You Are Not an Imposter
You are a deeply-caring creative
A funny thing happened one Friday night before giving a talk about creative confidence. I was thinking about the presentation and procrastinating: “What do I have to offer about this topic?”.
On this particular Friday night, everyone in my house fell asleep relatively early and felt like doing some reading before bed. All of my books are in my eldest daughter’s closet and even with the possibility of waking her, my gut told me to sneak in and grab a book. I didn’t know what book and I’d figure it out when I went in. I tiptoed into the space flashlight pointed at the floor, creaked open the door to the closet and stood in the dark, scanning my bookshelf looking for inspiration.
Hmmmmmm… what book?...
But then, a little book called The Practice: Shipping Creative Work by Seth Godin (whose ideas we met earlier) caught my eye.
I started reading it years earlier but hadn’t picked it up since. I grabbed it, snuck back out of the room (no children were woken in the making of this story) and read.
And read.
And read.
And read.
And oof. It’s what I needed in that moment:
“We allow others to live in our head, reminding us that we are imposters with no hope of making an original contribution. Our practice begins with the imperative that we embrace a different pattern, a pattern that offers no guarantees, requiring us to find a process and to trust ourselves.” p.23
Okay universe, you’ve got my attention!
And then, on page 28, Seth Godin, author of 19 international best sellers, has one of the most popular blogs in the world and who is arguably the biggest thought leader in his discipline said this: “And I feel like an imposter often.”
You Share Because You Care
Art Therapist, Amelia Hutchison, puts it this way: “Imposter syndrome doesn’t mean you don’t belong; instead it’s a sign of love and wanting to deliver value in your work. In other words, it shows you care.”
Imposter syndrome is signalling that we care deeply and we want to deliver value in our work. For me, this is where my imposter syndrome came from on the eve of that presentation; wanting to do a good job for good people.
As I dug deeper into the topic of imposter syndrome, I learned that everyone, at all levels feels imposter syndrome at least sometimes.
Here are four examples of the beautiful, the rich, the famous — those who appear to be living most confidently with “it all figured out” — feeling like imposters:
“...even 12 years after graduation [from Harvard], I’m still insecure about my own worthiness… that every time I opened my mouth I would have to prove I wasn’t just a dumb actress. …” - Natalie Portman, Harvard Commencement (May 2015)
“Writing is always full of self-doubt… by the time I wrote Wild, I was familiar with that feeling of doubt and self-loathing, so I just thought, ‘Okay, this is how it feels to write a book.’” - Cheryl Strayed, Booth (July 2014)
“No matter what we've done, there comes a point where you think, 'How did I get here? When are they going to discover that I am, in fact, a fraud and take everything away from me?'“ - Tom Hanks, NPR, (April 2016)
“I go through [acute impostor syndrome] with every role. I think winning an Oscar may in fact have made it worse. Now I’ve achieved this, what am I going to do next? What do I strive for? Then I remember that I didn’t get into acting for the accolades, I got into it for the joy of telling stories.” - Lupita Nyong’o, Time Out (September 2016)
What’s at the core of imposter syndrome?
It’s often rooted in comparison.
Comparison = Conformity and Competition
“Comparison is the crush of conformity from one side and competition from the other – it’s trying to simultaneously fit in and stand out…. fit in, but win.” - Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience
How do we stop comparing ourselves to others so that we may feel less like imposters, and instead, feel the satisfaction that comes from living a creative life on our own terms?
The answer lies in removing the temptation to always compare.
In his book Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results, author James Clear spells out the fact that to break a bad habit, we must make it invisible. We must reduce our exposure and remove the cues of our bad habits from our environment. He shares the ‘secret to self-control’, which is simply that “...disciplined people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations.” - p.92-93
Social media is a breeding ground for imposter syndrome; a platform built on the foundations of comparison, which can harbour discontent, dissatisfaction and feelings that everyone’s realities are far more exciting/ successful/ beautiful/ more intentional/ better than our own. This idea is logical and generally accepted almost 20 years into social media’s existence, but also feels emotionally challenging to wrap my ‘comparison-focused’ brain around.
In search of rest over the 2021 Winter Break, I deleted Instagram for three weeks and I felt a weight lift that I didn’t know was there. I now delete the app on a regular basis when I feel the familiar pangs of imposter syndrome entering my system.
What are the other places and spaces that you know, deep down, are contributing to any imposter syndrome you may be feeling? How do you navigate removing the temptation of comparison from sites like Pinterest, TikTok and Instagram if you are a creative business person who relies on these platforms to complete and promote your work? This question is so important because, as Brené reminds us: “Comparison is a creativity killer, among other things.”
Reducing Temptation
It’s not all or nothing.
Reducing temptation is a softer, more accessible means to an end, more so than removing temptation altogether, particularly when, as professional creatives, digital social platforms are used at some of all stages of the creative process.
To reduce temptation, commit to tucking away the apps contributing to imposter syndrome so they're more difficult to access. Set boundaries around when and for how long you spend on these apps. It’s easier said than done, but the efforts are well-worth the rewards of lifting the weight of comparison.
Furthermore, inspiration has existed in analog forms for thousands of years and it’s readily available all around us. Instead of always scrolling through Pinterest to develop a mood board, head to your local library or bookstore to browse beautiful books and magazines. Go for a walk and find inspiration in unlikely places, both natural and otherwise. Even an average walk through the grocery store may be the perfect place to find inspiration in beautiful packaging or develop a new colour palette based on a strange, exotic fruit. Some of the most interesting creative work comes from looking outside of the industry where we spend the majority of our time and in finding inspiration offline, we’re far enough removed from the creators of these works that direct comparison doesn’t happen in the same way as it does online.
Better Work is Out There
Whether we compare often or not, whether we have harsh critics or boundlessly supportive cheerleaders in our lives, the fact remains that there will always be someone with work that’s better than ours.
A reminder that’s worth restating: We are not our work.
Separating ourselves from our work allows us to more objectively and openly acknowledge the truth in this statement, believing in our enoughness outside of the work we produce. It’s not always easy to adopt this mindset when the opposite is so deeply engrained by educational systems that conflate work and worth starting when our age can be counted on a single hand.
But enoughness can be actively cultivated and practiced.
It’s simply a fact that someone will always have work that is more refined/ professional/ interesting/ creative/ noteworthy/ special than ours. However, that doesn’t mean that our work is any less important. “Better” in creative work is often subjective, contextual and an unnecessary metric to try to achieve. Creative work is rarely binary and instead there are hundreds of different ways to approach a solution to a single problem. Our unique views, our life experiences and our specific ways of thinking help us create work that is meaningful to ourselves and to others.
There can be an upside to seeing work that’s better than ours. If we can believe that we are not our work — uncoupling our identities from our outputs — it can be helpful and motivating to see others who are better than us and who have sustained a long, creative career. Seeing the growth in someone else’s creative tenure can help us see our own evolution reflected in them. It gives us something to strive towards because creative living is a marathon, not a sprint.
Make a Ruckus
Imposter syndrome is often built on a rocky foundation of:
External expectations
Conditioned ideas of “right” and “wrong”
Comparison to others’ successes without adequately zooming out to see the big picture
The mistaken notion that ‘we are the work we produce’
Imposter syndrome is real, but there’s a volume dial on the all-too-familiar internal dialogue and it can be turned down (even muted!) with the right mindset and measures in place.
You are not an imposter. You are a deeply-caring creative doing important work for a world that needs your unique point of view and unapologetic humanity.
As Seth implores us: “Start where you are. Don’t stop. Go make a ruckus.”
