Jay Papasan:
I’m Jay Papasan and this is The ONE Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results.
This week, we’re going to be talking about self-doubt, the imposter syndrome, something that you’ve probably felt. I mean, have you ever wondered, “When will everybody figure out that I’m actually a fraud, that I’m just a phony? I’m not good enough to be doing what I’m doing.” Have you ever attributed your success to luck or outside factors? Have you ever agonized over even the smallest flaws or mistakes that you might’ve made? Do you, sometimes, self-sabotage before you even start?
This instinct to doubt your own abilities can self-sabotage, so you never even get out of the starting gate. If any of those sound like you, I think you’ll get a lot out of this episode. And I’m just going to give a nod to my friend Jamie Kern Lima. We had her on the podcast back in episode 440. She was talking about her great book, Worthy. And we’ve got a few quotes from her in this podcast because she’s talking about self-worth, which is very related to self-doubt and definitely is on the path to imposter syndrome. And we’ll link to that in the episode show notes. So, without further ado, let’s dive in and talk about what exactly is this thing, imposter syndrome, and how does it show up?
The imposter syndrome is a form of self-doubt. And it’s a fear that shows up – maybe an ongoing fear – often suffered by high achievers. People who actually perform at a high level seem to suffer from it more than others. And it’s this idea that they’re going to be unmasked, that they’re going to be found out to not be as good as everybody thinks they are.
Now, the imposter phenomenon, as it was originally known, was coined in 1978. It was by researchers Pauline Clance and Dr. Suzanne Imes when they published their research called The Imposter Phenomenon for High Achieving Women. Today, we call it the imposter syndrome. And most researchers and psychologists would agree that it’s not something that we identify just for women, but it’s broadly found across men and women, whether they’re high achievers or on that journey.
There’s three factors that they kind of look at when they talk about the imposter syndrome. People think that others have an exaggerated view of their skills. They think of less of themselves than they perceive others to think of them. They have this perpetual fear of being exposed as a fraud. That’s why it’s called the imposter syndrome. And they have a tendency to downplay their own achievements. They’ll write them off to luck or to outside factors. Those are three of the core attributes that this study identified in people suffering from what they then called the imposter phenomenon, which we now call the imposter syndrome.
We know that self-doubt from the research can appear in children as young as four years old. Think about that if you’re a parent. You’ve got a young child, why in the world are they starting to experience self-doubt? And self-doubt is different than just fear. Fear, anxiety, there’s really good reasons we might have that. Like, yes, you should be afraid of a barking dog if you’re a small child. It might not be a safe dog, whatever that is. You need to be afraid of running in the street. But self-doubt is something entirely different.
Researchers would point to the fact that today, as much as 70% of high-performing individuals will experience imposter syndrome. So, if you’re thinking, “That’s me,” you are not alone. In fact, you’re far from it. This is very pervasive in our society, especially if you’re striving. We’re striving, by definition, means we’re operating often at the edge of our abilities. And that edge of our abilities where you try to get ahead, that’s where we feel the most fragile. We’re trying things that might be new. We’re trying things that might not have been done by a lot of other people. Maybe we haven’t done them a lot, but we’re stretching ourselves in order to achieve our goals. And that’s when we’re at our most fragile. That’s where that kind of coincides and why it appears to show up more with high achievers than others.
There’s also something called the Dunning-Kruger effect. It’s the idea that the less skilled someone is, the more likely they are to think they’re highly skilled. And the more skilled someone is, the more they can see their flaws. And if you step back past all the messy emotions of self-doubt and anxiety, that makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? If you have really become a master of what you do, you can take apart your performance so much more detailed than an amateur could. You can go out and, like, I listen sometimes to one of my stage performances, and because I’ve done a lot of training, I hear every single like, I hear every single filler word because I’ve been trained. I know what the mistakes are and I’m more likely to notice them.
So, there’s this a weird phenomenon. Like people who are unskilled and unknowledgeable might think they’re absolutely awesome at something. They have an inflated sense of their own achievement; whereas, people who are actually quite accomplished and quite skilled might have an artificially low sense of their own abilities. So, that’s a factor that’s playing in here and kind of compounding this imposter effect. I think it’s totally natural to wonder if we measure up, especially in a competitive environment. If you’re a leader, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re striving to do something that measures up to extraordinary success, it’s totally normal. And in some ways, it can actually be very healthy for us.
