The imposter syndrome feeling gets right down into my bones when it happens. It’s hard to think of it as a feeling and imagine that it’s only alive in my brain. It feels as if it’s in my heart, my lungs, my core being. It feels as if others should see it on my face as clearly as I feel it in my body.
My brain tells me that I’m credentialed, experienced, competent, and capable of doing the task standing in front of me. But the rest of me says “you’re a fraud, you got here because you were lucky, and you tricked these other people into thinking you’re smarter than your true intelligence”.
Maybe I would have lost that feeling if I’d stopped growing, changing, and evolving? I suppose that, if we stand still – keep doing what we’ve learned to do – then the feeling subsides. Maybe, once we stop trying for more, we do actually know how to do what we do. Maybe if we master our work then we believe, internally, that we know we can do it.
But, standing still has never been part of my nature. I enjoy stretching, growing, leveling up, and doing a little more. As a result, I’ve felt like an imposter all along. I still feel it now.
