Maybe You Really Are an Impostor…

This is a four-part series we’re calling “The Impostor Syndrome.” If you are new here, welcome! You can read part one here and part two here.

Maybe you are an impostor. But that doesn’t mean you should stop.

I want to talk about this real quick because this is an email I get over and over again. It goes something like this:

I’m deep in my career, I’m an expert in my field, I’m making good money. But there’s this gnawing feeling. There’s something I want to do. Something new and novel. But as soon as I think about it, this voice pops into my head… “What? You’re 46 years old! You have a successful career! You can’t do that!”

Sound familiar? Of course you can’t do something new… that would make you an impostor… right?

Maybe. But my question for you is, so what?

Let me tell you a little story. Rob Bell is a super successful pastor. He has been on the cover of Time magazine, is a bestselling author, had a podcast, etc. One day, Rob had the crazy idea that he wanted to do a one-man show at Largo, in Los Angeles.

The only thing is, Largo is a comedy club.

When he stepped out onto the floor for rehearsal, he was suddenly super nervous. The floor was different, the lighting was different, there wasn’t a pulpit! There was just a mic and a mic stand. “What are you doing here?!” He asked himself.

“So what did you do?” I asked Rob, when I interviewed him about his experiences with the impostor syndrome.

“This voice just popped into my head that said: You’ve got this. You’ve been here a thousand times before.”

When I asked Rob what he meant by that (since he clearly wasn’t talking about Largo), he told me that by here he simply meant the place where he’s trying something new. And that is somewhere he has been a thousand times before.

The moment you start something new, you may very well be an impostor. Indeed, I would argue that’s precisely what Rob was when he stepped onto the stage at Largo.

But that doesn’t mean he should have given up and walked away. And neither should you.

We all start out as impostors. Don’t forget that. Where do you think the expression “fake it til you make it” comes from, anyway?

And next week, to tie this whole series together, I’ll tell you what you can do with this unsettling news.

This is part three of a four-part series on “The Impostor Syndrome”. Read part four of the “The Impostor Syndrome” series here.

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