Some researchers actually think that self-doubt – and it can metastasize into this imposter syndrome, so I’m kind of using them synonymously – it might even be something that is evolutionary. That because we doubt ourselves, a part of our brain is actually protecting us. You can imagine going back to our ancestors, and we’re walking into a new part of the savanna, it’s checking off all these boxes around safety. Is this a good place to be? Or is there another tribe here? Are there predators that could hurt me? So, it’s normal to have doubts.
And in some ways it serves us. I’ll go into this in a little bit more detail later on, but when we have self-doubts, for some people, it becomes a growth event. It means that they will prepare longer and harder to overcome those self-doubts on the front end. They might do more preparedness to try to lower those anxieties and fears on the front end. So, in some ways, even though it feels bad, it can actually serve us in other ways.
Now, this is a quote from the actual research, “People with imposter feelings often feel relief instead of pride after an accomplishment, which can cause them to keep pushing without taking care of themselves.” Man, when I read that, it was like a stake through the heart. I mean, seriously. And I know a lot of other people who, when they achieve something, the first thing they feel is a sense of relief that it’s over, that they didn’t fail, that they didn’t embarrass themselves. Instead of going, “Wow, I won. I actually just did it,” like how does that even happen in our brains that we win the race and our first feeling is relief? But that is very much tied up in this complex tangle of emotions, which we’re calling self-doubt and the imposter syndrome. So that’s the big picture.
And I’m gonna go back. The three big things, imposter syndrome and self-doubt. It’s people believing that others have an exaggerated sense of their own abilities. Everybody thinks I’m better than I actually am. Because of that, we have this fear of being exposed as a fraud. And then, lastly, there’s this tendency to downplay our achievements, to say, “That was lucky,” or “I had a good day.” Why care about this? I mean, obviously, all of this is important if you’re on the journey to achievement. Man, I would really like to do it without all this self-doubt and this sense that I’m a fraud, obviously.
I’m gonna go back to what I mentioned earlier. One of my favorite things I found while I was researching this episode was a quote from Jamie Kern Lima in our episode 440. She said, “If you don’t have self-worth, you’ll doubt yourself out of your own destiny.” If you don’t have self-worth, you’ll doubt yourself out of your own destiny. Man, that hits hard. The price that we pay for this imposter syndrome, for this feeling that I’m not worthy, that the self-doubt, is man, we’re gonna self-sabotage. What are the things that we’re not trying, that we’re not even striving to do, that we don’t think are in our wheelhouse, so we’re not even trying? We’re eliminating the opportunity for achievement and growth before we even begin because of this inner sense that we’re not worthy, that we have self-doubt.
Now, if you’re a founder, if you’re a leader, if you are the person in charge, whether it’s a nonprofit, a for-profit, or even in your family, here’s the deal, the person who leads, doubt and criticism is gonna show up in dump trucks, and affirmations and praise in teaspoons. It’s just a reality, folks. It goes with the territory. If you’re out leading the pack, people are going to hear the play you’re calling, and they’re going to say, “But I don’t think we should do that. And I think I have a better plan.”
And that’s just part of the package, that we are going to face more criticism if we’re stepping out of the comfort zone of everyone else and trying to do something that’s truly spectacular to lead the company’s success, to lead our team to success, ourselves to success, there are always going to be people, I mean, even good-meaning ones, that’ll say like, “Ooh, that sounds risky,” “Ooh, are you sure you want to do that?” And then, there’s the people who just outright pick you apart. It’s the old man in an arena quote, don’t listen to people who aren’t in there with you, but it’s easier said than done. But man, it’s hard when you deal with this on a day-to-day basis.
Now, one of my favorite speakers and writers, Denis Waitley, there’s a quote that I’ll just read to you. “It’s not what you are that holds you back, it’s what you think you’re not.” It’s not what you are that holds you back, it’s what you think you’re not. Thank you, Denis Waitley, for that little gem. This idea that we don’t believe we have the tools, or the skills, or the ability to do the things that we want to do, that we dream of doing, it’s holding us back. Not what we truly are, it’s the thoughts in our heads.
