Wrestling with Imposter Syndrome

Hello, I’m Andy Temte and welcome to the Saturday Morning Muse! Start to your weekend with me by exploring topics that span leadership, business management, education, and other musings designed to support your journey of personal and professional continuous improvement.

You’ve just made a big presentation to your colleagues and senior executives about a project that has proven to be a game-changer for your department and the company. You played a big role in the project and were integral to its success. Afterwards, the CEO stopped you in the hall as you made your way back to your workspace and thanked you profusely for your contributions. “Well done! I’m so impressed with your work and can’t wait to see what’s next!”, the CEO extols. “You’re definitely a rising star!”

Instead of allowing this well-deserved praise to sink in, a disembodied voice inside your head is screaming “you don’t deserve this, what if she finds out that your skill level is nowhere near what it should be to be worthy of such adulation! You’re such a fraud.”

This is an example of imposter syndrome in action.

Imposter Syndrome Defined

There are many definitions of imposter syndrome, but they all boil down to the self-doubt and negative self-talk that swirls in our minds after we’ve achieved a success. From Wikipedia, “Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing [imposter syndrome] do not believe they deserve their success or luck.” From Psychology Today, “People who struggle with imposter syndrome believe that they are undeserving of their achievements and the high esteem in which they are, in fact, generally held.” From Oxford, imposter syndrome is “the persistent inability to believe that one’s success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one’s own efforts or skills.”

Speaking from first-hand knowledge and experience, imposter syndrome can be debilitating, paralyzing, and limits forward progress. By many metrics, I have achieved great personal and professional success. I’m a former CEO, a published author, a podcaster, and a university lecturer. I’m married to a gorgeous, mesmerizing, and talented lady; have two wonderful grown children; live in a beautiful home perched on a hilltop overlooking the Mississippi River in western Wisconsin; am the lead singer in a rock band; and am privileged to have cultivated a strong network of supportive former colleagues, family and friends.

However, with all this external evidence of my success, I still question my worthiness and berate even the smallest of personal/professional missteps. I worry that the “fraud of my failures” will be discovered. That I will be exposed, stand naked, and face the ridicule of society for not being as skilled and talented as I claim to be. If someone congratulates me on a performance or presentation, my own voice is yelling at me for all the small errors I made, and whispers to me that I don’t deserve the recognition.

Earlier in my life, my battle with imposter syndrome was much more acute. The voices of self-doubt and critique were much louder, frequent, and more persistent. As I look back, I wasn’t the best partner I could be to my spouse, family, friends, and colleagues, and I didn’t fully explore myriad opportunities for growth that I knew (or should have known) where around me. Many times, I felt like I wanted to crawl under the covers and take a long nap. Sometimes, I did just that. Every now and then I wonder how much more I could have achieved if I focused on quieting the voices of self-doubt and insecurity earlier in life. Unfortunately, we’ll never know.

How I Reduced Feelings of Imposter Syndrome

What I do know is that reducing the negative feelings that accompany my imposter syndrome has distinct benefits. My anxiety is much more manageable, I’m happier and feel more fulfilled, and I believe I’m a better parent, partner, and friend. So how did I reduce my exposure to imposter syndrome? I defined and connected to my personal purpose.

It’s important to note that I didn’t sit down one day and say “Andy, we need to get control of these feelings of being a fraud or an imposter.” The journey is much more complicated than compartmentalizing this specific psychological challenge. It would indeed be nice if we could place all of our psychological challenges into separate buckets and work on them individually, but the reality is that there’s a spaghetti of issues and confounders that are all jumbled together in our beautiful, mysterious minds. My personal wake-up call was a post-divorce recognition that something had to change and that a journey of discovery through both personal and professional continuous improvement was required if I was going to be the best man I could be for both myself and those who rely and depend on me.

This journey of discovery, which kicked off in earnest in my early 40s, is when the concept of purpose bubbled to the surface. The fundamental philosophical question of “why am I here, why do I exist” is one that I had spent no time contemplating to that point in my life. Once I did, my “why” came into focus. I am here to teach, coach, mentor, and (hopefully) inspire.

Knowing and connecting to my personal purpose has allowed me to draw a much clearer line between what makes me tick as a human and the work I am engaged in. From an early age, I knew that I enjoyed teaching and performing, but I didn’t understand, or do the work necessary, to align my purpose with the dreams I was chasing. Knowing and connecting to one’s purpose earlier in life allows for the creation of a higher resolution vision and personal/professional roadmap. Instead of chasing other people’s definitions of success and suffering through the perceived failures of living up to someone else’s ideals, understanding purpose allows for a more personalized, customized definition of what success means. The irony is that if you try to live up to someone else’s ideals of success, you become an imposter in your own story!

If this is work—defining purpose and creating a personal vision—interests you, I’ve created a Personal Planning Guidebook that you can download for free on my website.

We are Social Creatures

By design and definition, we are social creatures who compare ourselves to others and measure success relative to what we see in others, so eliminating imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and insecurity are damn near impossible. However, when you’ve defined your purpose, your vision, and your definition of success, it’s much more difficult to feel like an imposter in your own story.

Thanks for listening and have a great weekend as you recharge for the week ahead.