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Do you ever have the sense that you’re waiting to be ‘found out’ – that you don’t really deserve to be a success, and that really, it’s a question of when, not if, your true inadequacies will be revealed? Imposter syndrome lurks within most of us. It is an almost universal feeling for all, even the seemingly most confident of leaders, regardless of age, gender or industry.
When I was at TEDx Stanford in 2013, I listened to a talk on inner saboteurs that included research where 100 CEOs were asked to share a secret they had never told anyone. What I heard was shocking. Keen to spread the word about basic human emotions so that stressed business leaders would feel more able to articulate their feelings, I wanted to share some of these secrets. So, for my own talks on neuroscience and leadership resilience, I picked out the six or seven of those secrets that were echoes of concerns my own clients had shared with me during coaching sessions. Amongst these FTSE 100 leaders, Law firm partners and investment bankers, there were various themes around fear of burnout, untimely death, use of drugs and alcohol, loss of connection to loved ones etc., but the one that resonates with someone every time, wherever in the world I am, is:
“I am afraid I will be found out for being a fraud.”
I have heard this anxiety from a range of people: the CEO of a Silicon Valley tech company; a hedge fund billionaire in the U.K.; the top team of an FMCG in Africa; and a group of CE level execs at an Asian bank. I could go on. It was certainly a widespread feeling amongst junior doctors when I was still working in the NHS. But I did not expect to change from a career in Psychiatry to become a leadership consultant and deal with so many people experiencing crippling self-doubt and an underlying sense of their own inadequacy, surviving at the edge of burnout, dealing with heart attacks, exhaustion and depression at the extreme end.
Our own successes are easily dismissed as luck, rather than proof of our skill, hard work or expertise. But this self-deprecation has a worrying side-effect. Fear of “being found out” breeds anxiety, and is associated with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the brain and body. Alongside this, feelings of “not deserving” correlate with lower levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin which relates to mood, and low levels of dopamine which are connected to reward and motivation. And interestingly, whether you are male or female, the lower your confidence, the lower your testosterone levels, meaning you are less likely to take healthy risks like going for a promotion. So all in all, by thinking this way, you’re signing up for an unpleasant chemical cocktail of fear, shame, uncertainty and mistrust that leads to self-sabotage. Who needs that?
Insecurity can lead to poor self-care and overindulgence in quick fix substances such as sugar, caffeine, alcohol and drugs. I have seen this time and time again in my work, both as a psychiatrist and coach. So keeping your body in the right physical condition to work on the mental and emotional issues is key. As an experiment, read this article again after a good night’s sleep, a 30-minute run or some mindfulness meditation, and see if it triggers the same thoughts or feelings in you as it did the first time around.
When you or anyone else is struggling under the weight of self-doubt, however consciously or subconsciously, you will be projecting all sorts of messages out to the world that signal the ultimate deal-breaker: lack of trust. If you don’t have trust in yourself (self-belief) then why should anyone else trust you? If you feel the need to assert yourself unnecessarily then why would anyone want to collaborate with you? These messages are given out and responded to in split-second timing by the tiny part of the brain called the amygdala which is deep in the limbic system – the ancient, intuitive part of the brain. When someone doubts themselves, this gets communicated at a deeply primal level.
So the questions is: how can you counteract imposter syndrome, and build your internal self-belief so that you communicate a sense of trust and comfort in your own skin?
In my forthcoming book, I describe an exercise I call the "Roadmap to Abundance." This is a great way to challenge imposter syndrome and put some strategies in place to break the habit of self-doubt. At its heart, is a challenge to the intrusive self-doubting thoughts that pop into your mind whenever you think about an aspiration.
What we know about neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to create new pathways and connections has taught us that it is only by doing things differently, and practicing thinking in new ways, that our underlying thoughts and habits change.
The first step is becoming aware of the reflex of self-doubt that pipes up: "there are plenty of other people who deserve it more," or "I'm not up to this challenge..." The second is to demote its significance - think of it as psychological 'noise' you don't need to listen to. Finally, the game-changer is taking action in spite of self-doubt. Repeatedly doing this will change the way you think over time. In short, there is no substitute for action. Imposter syndrome wants to keep you stuck. Don't let it.