Now, the truth is, I believe that imposter syndrome will defeat more achievers and more entrepreneurs than the competition ever will. Why? Because that doubt impedes our performance, and again, it might not even let us get out of the starting gate.
Now, before I get to the solutions, I want to just take one big myth off the table. And it’s this idea that everyone’s even actually paying attention. And researchers, kind of, this sense that everybody’s watching us, they call it the spotlight effect. It’s this idea literally of walking onto a stage. If you can imagine the last time you went to a play or to a performance, the singer walks out onto the stage and they have that spotlight that is just following them to the microphone.
And in a dark room, that’s pretty much what everybody’s focused on. The spotlight effect kind of happens every day and we walk around imagining falsely that everybody is kind of watching our every move. They’re seeing every little mistake. When we’re walking into the room, and we stumble a little bit, and we’re like, “Oh, gosh. Great entry, Jay. You just fumbled the ball right before you even got to introduce yourself,” nobody noticed. You’re in your own spotlight effect you’re paying so much more attention to it than anybody else.
One of my favorite quotes is from one of my favorite authors Morgan Housel and he wrote the Psychology of Money. And he was talking about one of his first jobs where he was a valet at a very expensive place in California. People are pulling up in Ferraris and Lambos, you name it. And he was talking about this effect in the sense of people wanting to buy expensive stuff because they thought it would make them look cool. And he got to experience this a lot as a valet because he saw the people who were driving the cars and what they were like.
And he goes, “People buy that sports car and they think, ‘Everybody’s gonna think I look cool when I’m driving this car.'” And he said, the reality is, people see you in the car and they say, ‘man, everybody would think I, not the person driving it, I would look cool if I was driving that car. The spotlight effect means they’re thinking about themselves, they’re not thinking about you. So we have to get over this idea that everybody’s paying attention.
And I’ll kind of wrap up this section on why it matters and also kind of why we kind of maybe over-index on this whole idea, this myth with the spotlighting effect. It’s with a quote from the Chinese, I believe is a philosopher, Lao Tzu. “It’s when you care about what other people think, you will always be their prisoner.” Not only is the spotlight effect kind of verifiably false, it doesn’t serve us. If we’re so focused on what everybody thinks about us, whether it’s when we’re giving a presentation at work or driving in our car, we’re really kind of giving them our happiness.
A wiser man than me once told me, “Jay, never lay your happiness at someone else’s feet. ‘Don’t give them that control ‘of how you feel about your life and yourself.” And I would give you that same advice today.
Now, it’s about time for a break. And on the other side, I’ll share seven strategies to help you overcome self-doubt and the imposter syndrome, and then get back on that journey of extraordinary results.
All right, welcome back, folks. It’s time now that we’ve wrapped up this idea of what is it, why is it important, and kind of gotten that spotlight effect off the table, let’s go do some strategies that you can employ for trying to dodge self-doubt, to try to avoid the imposter syndrome, or at least minimize the effects. The last thing I want for you on the road to extraordinary success is to avoid taking on challenges, to avoid going for possibilities, goals and stretch goals. I want you operating out there. We want you operating out there at the edge of your abilities where extraordinary success happens.
So, the very first one is, validate your feelings. Now, I go all the way back and I just think about one of the little things about self-doubt that we learned in researching for this is that it happens in the same part of your brain that registers physical pain. Did you hear that? Those feelings of self-doubt, “I’m a fraud. Everybody sees it,” it’s registering in the same part of your brain that registers when you stub your toe or bark your shin on the coffee table. It is physically painful or mentally painful to experience these.
So, we just have to acknowledge it. When we’re going through this, it’s , iIt sucks, it is psychologically painful, and it’s happening in the same part of our brain where broken bones and burns show up. It is not a good feeling. We can acknowledge that. And one of my favorite authors is Dr. Becky Kennedy. And one of the best lines I’ve heard from her, and I think she did this on a podcast, I can’t remember, she just said, “Here’s the thing that you say to yourself. It feels hard because it is hard, not because I’m failing.” It feels hard because it is hard, not because I’m failing.
