The Real Cause of Imposter Syndrome

Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

Many talented people have dealt with imposter syndrome. It’s the uneasy feeling that you’re not nearly as good as other people think, that you don’t deserve your success, that you’re a fraud who will be “found out” at any moment and your life will come crashing down around you. Imposter syndrome takes “fake it ‘til you make it” and turns it into “I’m still faking it and nobody seems to notice yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

Imposter syndrome happens because your skills, talent and ideas feel “normal” to you. Your creative decisions just seem like something you do rather than something unique or notable. Much of your talent comes from now-innate things that seem obvious to you, so you assume these things are obvious to others as well. The choices you make feel like natural choices, so you assume they’d be just as natural for someone else.

Even if you spent years working hard to build them, your abilities inevitably become part of your everyday, normal existence. They don’t seem like anything special in that context, but to outsiders they are very special. To some third parties, they are downright goddamn magical.

To the outside world you are impressive. You are clever and creative. You are doing something original, something cool, something they’d never think of. You make choices that wouldn’t have even occurred to them, you do things in a way they can’t even comprehend being able to do. And most importantly, other people also feel like they don’t know what they’re doing. They just try to hide it as much as you do. We’re all fake frauds pretending we feel like we belong.

Just like the heroes you admire for doing cool shit that you never would have thought of, people admire you for the same reason. Stop assuming that just because something comes naturally to you (even if it took years of hard work to make it feel natural), that means it is equally second nature to everyone else.

It’s not.

You’re cool as hell.

You’re interesting and unique.

Nobody is quite like you and that makes you exciting.

Imposter syndrome is a giant pile of crap that comes from small picture, self-centered thinking. It comes from living in your head, like many creative people do. It comes from something that you think must be real but isn’t. It comes from you thinking creatively about everything except yourself.

Break out of it. Expand your perspective. Stop focusing so hard on yourself and focus outward on what you’re creating. You’re not a fraud. You’re an artist. Now go make something great.