03 Apr Blog: On Impostor Syndrome

A lot of us suffer from shades of the famed impostor syndrome. That is, a state of the mind when you believe that you are faking it. Essentially, that you don’t deserve what you’ve earned.

It’s not technically a psychological disorder or illness, though researchers agree that it is growing profoundly so. It’s simply a state of mind that comes from our cultural conditioning. (Big surprise there).

I suffer from it in big ways. (Hell, I just admitted during a TED talk that I feel as though I don’t belong on the stage… as I was on the stage. Meta).

I find there’s generally three phases that I go through in the severity of it. More often then not it strikes with intense self-questioning. So, here goes.

Mild: What am I doing here?
Moderate: No really man, what am I doing here?
Severe: I’m freaking out, what the hell am I doing here? Aaaah!

In response I have trained myself (and it’s still totally not 100% there) to have a mental knee-jerk reaction. Kind of like an automatic thought – sort of like an out of office email message – that just blurts out.

What am I doing here? —> Who cares, this is kinda cool and will make a good story one day.

No really man, what am I doing here? —> Why not you, but someone else? You have as much right as anyone to be here.

I’m freaking out, what the hell am I doing here? Aaaah! —> Don’t let this moment pass because it’ll never come again, jerk.

The first two are a matter of telling me to calm down. But the last it all about FOMO. That’s right, I cheat my head into chilling out by embracing FOMO.

And here’s why. My ultimate fear is not experiencing all that I can. (Also, death, spiders, and some other stuff, too). I loathe losing moments that I worked really hard for because I didn’t open up with that last 5% of being present and aware. FOMO is the manifestation of that, for me.

And it scares the hell out of me. In that, I find it’s sobering and I can use it to bring me down