Let’s take that same syntax and say it feels painful because it is painful, not because I’m not good enough. It feels painful because it is painful, not because I’m not good enough. We can acknowledge that self-doubt imposter syndrome, it’s no fun. And acknowledging it also validates it, so we don’t feel like we’re the weird one walking in the room. We’re the one, the only person possibly who could be suffering this. We tell ourselves this ridiculous stuff and we spiral, just absolutely spiral, and we just want to avoid that.
Now, those feelings, as we pointed out, might actually serve us. Remember that evolutionary data the researchers found? Maybe this was there to keep us alive. Maybe this is there to keep us in our social groups back when being a part of the tribe was a way to survive. So, we can just say, “Thank you, self-doubt. I hear you, I know you’re trying to do a good job, but I don’t need you today.”
One of my friends is the author, Joseph Nguyen, and he wrote a book called Don’t Believe Everything You Think. And he kind of blew up on TikTok just reading the book. He’s the most humble, smart guy. I just, I love him to death. He says, our thoughts, in this case, our thoughts or feelings, are just an observation of fact. It’s pretty cold in this room. It’s pretty hot in this room. Man, this is a big audience come to see me. That’s the thought.
Our thinking – Don’t Believe Everything You Think is the title of his book – is our judgment about those thoughts. So, we observe something in the world and that shows up in our thoughts. And we follow it with our thinking, “How do we feel about that?” Man, there’s a lot of people in this room. If we go from that fact to the thinking or the feeling of, “Why are they here to see me?” we’re kind of going down the wrong path
So, acknowledge that there is this gap between our thoughts and our thinking. And that’s the space where we can start taking control. The thoughts, the observations, that’s scary, that’s a big audience, all real, we validate it, might even be serving us, but then we can step past the, “We’re not good enough. They’ll find out soon enough that I’m not good enough,” whatever that negative dialogue is in your head, and move on.
So, first step, validate it. It’s literally painful. It’s real. We’re not alone. Everyone does it. In fact, those feelings may be serving us, but the feelings being real should not dictate our response to them.
Now, strategy number two, let’s look for some facts. Could you provide evidence about what you’re feeling right now? When you think about yourself in this arena, can you prove that your feelings are valid? Are there facts that line up to it? Now, sometimes, we ask those questions and there’s a few things like, “Oh, wow, I’ve never studied professional speaking.” But guess what? This book talk that you’re about to give, you’re the author. It’s your presentation, you prepared it, it’s your department, it’s your idea. There’s almost always counter facts that balance out the ledger.
If we stop the feelings for a second, we’ve acknowledged them, maybe given them a name, said, “Thank you so much, but no thank you.” Now let’s look at the facts. There’s usually a lot of facts around that. And ask yourself, what’s the opposite? What are the facts that would support me being absolutely appropriate for doing this thing? “Hey, I’ve done this before. What’s the worst that can happen?” When we say those things too early, our brain just doesn’t process them. It’s like talking to your kid when they’re afraid to join the other kids in the playground. If they’re in that scared place and you’re saying, “You’ve done this before. You’ll be okay,” it’s just noise. They’re not hearing you and you don’t hear yourself if you go there too fast.
Now, the other thing I like to talk about is this idea of the gap in the game, and where are we living most of the time. In my experience, a lot of achievers, and it’s because of these self-doubts, they live in the gaps, not the gains. That’s that wonderful Benjamin Hardy and Dr. Sullivan book, The Gap and the Gain. But where are you living all the time? We cannot equate an opportunity to improve – a small gap, a small mistake, an imperfection – with failure. It’s not the same thing. An opportunity to improve does not mean poor performance.
So, we’ve got to get this out of our head. The facts would say, man, you kind of nailed it. They applauded at the end. Maybe it was polite. Maybe it was actually enthusiastic. But yes, you had a few filler words. You stumbled over a few parts. We all do. They probably didn’t notice. They didn’t certainly notice like we noticed. So look for the facts, and I think a lot of times we’ll find a few that are supporting, but you may have to ask the question, what facts would support that I am actually worthy of being here, that I should be doing this activity?
Three, and this is one that’s really near and dear to my heart, and if it had been appropriate, I would have started with it. Prepare for success instead of preparing for failure. If we start the journey preparing for failure, we often don’t get out of the gate. But if we prepare for success, now we’re doing the things, this is how self-doubt serves us. Oh gosh, I’m afraid I’m gonna face plant when I do this thing. Well, great, what can I do to feel more prepared about it? This is again, the advice we might give our child.
