You are not a fake

“What’s your greatest achievement?”

Someone asked me that question in an interview a while ago and I stumbled. As the pressure of a roomful of eyeballs built, I wracked my brains for an answer.

Not because there were too many to choose from, but because there’s a part of me that struggles to recognise any of my successes as legitimate or deserved.

Imposter syndrome affects 70% of us - all in the loop of feeling insecure and undeserving of achievements - but few admitting it for fear of being “exposed”. It’s a figure far higher than I expected which is as much a relief as it is saddening.

There are five types of “imposters” amongst us.

• The Perfectionist: they must know it all before beginning and set excessively high goals. If they don’t think they can reach the standard, or try and fail, they become despondent.

• The Expert: they measure worth on how much they know, what they can do. Excess time is dedicated to learning, mostly for fear of being exposed as unknowledgeable.

• The Soloist: they feel that asking for help reveals fraudulence. If they achieve with the support of a team then it doesn’t count as a success.

• The Superwoman/man: they are convinced they’re fakes amongst real-deal of colleagues, friends, other parents. They push themselves to work harder to measure up but never quite feel they do.

• The Natural Genius: they set the internal bar impossibly high. Judging themselves on getting things right first time, quickly and fluently, failure is hard to accept.
  
  So if you relate, how do you manage these emotions? Start by recognising them as exactly that - emotion - and separate them from the facts by rationalising the full picture rather than the detail you’re hung up on.
  
  That incessant, nagging sense of self-doubt and fear of being exposed as a fraud is not real. It’s a mind-trap. Everything you’ve achieved is a result of the work you’ve put in so don’t allow a sequence of negative thought patterns fog your reality.
  
  No one is holding you to the same excessively high standards that you’re holding for yourself. Just do your best and accept that it is enough.