- Hey, friends.
Welcome back to the channel.
Let's talk about imposter syndrome.
Now, this is something that I have been struggling with
for many, many years.
With this YouTube channel or my blog
or my career as a doctor,
basically with everything that I've done,
I've always had a sense of how, you know
how am I the person to be doing this?
Why am I the person to be doing this?
Why are people taking me seriously?
Like all of these thoughts
associated around this idea of that,
maybe I just kind of got lucky
and I fluked into the position of being where I am
and, oh my God, now there's attention on me.
And like, what the hell do I do with it?
And I think over time
I've gotten better at dealing with this imposter syndrome.
I still get it all the time.
But in this video, I wanna talk through
three stories in my life
where I really experienced imposter syndrome
and lessons that I learned from it
which I've now taken forward,
and I'm trying to apply to my life today.
The first one is fairly recent
and that was in November of last year
when I was running my online course,
the Part-Time YouTuber Academy,
and initially this was supposed to be
for like five or 10 people
where I was gonna teach people
kind of my systems and processes
for being a part-time YouTuber.
But in the first cohort
we ended up with around 350 people,
who were all paying like decent sums of money
to hear me speak and teach them about how to be a YouTuber.
Now, I had so much imposter syndrome going into this
because like the feeling in my mind was
how am I the one to talk about this?
I've only got one point something million subscribers,
surely people should be listening to David Dobrik
or MrBeast who's got 50 million subscribers.
Like, why am I the one
that people are coming to for this sort of information?
And I think a lot of it came
because I thought that I had nothing really to teach
because all of the systems and stuff
that I've built around my YouTube channel with my team
I just kind of got that off the internet
and off other channels, like Video Creators
and Think Media and like listening to loads of podcasts.
And then I felt like there was nothing new or interesting
and it was all kind of just obvious stuff.
It was all stuff that
if you spent a long time doing YouTube,
you would just, I felt naturally pick up over time.
But as I was giving the lessons
over like a live Zoom calls
to our cohort of a few hundred students at a time,
like the chat was absolutely exploding,
with like people saying, oh my God
this is actually groundbreaking information.
And this is something I always get.
When I think we all have this,
when we teach something or when we explain something,
if we're teaching something
it's kind of obvious to us and we don't appreciate that,
what's obvious to us can be amazing to others.
And I read this in a Derek Sivers blog post, a few years ago
and I often return to it.
It's this idea of the curse of knowledge.
Like once we know something
we think it's no longer interesting
and we think surely it's obvious,
everyone must know that thing.
And so for me, you know, we have all these systems
around this YouTube channel,
like batching and parallel processing,
and sort of systematically structuring stuff.
And I wasn't born being able to do that kind of stuff.
I just internalized it over three and a half years
of making YouTube videos
and reading a ton of productivity books and business books,
and, you know startup books and applying all these systems
and stuff to my YouTube channel
which I kind of treat as a startup/business.
And so in my head, it was like all these things are obvious.
Surely everyone knows them.
Surely there's nothing new here,
but actually when I was explaining them,
this was blowing people's minds.
And so it was a real illustration
that what's obvious to you can be amazing to others.
And this is one of the main issues people have
when it comes to starting a YouTube channel,
or starting a blog or starting a podcast
or putting yourself out there in any way.
It's that we don't feel
like our own ideas are worth anything
because there are our ideas
and we've come across them somewhere.
And now they feel really obvious to us.
And so that's one thing
that I keep on trying to remind myself of anytime
I get this imposter syndrome springing up,
that what's obvious to me, what's obvious to us
can be amazing to others.
Story number two, it happened a few years ago in 2017
when I was in my fifth year of medical school at Cambridge
and I was one of the two directors
of the Hospital Pantomime.
And every year the medical school puts on a Pantomime,
which involves about a hundred people,
musicians and cast members and singers,
and like set designers and artists
coming together to make this like comedy production.
Now I had absolutely no experience
of doing any of this sort of acting theater type stuff.
It's just an area of life
that I basically never, ever done before.
And Will, who was the other director
had loads of experience about this.
Like he'd been doing theater for like a decade,
at this point.
And he was really good at acting
and really good at singing
and knew what being a director actually meant.
And he messaged me on Facebook one day being like,
hey, this is gonna sound random
but do you wanna be the director alongside me?
And I was like, sure.
That sounds like it would be fun.
But then getting into the rehearsals
and actually starting to do it,
I really had a massive sense of imposter syndrome
because there was me with like zero experience
alongside this guy who had like 10 plus years of experience.
And he was fantastic.
And I thought I had no idea what I was doing.
And I would feel really self-conscious
during the warmup exercises.
Like, you know, we'd get people to do silly things
and to sort of warm up, give me like, ugh, aliyah.
And then like do like a web,
like pose and run around
and, you know just warming up the actors and the singers.
And you know, it was down to the directors
to lead the warmups.
And I remember I would,
I was doing this in my head thinking,
oh my God, like, no one's gonna follow me.
Like, they all know that I'm a fraud
but I was doing the thing
and people were following the warmup.
And it was like a magical feeling.
'Cause it was like, what the hell?
Like surely everyone knows
that I'm a complete fraud compared to
Will who's an absolute legend.
Surely everyone knows I'm a fraud.
Like why hell are they following me?
And then even when it came to,
for example giving the actors feedback on their lines
or tweaking things, or even, you know,
giving some feedback to the singers,
every time I would say it and it was, you know
my heart would be thudding
because I'd be like, oh why is anyone gonna listen to me?
