Yes, You Belong Here - Overcoming Impostor Syndrome

This is part two of the series on my talk about impostor syndrome. You can read the first part here.

In part one, I discussed what impostor syndrome was and the effects of it. Hopefully you don't feel limited by the effects of impostor syndrome but if you do, I hope this post can start you on a path that leads you to managing it so that you can succeed.

The first step in dealing with anything really is to educate yourself about it. You're here reading this post so you're already taking steps to educate yourself, good job. Some resources that really helped me recognize and learn how to deal with impostor syndrome include:

• Julie Pagano's talk at Nickel City Ruby Conf 2013
• Ruby Rogues' Impostor Syndrome episode with Tim Chevalier
• Scott Hanselman's I'm a Phony blog post

There's also another impostor syndrome talk by Nickolas Means that was at this year's rails conf that's supposedly very good but I haven't been able to find a video of it yet so keep an eye out for it.

As you educate yourself about impostor syndrome, here are some things I've found to be true and to keep in mind:

We are our worst critics. This isn't just for people affected by impostor syndrome, most people are terrible at evaluating themselves. It's good to self-reflect but take your self-criticisms with a grain of salt.

This sounds worse that it sounds. Impostor syndrome syndrome can be managed. In fact, if you manage it well, it can actually slingshot you into greatness.

What do I mean by this? There are people in this world who are just awesome at managing their time and getting stuff done. Does this mean they're smarter or more intelligent than you? No, this just means they're good at managing their time. This distinction is important as procrastination is something that can often lead you to feeling like an impostor.

Don't get me wrong, procrastination is still a problem, but separating your intellect from time management skills can help you manage impostor syndrome. If you have a problem with procrastination (like yours truly) I highly recommend this series of posts at waitbutwhy.com, here and here.

With these things in mind, there are many things you can do to help manage impostor syndrome.

An important (and maybe most difficult) step is to get help from others. Because you're terrible at evaluating yourself, find people you trust to give you a realistic view of how you're really doing. This also gives people who want to see you succeed a chance to help you out when they may otherwise have no idea of what you're going through.

Avoid negative people and situations if possible. Negative people can drain your emotional energy; energy that you may not have to spare. They don't owe you anything and neither do you. This can also include social media. Unfollowing is easy and it only hurts for a second ;-).

Find a system or belief that gives unconditional love and acceptance to get hidden strength from. Find worth outside of your intellectual pursuits. Putting too much emphasis on intellect can be a source of imbalance in life. I've found that if I've been neglecting my religious studies or exercise, I get overwhelmed easily.

We get so involved with the present that we don't take a moment to see where we've been. Play the long game and don't worry about the day to day so much. Even if you're not improving as fast as you'd like, as long as you're constantly improving you're winning.

If you experience a success, celebrate! Tweet about it, write a blog post about it, just do something that will remind you that you have successes. At the same time, if you fail, learn from it and then move on. Remember that everyone fails and every failure is a learning opportunity.

If you find yourself hesitating from trying out something with a chance of failure, think of it as a big experiment. Then think, "what's the worst that can happen... really". People bounce back from pretty bad failures, oftentimes stronger for it. And then think, "what's the best that can happen?".

If you have intellectual heroes or have some favorite geek celebrities, remember that they are human too. They had to work hard to get where they are and their circumstances are simply not the same as yours. Everyone has strengths as so do you. Measure yourself against yourself and use your unique strengths to be awesome.

Help others. It's scary, you might fail, and yes, you will feel like an impostor at first but after doing it for a while, people will start coming to you for help. Let me tell you, having people come to you for help flies in the face of impostor syndrome!

Finally, some simple advice that my mother always gave me was totally cliche but is true in many respects:

Fake it 'til you make it

This is weird advice because I'm basically telling you to be an impostor. If you already feel like one, why not own it? There are a lot of smart people out there but you'd be surprised to find that they're all faking as well. The only difference is they're not letting it hold themselves back so why should you?

That's great! That means the next post is for you. Next time I'll wrap things up by talking about what you can do to help others with impostor syndrome. Once again, feel free to comment below or hit me up on Twitter or Google+.