The Impostor Syndrome Is Everywhere. Chances Are, You’ve Experienced It, Too.

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

The really interesting thing about the impostor syndrome is that it doesn’t just show up in beginners (the way it did for me when I first started doing sketches for The New York Times). High achievement doesn’t solve the problem — it can actually make it worse! And the reason is that as you get further and further off the ground, achievement often acts as air beneath you. You may be more skilled, and more confident. But at the same time, you’ve got further to fall.

This may explain why Jodie Foster “thought it was a fluke,” when she won an Oscar. “I thought everybody would find out, and they’d take it back. They’d come to my house, knocking on the door, ‘Excuse me, we meant to give that to someone else. That was going to Meryl Streep.’”

This may be what prompted Maya Angelou to say “I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’”

This may account for why my friend Shawn, who is an incredibly talented and successful businessman, thought everything he achieved boiled down to pure dumb luck. Or my brain surgeon friend’s feeling that he had no business operating on the brain of a child. Um, excuse me Mr. Brain Surgeon. If you don’t have any business doing this, then who does?!

That’s the impostor syndrome. If it can happen to Jodie Foster, Maya Angelou, businessmen, and brain surgeons, I assure you, it can certainly happen to you.

In fact, it probably already has.

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

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