A podcast episode on the same subject from 2020 is here.
I'm so over people holding themselves back from feeling like they have Imposter Syndrome. It’s breaking my damn heart. All the delayed dreams and hidden longings to share one's work with the world are blocked in this way and I can’t take it.
It’s ridiculous! How much does the made-up concept cost the world? What is being lost to the false construct of Imposter Syndrome, which is holding people back from expressing their full creativity? How much time is being wasted?
A metric f*ck ton, that's how much.
Every time you uplevel, you WILL feel like a poser, out of your league, scared half to death.
You'll want to run, hide, and go back under the rock you just crawled out from under.
In other words, you'll feel like all critters feel when they come out of the chrysalis and take flight. Intensely readjusting is intensely awkward, weird, sweaty, and fraught with embarrassing moments.
That's just a normal brain making its normal nervous system adjustments to accommodate all the newness until the new feels normal.
That's the entirely predictable outcome of the Bartender in your Brain Bar mixing up the new chemicals to match the new level.
New thing = Agitation and Discomfort.
Always has, and always will.
Delaying the process of adaptation by buying courses and books to resolve a set of symptoms resulting from a massive misattribution keeps people stuck, miserable, and stifled. Excuse me while I inhale. That was a long sentence.
It's not a thing. It's not a Syndrome, and calling it one gives it a legitimacy this crippling concept doesn’t deserve. Allowing ourselves to think it’s outside our control, like a disease we caught sitting at the bus stop, allows anxiety and procrastination to go on and on and on.
The world needs everyone functioning at full creative capacity. Stop believing the nonsense you’ve been taught.
You're the boss of you.
Get going.
XO,
LMW
Dear Laura Michelle Wolff,
Another perspective would be realizing what we call imposter syndrome is what everyone but the very privileged go through in trying to grow and live life. This perspective sees that it's real but is a societal issue more than anything, brought on by social criticism and unrealistic expectations.
Thanks for your thoughts,
Rochelle