If you've ever become really good at something, primarily work you get handsomely paid for, you undoubtedly have experienced the so-called impostor syndrome.
It's a nagging feeling of inadequacy and self-doubt. It can grow to a crippling fear of being exposed as a fraud, as someone who got there by chance and luck or other external factors, and because you put in the time and effort to become competent in your field and become a success.
It's especially prevalent in entrepreneurship due to the unique challenges and uncertainties founders face when running a startup. It's the nature of trying to build a successful business that becomes highly conductive for impostor syndrome. Most founders were operators before that, so it's hard for them to grasp that their success is of their own accord. Instead, most struggle with fear of failure, being perceived as a novice in the industry, ultimately failing and becoming a laughing stock.
Let me tell you this.
It's absolutely normal to feel impostor syndrome anytime you succeed. There are various levels of it, ranging from a nagging anxiety to total burnout due to the crippling fear I mentioned above. And there's no one single cause of impostor syndrome that we can quickly address and eliminate. It can be due to past experiences, unhealthy perfectionism, culture, or personality traits.
Signs and symptoms
By now, you might be wondering whether you have impostor syndrome or not. My personal theory, after discussing the topic at length with 10+ people from my circle, is that every at least mildly successful human being experiences it. Whether you struggle with it or not is an entirely different thing. Plus, it's very personal.
For some people, something as small as getting a work award for "Best Excel-er in the Office" might be a huge trigger. The fear that from now on, every colleague will ask you when they get stuck in Excel can be harrowing. What if you can't help them? What if you suggest something wrong, or even worse, something dumb. You'll make a fool of yourself, everybody in the office will laugh, and they will all know you didn't deserve the award.
I know this example might seem a bit extreme, but you get the point. Being awarded that way may pose severe challenges for a shy and introverted person.
Figuring out you are suffering from impostor syndrome can be pretty hard sometimes, as the whole premise of it is that it induces other feelings. Some of the signs you should watch out for may be:
Persistent self-critical thoughts or self-doubt
Constantly downplaying all your achievements
Having an unreasonable fear of failure and not meeting others' expectations
Excessive need for outside validation
Continuously undermining your abilities and sabotaging your success
Overworking yourself to make up for your supposed inadequacies
For many entrepreneurs, the syndrome can also manifest as excessive workaholism, reluctance to delegate tasks, and avoiding seeking help. These usually come with the false notion that only you must do the tasks at hand and do them right away to validate your position and show you are worth it.
All those are hard to catch, and the problem is that by the time you realize you are suffering from impostor syndrome, you are usually either burned out or on the verge of it.
Every single time I've been there, impostor syndrome had a part in it. I always felt I needed to do more, to show everyone there's a reason I am there, that I deserve to be there, while constantly feeling like a failure. It takes a sobering look at yourself from a bird's eye view to see how deeply you've dug yourself. And it can often have nasty effects on you and your company.
Negative effects
If left unchecked, impostor syndrome can devastate you as a founder. It can hinder your decision-making abilities, leading to missing opportunities or avoiding necessary risks to innovate and grow. It can contribute to mental health issues, lead you down the path of being unable to enjoy successes and push you towards burning out. It can strain your relationships at work and with family and friends, resulting in chronic stress.
As for the company, if the founders or management are struggling with impostor syndrome, they are more likely to hesitate to delegate tasks, stifle team creativity, and significantly negatively impact the company's performance. If the issue goes as far as influencing company culture, it becomes an even bigger issue. If things like feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, and decreased motivation become the norm, productivity and morale will undoubtedly suffer.
And to make matters worse, good employees usually leave such toxic work environments first. Therefore, to foster a positive team culture and ensure the sustainability of the business, it is crucial to identify the signs of impostor syndrome early on and take the necessary actions to deal with the issue.
Strategies and tips to overcome
As with most ailments of the mind, there's no one-size-fits-all solution to overcoming impostor syndrome. There are many tips like Trusting your Journey, Celebrating small wins, Embracing vulnerability, Acknowledge your feelings, etc. Still, those all sound vague and way too unspecific to me.
Instead of listing the same bullet points you can read (and probably have) in 100+ blogs, I want to focus on my process and what's been of tremendous help to me.
First, find a person you trust. Not trust, but trust. For me, that's my beautiful wife. She is my best friend and always there for me, at my best and worst. Over the last year, I've specifically started to practice being more vulnerable with her, and both her positive reaction and the benefits for my mental well-being have been nothing short of amazing.
I can talk to her about anything. She never judges me but always has something witty to say to make me feel better. Whenever I get the familiar impostor syndrome feeling of dread, fear of being exposed as a failure, fear of becoming a laughingstock, etc., I always talk to my wife and feel much better afterward.
Having someone to open up to is probably the best feeling in the world. And it helps so much to quiet down the voices causing your self-doubt and self-imposed fears.
It sounds so simple when I read it that it almost feels like I am not sharing anything useful. Still, I firmly believe having someone to talk to entirely openly is the best thing you can do to battle impostor syndrome.
Another thing that has helped me a lot is rewiring my brain to see failure and challenges as necessary stepping stones on the path of constant growth.
We have all read quotes from successful people talking about how they failed numerous times before ultimately succeeding.
Alex Hormozi (if you don't watch his videos, you should) often says that the best way to succeed and get ahead of your peers is to do the same thing but do way more of it. A few extra hours of work on Sunday won't ruin your weekend but have the potential to set you up for a much more productive and efficient week.
So, what do I mean by those two? You are allowed to fail, remember this. Failing means you tried to build something, and this is way more than most people ever do. And, if you apply Alex Hormozi's concept here, to ultimately be a success story, you need to fail much more than others.
It will always suck to fail, but you shouldn't fear it. A failed venture simply means you didn't know enough to make it this time. You know what? You now know much more than before you started, so is it really a failure? Well, it is, but it doesn't matter because you know the end goal. And the end goal is not becoming a success, the end goal is bettering yourself and growing constantly.
You need to shift your mindset to accept failure (and, most notably, the constant possibility of failing, especially in entrepreneurship) as a game. It would be best to approach it as each level's end boss. Every level you play ends with failure, but then you take all the points accumulated over the time spent on this level and move on to the next, more challenging level. This level also ends when you fail. But then you move to the next one, and so on.
Those are my two go-to strategies to deal with impostor syndrome. Try them out and see if they work for you or not. If they do, happy to be helpful, but if they don't, make sure you take action and start dealing with impostor syndrome, as it can have devastating effects on your mental health, relationships, and business.
Impostor syndrome is a widespread phenomenon, especially in the entrepreneurship community. Realizing it can be managed and overcome is empowering, but it's only the first step. And the process is always unique to you. Find the right tools and build the mindset to help you transform impostor feelings and fear of failure into a power source to feed your growth and resilience.
And remember, it is okay to fail. In fact, you should get into the habit of doing it more and faster.
This is all I have for you today. Thank you for reading, and extra brownie points for those who share the newsletter with one friend or colleague. It helps me grow, and it may help them too.
Till next week,
Dobri