IMPOSTOR SYNDROME
Accepting 5 Truths Helped Me Overcome Impostor Syndrome
It plagued me for most of my career, but one day it disappeared
I didn’t actively try to eliminate the Impostor Syndrome that continually lurked in the back of my mind for several decades. But, today I tentatively reached inward to touch it and found that it was surprisingly gone. This happened sometime during the past year, and it took me a bit of thinking to understand why.
But first, let’s talk about why so many of us experience it. The condition was first identified in 1978 by the psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes. It has been estimated that 70% of people feel like an impostor at some point in their careers.
However, I think it all begins long before we enter the working world. It may reach all new heights as you progress in your career, but it starts much earlier than that. Impostor syndrome doesn’t suddenly appear overnight.
It starts the moment in childhood when we were first told — and started believing — that we were somehow not enough. That who you are is not sufficient or acceptable. That you would need to be someone different in order to fit in, be accepted, and make friends. That you would need to behave and be perceived in a certain way in order to…
