5 Tips To Beat Imposter Syndrome
1. Gain more experience and change the story you tell yourself.
A lot of times, lack of experience is the cause of imposter syndrome. Our negative self-talk makes us believe that we are not good enough. But if we have experience and put in the time to practice developing a skill, we can counter this negative-thinking with evidence that “but I’ve done this before. I am good enough; I can handle this“.
For example, there are times when I’m oncall and get a call to do a difficult CT case, I get nervous and have those flashes of self-doubt about whether I’m meant to be a doctor. But then I tell myself, “I’ve been oncall many times before, I’ve been in similar, difficult situations; I can handle this.” Having this mindset can stack the deck in your favour and prove to yourself, with evidence, that you are not a fraud and that you are capable.
2. Step outside your comfort zone.
Try to do things that challenge you. The more challenges you face, the greater resilience you develop. By doing more challenging things, you become more familiar with what you are able to do and by doing this, you expand your comfort zone. Life is full of difficult and challenging situations. I try to make it a point to do at least one new difficult thing each week that will help me step out of my comfort zone. For me, as an introvert, this can be me walking up to a random person and striking a conversation, intentionally putting myself in an uncomfortable situation. By doing this, I expand my comfort zone and it makes it easier for me to be more extroverted and build my self-confidence .
3. Draw on your experiences and use them as motivation.
We’ve all been through our own unique experiences. While not all experiences are equal, they are numerous and diverse. We have all faced challenging situations that we never thought we would overcome. We can draw on these experiences for inspiration and to prove ourselves that we can overcome what life may throw our way. Even when we weren’t successful, we were still able to learn something from our own experiences, even if the experiences weren’t necessarily pleasant.
Don’t compare your experiences to others and don’t devalue your own experiences. Take your experiences as what they are: your experiences. As the famous Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius once said, 80% of what happens in your life is beyond your control; only 20% of life is in your control. You may not have been able to control or prevent the bad experiences that you faced but you are fully in control of what you do with those experiences; whether you will make something out of them or whether you will let them overwhelm and hinder you.
This ties in to the previous point of stepping outside your comfort zone; aim to do more challenging things to increase your familiarity and widen your comfort zone. This will broaden your skills and make you more versatile.
4. Trust in the process, be patient and allow yourself time to grow.
While it’s relatively easy to be inspired to start something, committing to a goal is hard to do, because it takes effort. This for me was driving. When I was a teenager, I really wanted to learn how to drive. I would see cool guys driving in movies and I pictured myself doing the same. In 2011, when I went for driving lessons, I unsurprisingly found out that I sucked. Badly. I would stall the car on every other street, I would drive very slowly and I was extremely nervous whenever I was on the road. I would think, “What if it started to rain? How will I drive at night while its dark?“. Also, I needed 20 driving lessons to sit my driving test, while the recommended number of lessons was only 10. However, after putting in the time and effort, I managed to pass my driving test. I continued to practise driving, in different conditions, such in the dark or in the rain, sometimes both simultaneously, and I gained more confidence on road. It’s now 12 years on and while I am not a master by any means, I am much confident in myself and more comfortable in my ability to drive in any weather condition. However, this took a long time to reach this level of proficiency.
With perseverance, hard work and patience, almost anything is possible. You have to realize that when you start a pursuit, you will usually suck at first. You want to progress so quickly and be able to do cool things but you have to start from somewhere. With dedication and hard work, you can accelerate the progress to some degree but generally, improvement happens over time. But the skills and knowledge will eventually come.
5. You are actually good; you just don’t realize it (yet).
You have gotten this far with the skills that you have honed over time. When the doubts creep in, it’s easy to get stuck in the rut of things and start to lose confidence in yourself. While self-reflection is important, you shouldn’t dwell on your doubts as they don’t define you. You have to remember how far you come and think about how much improvement you have made, especially in the last 6 or 12 months. You need to celebrate your wins and give yourself credit with the skills that you have acquired up to this point.
Think of it this way: don’t aim to be good for others, aim to be good enough for yourself each day. Over time, you will better yourself and you will really appreciate how far you’ve come.
On that note, I’ll leave you to think about this quote:
“I am not who I was,” he whispered, gripping the edges of the column, “but I know who I am…And I won’t give up.”
[Christopher Paolini, Inheritance]
Have a blessed and productive week!
