do you feel like an impostor? Like everyone is just about to find out what a fraud you really are? You’re not alone in this. Every time I start writing one of this little posts, I feel like I won’t even be able to put one word in front of another. English is not even my native language after all. Are all of you just about to find out what a useless fraud I am?
“Sometimes I wake up in the morning before going off to a shoot, and I think, I can’t do this. I’m a fraud.” – Kate Winslett
Not that I am some literary genius, but this permanent creeping feeling of being incompetent is not rational at all. I guess it's not very helpful that I’m writing this on a site where people are “judged” by this amount of votes – and this is true for most of the social media.
Maybe the first step to overcome this impostor syndrome is to realize that is okay to make mistakes. It’s not like the fate of the world depends on your actions.
Accept every little success. Impostor syndrome happens because you think you don’t deserve your successes. You deserve the same opportunities as everybody else.
Instead of thinking that you should prove your mastery on some subject, just try to genuinely help others by providing value. By doing that you’re shifting the focus from yourself (I have to show that I know) to your audience (will this help someone in some way?).
Lose the fear of exposing yourself. The fact is, you are not that special or different from everybody else. All the things running around in your head that you think are unique (and even shameful) are also in the heads of lots of other people. When you’re honest and candid, you are more capable of helping people.
Acknowledge that you are going to make mistakes. That doesn’t make a fraud. People make mistakes all the time — it’s just that everybody tries to hide their mistakes. Even the most intelligent and talented people make lots of mistakes.
If you never lose it's just because you never try.
We are all human beings, and we all live only once. Accept your place in the world — you deserve to be here just like everybody else. Wasting your life feeling like a fraud is a sure way to lots of regrets.
Nobody really understands this world we live in. We’re all just improvising and doing the best we can.
Images from pixabay
