I recently learned that someone in my life has been drinking again.
He’s like me — alcohol and drugs spell trouble for him. Our entire lives will be spent avoiding these temptations. That’s just the way it is and there’s nothing we can do about it. We sat down at the table and these are the cards we were dealt.
After much discussion and professional-quality family guesswork, the people close to him have come to the conclusion that, to some extent, he’s suffering from impostor syndrome. He doesn’t believe he’s worthy of the success that he’s finding after a year of sobriety.
Not only does he not feel worthy, but he is terrified of screwing it all up because he feels incompetent. He doesn’t know how to keep his success going — or at least he doesn’t believe that he knows how. That’s a pretty scary and awful place to be. So what does he do? He screws things up in the easiest and most direct way he knows how. “Forget waiting for incompetence or mistakes to get me. I’m just going to destroy everything the old fashioned way, by doing the exact shit I know I should not be doing.” This is what our subconscious mind says to itself.
Self-sabotage, while not seemingly reasonable, is actually pretty simple. It’s about avoidance of uncertainty. It’s taking the bird in the hand that you know will destroy you over the two in the bush that may or may not.
Impostors, impostors everywhere
But everyone struggles with this at some point. Everyone who is reasonable anyway, and who isn’t a complete narcissist.
I mean, think about it. What happens when you get a promotion?
Your job is to act like you know how to do your job, even though you have never done it before. You, quite literally, are an impostor. You’re getting paid to be one. You have been invited to be one. By people who know what they’re doing.
And not only is that okay, but that’s the only way anything happens in the world. People start off doing something poorly, and learn as they go until they’re good at it. And all you ever remember seeing, most times, is the version of them that’s good at it. And you think to yourself “how could I ever do that? They know so much.” But the answer is, precisely the same way they did do it. By having no idea what they were doing at first.
There is but one way to being good at something: through being bad at something. Not around, but through. One way to be a pro: by being a beginner.
So you’re not alone. Everybody experiences this. Everyone who is worth anything, realistically, must experience this. It’s required in order to do anything meaningful. You might even say it’s required to do anything at all.
Stupid questions
“There are no stupid questions,” they say. And that may or may not be true. But what is certainly true is that leaving your question unasked and unanswered is stupid. You’re allowing fear, of looking silly or incompetent, to keep you from asking what might seem to you like a trivial question. But you will remain stupid if you don’t get an answer. That seems worse. That seems like you’re putting a roadblock in your own way, and behind that roadblock you’ll remain trapped… angry, regretful, and incompetent.
And it’s far worse in your head than it is in reality. The overwhelming majority of teachers, professors, parents, and bosses will be happy you asked. If they are reasonable people, they won’t be judging you. Not one bit. They might laugh because of the irony of such a simple question, but that laugh probably contains more of a reflection of how they once felt than a judgment of your intelligence.
And even if they do give you a hard time about it, screw them. Your job here is to learn and do things properly, not to make friends with people who judge stupid questions.
And think about this: if you have a trivial question floating around in your mind, chances are someone else in the room has that same question. You are, on average, an average person. The chances are pretty good that there’s a missing connection for more than one person. Other people will probably appreciate your speaking up and asking. And then you all can breathe a sigh of relief and the professor or boss will laugh because it was clearly something that needed to be addressed.
And if you’re a professor or the person teaching, all you have to say to these kinds of questions is “okay. I’m glad you asked. Let’s come at this from a different angle until I can help you make the connection.”
Simple.
Everyone sucks just as much as you do
I imagine a conversation with our drinking friend:
The world doesn’t make as much sense as you think it does. Give yourself a break. You look around at those people at work, and your bosses, and your friends and their parents, and you see a bunch of people who “have it figured out.”
But think about it.
How often have you been surprised by the realization that other people are just like you? Pretty often, right? I mean, you’re in Alcoholics Anonymous, aren’t you? That’s the functional purpose of the program. To show you how you’re not special and other people are just like you. And that you can use that solidarity to better face reality.
Nobody has it figured out. Not drug addicts, not alcoholics, not CEOs, not “normal people.” We’re all the same. We’re all one dumb mistake away from ruining our lives. We’re all one silly oversight from looking like a clown. We’re all just doing the best we can with imperfect information and imperfect judgments. That’s what being a human is. Even the people who run the institutions that run your life — even they are impostors so some extent. Just trying to earn a paycheck to take home to their families, probably making 15 mistakes a day the same way you and I do.
But it’s not that bad. Everything is going to be alright. You’re not going to destroy everything and burn your workplace to the ground and disappoint everybody. And even if you do, it’s still going to be alright.
How to do anything
When you’re feeling incompetent and new and at risk of doing something stupid, just move at a speed that you think is fair and appropriate. And adjust as you go. Ask questions when you have them — you need the information. Make decisions when they need made — they’re yours to make. And dutifully carry out the role you’ve been given or the role you want.
Give it precisely what you have to offer. Obviously you shouldn’t lie or cheat or steal, or misrepresent yourself. You shouldn’t act like you know what you’re doing when you don’t. But you should represent yourself and your role adequately. You should represent the responsibility that has been entrusted to you with integrity and care, and understand that this is all anyone can do. Mistakes happen. But so do good things. And so does nothing interesting at all.
There’s a hidden magic to showing humility — it attracts people who are equally intellectually humble to you. It makes friends out of competent people for you. It puts you on all the right teams. It makes people point at you and whisper “this one is going places. Good places.” It makes people trust you, because they know you’ll never do something that you haven’t thought through.
If you’re feeling impostor syndrome, you’re probably smart and you probably actually care about other people and how you affect them. That seems to me like a strength, not a weakness.
Drink some water and give yourself a break.
JDR
“All great men are play actors of their own ideal.” - Friedrich Nietzsche