Overcoming Impostor Syndrome: CEOs Poop Too
Impostor syndrome is an often poorly misunderstood phenomenon and, even if this is your first time hearing about it, you’ve probably experienced it, maybe infrequently, maybe all the time.
Here’s how to know: Have you ever had any of the following thoughts?
“Wait, my boss thinks I can do what?”
“I just wish I was as good at this as Bob.”
“There is no effing way I deserve the $65,000 they pay me at this place.”
“There is no way I could ever do my boss’s job.”
“How the hell is Kathy so good at everything?”
Okay, now that I have 96.4% of you on board, let’s talk.
What is it?
Impostor Syndrome is a phenomenon in which people are overcome with feelings of self-doubt and intellectual fraudulence despite concrete eternal evidence of their competence and capabilities. Basically, despite our abilities and past achievements, we think of ourselves as frauds, unfit for whatever position or responsibility we have been given. Impostors.
Sound like you? It probably does. I know this because it sounds like me, too.
Why is it a thing?
I’ve known about Impostor Syndrome for a while now. It was such a significant event for me to learn about it that I still remember the exact moment it happened — two years ago driving from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe with my friend who was working for Google.
I was describing my mindset in the context of a situation at work when he stopped me and said, “Have you heard of Impostor Syndrome?” I said no and he explained what it was. It turns out, I already knew what Impostor Syndrome was because I experienced it all the time. I just didn’t know that it, like, had a name and shit.
My mind was pretty blown. I had seriously thought this was a “me” problem. I was right. It is a “me” problem. But it’s also a “billions of other people” problem.
Even though I’ve known about it for a while, I still didn’t know how deep Impostor Syndrome is ingrained in us until I watched this video.
The roots of Impostor Syndrome go all the way back to how we see our parents when we are growing up as little obnoxious children. You know what I’m talking about. It’s that superhero status we give to Mommy and Daddy. We look at our parents as kids (and now) and think, “These people can do anything.”
They can stay up late without being tired the next day, work really freaking hard without ever having time to play, and take care of other humans all by themselves.
This creates a strong disconnect in which we perceive competent, capable people as inherently different from ourselves, which we carry with us into adulthood (or whatever this current stage of our lives is supposed to be called).
It’s not just Mommy and Daddy’s fault
The disconnect gets magnified because of a simple, yet profound fact of life — we have an internal view of ourselves and an external view of every other person on the planet.
Simply, you are critically aware of your own anxieties, shortcomings, secrets, mistakes, and weird things you do when no one is around, but you do not often witness evidence that these things exist for others.
Instead, we see what others choose to put out externally. We see confident, capable, intelligent people all around us that we naturally feel we do not stack up against.
Why is this a problem?
The results of Impostor Syndrome can be crippling. They can leave us feeling that we are not deserving of the success we have already achieved and that we could never belong in the places occupied by people that are currently more successful than we are.
It fuels self-doubt and anxiety, which can limit our performance, keep us from accomplishing that of which we are capable, and leave us with a generally unhealthy state of mind.
But you can do something about it.
Kings, queens, philosophers, and ladies
That same video I mentioned describes the solution to changing your impostor mindset as “a leap of faith.” You need to take a leap of faith that maybe, just maybe, instead of being completely different from the other 7 billion people on the planet, your internal thoughts and struggles are actually incredibly similar to everyone else’s.
We need to remind ourselves that the most successful people out there still have the same hidden inadequacies that we do. This thought was captured perfectly by the 16th-century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne when he reminded his readers, “Kings (and queens. I’m adding queens.) and philosophers shit, and so do ladies.”
This is obvious, but yet, we never acknowledge it to be the case. We never think of the distinguished people in our lives as having to reduce themselves to such a crude task as squatting on a toilet. Meanwhile, we are drastically aware of all of our own worst bathroom adventures.
Even though we don’t have direct evidence that these dignitaries go to the bathroom just like we do, we need to take a leap of faith to believe it. Of course, they shit just like we do. They simply have to.
And kings, queens, philosophers, and ladies are not the only people who poop. Bosses, mentors, professors, parents, CEOs — they all poop, too.
Beyond bathrooms and bowels
This takeaway extends far beyond bathrooms and bowels. The most successful, seemingly well put together people in our lives?
They also experience crippling self-doubt. They walk into walls. They pick their nose.
They tap the car behind them when trying to parallel park and don’t tell anyone. They accidentally think that their cousins are hot even though that’s kind of weird. They repeatedly refresh their Instagram after they make a new post to make sure they are getting enough likes. They are petrified right after they send a potentially controversial text to their significant other.
They think their writing is trash. They think their code is trash. They think their art is trash.
They have no idea what the hell they are doing.
We have to take a leap of faith that all of these things are true.
Because once you realize that all of those things are just as true for the most successful people you know as they are for you, you realize that the reverse is also true. All of the best things about those people can be just as true for you as they are for them.
You can command the room. You can come up with that once-in-a-year idea. You can be the first to do this or the first to do that. You can look that good in that suit or in that dress. You can land that date. You can get that promotion, start that company, be that CEO, change that thing you hate about this world.
When you do all of these things, you won’t be an impostor. You will be you. Doing exactly what you should be doing exactly where you need to be doing it.
Because you are capable. You are deserving. You are you. And they poop just like you do.
