Everything Has Been Done Before, But Not By You!

A Treatment For Impostors Syndrome

Garrett Petticrew
Sep 4, 2018 · 3 min read

Confession time.

I get impostors syndrome every single day of my life. Every. Single. Day.

Impostor’s syndrome, in my words, is when you all of a sudden feel like everything you do sucks and you have no idea why anyone wastes their time reading your stuff.

Pretty harsh, right? Ever felt it before?

I think all non-sociopaths have felt this before. This post is about how to overcome it.

Today I was feeling this way, not wanting to write, and then I looked over my notes from DragonCon. An author panel I went to featured several well-known authors and one of them said something that shook me.

“Everything has been written before, but it hasn’t been written by you!” — Chris A. Jackson

Chris is a great panelist and a great writer. Here’s a link to his author’s page for your convenience.

Chris was right. This quote shook me from my stupor, put my but in the chair, and now my fingers are fluttering across the keyboard.

Impostor syndrome averted! For now.

Everything Has Been Created Before

The internet changed the world in many ways. It connected the world, allowed persons from anywhere to talk to each other, and most importantly, became a repository for the world’s information.

We are now several decades into this mass accumulation of information (looking at you google). You’d think that everything would have been created by now.

It has, in a sense. Every once in a while we get something truly novel like the iPod, but even novel technology like that has roots and inspirations in other things.

As Gary Vaynerchuk is probably most famous for saying:

Image by Jonas Svidras on Unsplash

Even if ideas have been executed before, does that mean they were executed perfectly?

Maybe. The bicycle, for example, at its core has not really changed much in the last hundred years.

Yet, if you go talk to a cycling enthusiast you can be damn sure they have an opinion. Engineers have been tinkering with this design for decades and still find a way to sell it to people.

But It Hasn’t Been Created by You

There is a fun exercise teachers-of-writing the world over have used to demonstrate how much an idea doesn’t matter.

The exercise goes something like this.

Teacher gives a prompt that is open-ended.

“I burst through the door, terrified of what I might find. The scene before me was far worse than I could have ever imagined….”

Give that prompt to one-hundred different writers and you will get back one-hundred different stories.

How many different vampire books exist out there? How many different books out there have wizards?

What about video games with guns? Oh oh, how about a video game with poor lighting, small hallways, and creepy little girls with glowing eyes?!?

It Goes Even Further Than That

Take a book, and have ten people read it. Every person is going to have a different experience reading that book.

It is the entire point of book clubs. To bring multiple perspectives together to discuss the same sequence of words.

Furthermore, as you grow and change as an individual over time, a book can change from one reading to another.

The human mind is a wonderful thing. If you love an idea and have a way to share it with the world, then do it.

It does not matter if it’s been done by someone else. It hasn’t been done by you.

So do it.


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I want to scale the value this brand provides by 10x, but I can’t do that without your support. My fiancé Megan is on the mend and is moving more and more towards independence which will free up time for both of us to get to work on giving back value to this community You can be a part of that, should you choose, through Patreon.

Wise Healthy Wealthy

We find the balance between Health, Wealth, and Wisdom, then write about it

Garrett Petticrew

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I write for myself and everyone like me. The screw-ups tired of screwing up. Emails that help you thrive → http://bit.ly/whw-newsletter

Wise Healthy Wealthy

We find the balance between Health, Wealth, and Wisdom, then write about it

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