Imposter Syndrome: It Isn't What You Think It Is

Have you ever found yourself in a room, or on a stage, or maybe leading a meeting, thinking "I don't belong here" ?

Of maybe you finally hit that $20k goal you’ve been striving toward, only to feel like “it’s a fluke”!

Perhaps your business grew faster than expected, and you can’t help but think “I’m not qualified to be leading these people”...

If any of those sound familiar, you want to know two things.

First, you're not alone. Not even close. Research suggests that up to 70% of people experience imposter syndrome at some point in their lives. It's one of the most common psychological patterns out there.

And second, and this is the part that might surprise you, it's actually not a bad thing.

Stay with me.

The People Who Feel It Most

Here's what's fascinating about imposter syndrome: it doesn't affect the people you'd expect. Many of us blame it on a lack of confidence, competence, or intelligence… but it’s not actually the underqualified person who experiences imposter syndrome the most.

It's the high achievers. 

There's actually a well-known cognitive bias that explains why. It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect, and it explains that people with limited competence in a given area tend to dramatically overestimate their ability, while people with high competence tend to underestimate theirs.

The less you know, the more confident you feel. The more you know, the more you doubt yourself, because you're aware of just how much you don't know.

So if you're feeling like an imposter, the irony is that it might actually be evidence that you're more competent than you realize.

So What Is Imposter Syndrome, Really?

Imposter syndrome is a disconnect between your identity and your external reality. 

You've been growing, leveling up, stepping into new rooms, bigger roles, or higher standards faster than your identity can recalibrate. Essentially, the way you see yourself hasn't caught up to what’s happening in your life. 

Your self-image is still set to the old version of you, the one who hadn't done this yet.

So when you look around and think "I'm not supposed to be here," what's actually happening is that the you on the outside has outpaced the you on the inside. You've arrived somewhere new, but your identity is still standing at the last stop.

That's not a bad thing at all. Simply just a sign of growth.

I had a client come to me recently pulling in about $8K/ month... in just 30 days she made $20K. By every objective measure, things were good, she was doing the thing. 

And yet, when we got on a call, the first thing she told me was that she felt like it was "luck". Like the other shoe was going to drop, "no way I will do this again". 

Sure enough she did it 2 more months in a row... this became her new baseline. 

So why did her brain freak out?

Not because anything was going wrong, but because everything was going right, and it didn't feel like her yet. She was operating at a level she'd never operated at before, and her brain was still wired for the $8k version of her business. The $20k reality felt borrowed. 

This is imposter syndrome in its purest form. Nothing is actually wrong or needs to be fixed. Your identity just hasn't caught up to your results yet. 

It’s painful not to hit your goals. But funny enough, it's uncomfortable when you start reaching them. It is so important that we realize that discomfort is not bad. It’s just a sign that change has occurred, and we are wired to resist change… good or bad.  

So if you find yourself in the uncomfortable space of feeling like an imposter, you want to tell yourself a new story… 

Instead of labeling it as imposter syndrome, label it for what it actually is.

You're a beginner.

You're doing something you've never done before. Of course, it doesn't feel familiar. Of course, it doesn't feel like "you." You haven't been this version of you long enough for it to feel natural yet.

Think about every other time in your life you started something new. The first day at a job. The first time you led a meeting. The first time you had a difficult conversation you'd been avoiding. It felt uncomfortable. It felt foreign. And eventually? It just felt like... you.

That's the cycle. Growth, discomfort, integration. Over and over.

Give yourself permission to be a beginner again. The feeling will catch up, it always does.