Now, there’s this old song about failing to plan is planning to fail. I would kind of flip it around and say, failing to prepare is preparing to fail. If I’ve got a two-hour speech, it’s eight hours over a few weeks that I will block, and by the end of the eight hours, like it’s all internalized. Four hours to one is the ratio for me. If I’d given the speech a thousand times, it gets shorter. But you look up and you realize that’s what it takes. If I prepare to that level, the majority of the fear goes away.
And I’m not gonna lie to you, today, even before I sat down today for this podcast in front of no one, privately, with a microphone, I got nervous. That’s the part that’s serving me because it’s encouraging me to prepare. And I’ve figured out how to prepare for success instead of preparing for failure. And by preparing for success, we do the things that allow us to move forward with some level of confidence, you can still be nervous. Most people are, if it matters, you will be. So one, two, three, validate your feelings, look for facts, prepare for success.
Now, let’s talk about step number four, strategy number four, celebrate success. I am so guilty of violating this on a daily basis. We talked about one of the three main points, is that people who suffer from imposter syndrome, they tend to invalidate their own successes. They attribute it to luck. They attribute it to outside forces. It was the team. It wasn’t me. And it wasn’t just them being gracious. They’re saying that because they have self-doubt.
And I know so many people, and this perfectly describes me, that even when we win the race, we do the thing that we really wanted to do, my first emotion is not elation, it’s relief. Does that sound like you? I know a lot of my fellow achievers that that fits the bill. “Oh, it’s over. I didn’t fail.” How messed up are we, folks? But I’m telling you, this is me. My wife knows it, my team knows it. I have to work on it. My wife helps me because she’s figured it out. She will celebrate successes and she makes me celebrate successes. And my team will sometimes force me to. They’ll say, “Nope, you did a great job. Let’s go celebrate.”
And that is so healthy to start conditioning to yourself by celebration. Genuinely saying, “You know what? Yeah, I flubbed a few lines, but man, I did good, right? I did good. That was a good performance. That was absolutely solid.” You start to condition yourself to believe that that’s actually possible for you.
Now, the next time someone congratulates you, how about you just say thank you instead of blowing it off? If you get an email where someone says, “Man, I really loved that thing you did,” maybe you should print it out and stick it somewhere in your office. Put it somewhere to remind you that even in the times where you were sure you were going to fail, more often than not, we succeed.
Strategy number five, start manufacturing confidence. What do I mean? I’ve been talking about this a lot if you’ve been listening to the podcast. Little wins, the smallest domino, that first domino, the thing that you absolutely can do. How can I reduce the first step to something I am confident about, that I have control over, that I can do on a consistent basis? It gets us out of this gap-and-gain mentality, where I talked about earlier, where we’re looking at what we can’t do, we’re focused on what we can do.
Yeah, it’s small, but you read the book, you’ve been listening to this podcast, you know the power of exponential results. You know that that two-inch domino can knock over one that’s three inches tall. It can knock over one that’s four and a half inches tall. Then, by the 18th, it’ll knock over one that’s as tall as the Leaning Tower. By the 23rd, it’s like a thousand feet tall, as tall as the Eiffel Tower. Little wins add up and grow in momentum, and that’s the stuff of extraordinary success.
So, let’s start manufacturing confidence by stacking up the little wins. “Yeah, maybe I’m a little afraid. My self-doubt is keeping me from doing the big thing today, but I’m gonna keep taking these small steps.” And what happens is we start to believe in ourselves along the way. Just kind of like focusing on the successes versus the avoidance of failure starts a different kind of tune in our head. Every day that we step up and we knock over that little domino, that small domino that we can do, that maybe we feel embarrassed is all we can do today, but we start to believe that we can do it. And then, it starts to grow.
There’s another study, and maybe I’ll just have to promise this is the last one, but you know that I nerd out about this stuff. It’s the Pygmalion effect. And the Pygmalion effect, if you’ve seen My Fair Lady, that’s based on it, it’s the idea that we perform better when someone expresses a belief in us. And what happens if we start to believe in ourselves? What happens? Does the Pygmalion effect kick in too? How do we turn self-doubt into self-belief, even if it’s on a very small scale?
