Everybody sucks here! And it is okay — The Impostor Syndrome
The problem
Have you ever feel that you are not good enough? Have you ever thought that you don’t belong to somewhere because you are not enough? Have you look to your coworkers and felt that you were the worst of them? Well, you maybe have been caught by the impostor syndrome. It is also common thoughts like: “I must not fail”, “I feel like a fake” and “It’s all down to luck”.
Katherine Hawley and Sarah K. Paul describe people as suffering from impostor syndrome when:
“They are successful by external measures such as exam results or professional accolades, but they feel that those external markers are unwarranted and that they, therefore, risk being revealed as an ‘impostor’.”
If you want, you can do a test here.
The cause
The impostor syndrome is a process that slowly hits you. This syndrome makes you feel like lying about who you are and how capable you are, and even that people like your work, your ideas and recognize you are a valuable member, you still feel like not enough.
It usually takes some time to establish; it usually starts with a small complain about something you did that puts all your work in discredit for no one else but you. Usually, no one cares about an error you committed, but for you, it is the end of a successful career.
The external solution
Nowadays, our work delivery changed from something tangible to something intangible. In the past, the work result was more tangible, you could go to a carpenter, buy a chair, and the chair could be useful, resistant, beautiful and well done. But how to measure the same thing about design, software development or innovation?
The impostor syndrome raises faster in an environment where you don’t know what is expected from you, and the failure and success become subjective. Especially in digital product development, it is extremally hard to measure the work. Quantity of bugs? Time consumption? How beautiful is it? Maintainability? Usability? How fast is it?
The internal solution
If you feel like this, you need to change your mindset to break out of this situation. The main things that you need to know are:
- Everybody sucks! You have a clear vision of your errors, but not the others’ errors that is why you think you make a lot of mistakes, but the fact is that everybody commits errors, a lot of them, and it is okay.
- Don’t be a bitch with yourself! Would you be more kind to the others if the same error were coming from them? I’m sure that you would. So be kind to yourself as well.
- If you need help, don’t hesitate to ask. It is fair to ask for the help of the others; you don’t need to save the world on your own.
- Pop the champagne and raise a toast. When you do something nice, even a small challenge, a small task delivered, you need to celebrate it, you nailed!
- And if you feel that this is a persistent situation, talk with you psychologist.
