Playing Small

If your boss offered you a raise of $100,000 per year, would you tell them no, you’ll just take $50,000? Probably not. Yet we do this same thing over and over again in our lives.

“There is no passion to be found in playing small — in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living” — Nelson Mandela

Life is full of opportunities. It can be a potential relationship (romantic or otherwise) with someone you’d love to be closer to. It can be a new job opening to apply to, or a new responsibility at work, or an opportunity to step up and take a leadership role in something you do for fun. In each case one of the decisions we have to make in determining whether or not to pursue this opportunity is a question that most humans struggle with: “Am I enough?”

We usually hear this question in our heads differently. What we USUALLY hear something like one of the following:

• I’m going to fail.
• I’m not good enough to do that
• They don’t know how little I actually know
• So and So is much better at this than I am
• I’m going to get hurt
• I could get humiliated in public
• Last time, it hurt so much, I don’t want to experience that again

This is impostor syndrome. It’s powerful, it’s loud, and all humans are subject to it.

There are a lot of great methods for helping with impostor syndrome. I want to focus on one specific one. This technique won’t remove it. It won’t rid you of it. Like most effective treatments for complex problems, the best treatment is not trying to remove the problem, but instead, incorporate it into a bigger whole.

Here’s the technique: Acknowledge and accept that this fear you feel, this “anticipated pain” is NOT an effective indicator of a good course of action.

That’s it.

As humans, we have a healthy behavioral trigger about avoiding pain. Touch a hot stove once and you’ll remember not to touch it again. Unfortunately, this trigger extends into unproductive areas.

We need this ability to help us avoid physical damage. But in our roadmap to life…in the various ways we use for navigating how we should behave, what course of action we should do, the fear from impostor syndrome is just not a useful signal.

Think of it this way: you stand at a crossroads. There are many signs in front of you telling you which way you should go. Many of them point one direction (friends, family, our internal ambition), but there’s a very loud one, one that promises an avoidance of pain, pointing in a different direction. Our natural indication is to incorporate all the information we gather in making a choice. But understanding what is BAD advice, so that we can just not incorporate it into our decision-making process can help us make better choices.

Recently I sent out an email and didn’t check one of the settings in my email program. So it went out with the wrong subject (several people notified me). This is the second time this has happened in a couple of weeks. Both times the INTENSE embarrassment I felt triggered an immediate response in me. “You’re not good enough. You can’t remember to check a couple of simple settings. You embarrassed yourself in front of all those people. You shouldn’t be doing this.” And yesterday I got the added “You can’t even learn from your first mistake. You’re just not good enough”.

A while back I was giving a webinar on Cypress.io, an End-to-End testing tool that I really love. I’ve given hundreds of presentations in my life, yet I still am getting that “wrong signal” from my impostor syndrome: “you are going to screw it up. You’re going to fail in front of hundreds of people.”

In both cases, I have to spend time (and not just once, but over and over) being mindful and reminding myself that these feelings are not good signals to follow. Instead, I should be listening to the other signals: “People benefit from what you’re doing”, “the reward is worth the effort”, and “growth is your friend”.

Home runs only happen when you swing.

What are you playing small over? What has impostor syndrome kept you from doing?

Happy coding!

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