Psychology would tell us that turning the tables, even if it’s small, will start to get us to start believing in ourselves. Yes, I can knock that down. Yes, I can do that thing. And we show up a little bit more confident, a little bit stronger, a little bit more resolved every single day. And you look up in a few years and people will go, “Dang, that’s like overnight success.” And you’ll know that it’s been a long line of dominoes. They won’t because that’s how the world looks at things. They don’t realize the small things that have to add up for extraordinary success, but that’s what you’ve been doing. And you get to start believing in yourself.
Strategy number six – we’re almost to the finish line here, folks – give yourself grace. I would be terrified if I could hear the inner monologues of a lot of you listening to this. If you talk to your kids the way you talk to yourself, do you think anybody would think you’re a good parent? Chew on that for a second.
The dialogue that we allow ourselves to have with ourselves is a brutal and offensive, abusive maybe even dialogue often when we’re in this place of imposter syndrome. I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy. We would never say that stuff to our children. We would never say that to people we love. Yet we say it to ourselves all the time. You’re trying to do big things. Give yourself some grace, folks. It’s a small step, but it’s an important one to give yourself a little permission to feel the feelings and do it anyway. There’s nothing wrong with you, folks. It may even be a lot right with you if you’re suffering from this.
And the last one, share with others. I’ve shared a few of my stories here. When you share your feelings around self-doubt with others, one of the responses you need to get used to hearing is someone being kind of incredulous. You get nervous when you go on stage, you get nervous with public speaking, you get nervous with sales, you get nervous with fill in the blank.
That saying that you’re underestimating your abilities and you believe that you’re actually a fraud, a masquerading as in a successful person, if you start sharing that, “Yeah, I have self-doubts, I worry sometimes that I’m not good enough,” imagine the gift that you’re giving to your team, to your friends, to the people around you, because a lot of people hold this inside, and that’s one of the things that allows us to think that we’re the only ones suffering from this. But if we, as leaders of ourselves and others, are willing to kind of vocalize it and normalize it, man, that’s a gift, not just to ourselves, but to other people.
There’s actually research that when you vocalize that, not only do you allow yourself to step past it, you can also invite the collaboration of others. And then, that power of working together and saying, “Me too. And this is what I do. Hey, I prepare four hours for every hour. What do you do?” we get both affirmation and also solutions to move forward. So, there’s many gifts to it, if we’re willing to be a little vulnerable and share it.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. It’s pretty personal if I’m being honest. I’ve definitely felt self-doubt. I felt like an imposter again and again. Usually, when I’m trying hard things, usually when I’m trying things at the edge of my abilities, usually trying things that are not naturally comfortable, like being an extrovert, walking on stage, having to socialize with strangers, all of those things are places where my tendency might be to shut myself down. But you too can step past it. And hopefully, one or more of those seven strategies is something that you can do.
In fact, my challenge for you this week is to go all the way back to the first strategy. When you are feeling self-doubt this week, maybe you’re about to turn off the car and walk into a meeting that’s very important, that there’s high stakes, and you’re wondering if you can pull it off or not, in that moment, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to validate it. “Hey, I’m nervous because this is kind of a big deal to me. It’s a little scary. It’s a little painful because that’s normal, not because I’m likely to fail. It’s a little scary because it is scary. It’s a little nervous or painful because that’s the way it is, not because I’m not enough, not because I’m not good enough.”
Have that little conversation with you, validate the feeling is real, you’re normal to be having it, it doesn’t say anything about you, and see where that takes you. It’s probably serving you. It probably got you to prepare a little harder, but it can’t stop you. So, your challenge for this week is, validate your feelings, address that self-doubt head-on, say you’re okay with it, but in the space between that thought and your response to it, you’re going to acknowledge it and move on.
Now, next week, I hope you’ll tune in again. My good friend Stu McLaren is going to join us. He founded a company called Wishlist Member which has helped, I believe, over 70,000 people build their own communities. It’s new things now but that’s where he started. And we tell the story of him discovering his purpose. He has a great ONE Thing story and we talk about aligning his work and his achievements with the power of purpose. And we also break down what’s the one thing for building community. If any of that sounds interesting be sure not to miss next week. Thank you for tuning in. We’ll see you then.