They all know that I have zero experience
in this kind of thing.
But the weird thing is
no one knew that I had zero experience
in this sort of thing.
Like this is a perfect illustration of the spotlight effect
which is this kind of psychological phenomenon
where we all walk around life thinking
there is a spotlight trained on us
and that other people are looking at us and judging us.
And like, you know, any faux pas, any mistake that we make,
other people are gonna see
and they're gonna judge.
And after a few weeks
of having this anxiety about leading warmups
or about giving people feedback,
I realized that actually
everyone is just worried about themselves.
Like the cast are worried
that they're gonna mess up their own lines.
The singers are worried that they're not good enough.
The chorus are worried they haven't got the dance moves,
the dance stripper trying
to get the dance moves to probably like,
everyone was super concerned about their own performance
and actively wanted feedback to be the best that they could.
And no one was thinking about me.
Like it wasn't about me.
It was about kind of the production as a whole
and trying to get the best out of everyone.
And I realized that I was falling victim
to the spotlight effect thinking, oh my God,
these people are judging me, but really they weren't.
They were just concerned about themselves.
And so what I found helpful there
was to try and get out of my own head,
trying to appreciate that look mate, no one is judging you,
everyone is just, you know
worried about their own performance.
So you do your job and they'll do theirs.
And in a way, dissociating myself and my
sort of my sense of self from the role
meant that I could step into the role of being the director.
And this is something that we have to do as doctors as well.
Like often if you're, let's say you're a very junior doctor
and you're maybe one week into working
and, you know patients are treating you
as if you are the doctor
and inside, you know I would always feel like,
but you know I graduated from med school like last week.
I know absolutely nothing.
But in that position
you have to step into the role of the doctor.
The patient isn't thinking about you
or judging you as an individual,
they're thinking about themselves
and they want you to do your job as the doctor.
And I would always have to remind myself of this,
that you know, no one knows that
I'm just a week out of med school
and I know what I'm doing more or less.
And I can ask for help when I don't know what I'm doing,
therefore, this isn't about me,
keeping the spotlight effect into account.
And I found that that
is another thing that's really helped me deal
with imposter syndrome
that I get around these sorts of scenarios.
And so overcoming imposter syndrome
is this constant challenge of separating ourselves
from the role that we're playing,
and separating our feelings from what's actually going on
and recognizing that actually,
fundamentally no one cares about us.
People are just worried about themselves,
which I think is extremely liberating.
And you know, what else is liberating?
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The final story from my life
about overcoming imposter syndrome
is something that I'm actually going through right now.
And it's, I'm feeling it very strongly
with the book that I'm in the process of writing.
So a few months ago I got approached
by an editor from Penguin, UK,
who said, hey, are you interested
in writing a book about productivity?
And initially I was like, absolutely not,
because I didn't think
that I had anything useful to say about productivity.
I feel like I've already said it in videos.
And I don't really have any original ideas.
All I'm doing is parroting ideas that Tim Ferriss
or David Allen, in "4-Hour Workweek,"
or in "Getting Things Done."
These other people have already come up with the ideas
and all I'm doing is just,
you know making videos about them.
And other than that,
one of the things I'm still struggling with is,
you know this question of what's the point of productivity?
Like I've been chasing productivity
and efficiency and passive income financial independence
for the last eight years.
And now that I've kind of hit that point,
I've ticked that box where I don't need to work
and sort of work is optional
and I've taken a break from medicine now.
I've got this sense of
what the hell am I doing with my life?
And what's the point of continuing to try
and be productive?
To, you know, do I just make more YouTube videos?
Do I make more courses?
Do I try and make more money?
Like, what's the point of it all?
And I realized that this is actually
one of the angles I wanna explore in the book.
It's like, I think there are plenty of books out there
and I've done plenty of videos about how to get more done.
But the thing that I'm,
that I actually want to know is
how do we figure out what we wanna get done,
and how do we figure out what's meaningful to us
and what our purpose is?
And you know, all of that stuff,
that in the past I used to think was a bit woo.
And so I was talking to my writing coach about this,
who's sort of helping me
along with this process of writing the book.
And I was saying that like,
why the hell would anyone listen to me as a 26 year old,
you know random dude who makes videos on the internet
about how to find what's meaningful,
and how to find what's purposeful,
and how to figure out what your values and vision are,
and even, you know, how to be more productive?
And the advice that my writing coach gave
which I think about basically every day is that
you don't have to be a guru, you can be a guide.
Now what's the difference between the two?
So a guru is someone who comes down from the top
of the mountain and says, look at me, I am the expert.
I have all the answers.
Whereas a guide is someone who is
on the same journey as you
and a guide says, hey I don't have the answers,
but we're on the same path.
Why don't we kind of approach it together?
And I'll show you what I've discovered so far.
And I found that that framing of it,
like guide rather than guru
has really helped me overcome some of my imposter syndrome
associated with writing the book
because the way I'm approaching it
it's not that look at me,
I'm the expert about all things productivity,
I'm the expert on how to figure out
what to do with your life.
It's more a case of,
I don't really know what I'm doing with my life,
but I've got the chance to write this book
about productivity
and I've read lots of books about productivity.
And so why don't we explore together, me and the reader,
like what other people have written on the topic
and what studies have been done about meaning and purpose,
and you know, how productivity fits into this idea
of figuring out what to do with our lives
and then figuring out how we can do it efficiently?
And the more I think about it
the more I see this guru versus guide thing
play out in other aspects of life as well.
Like basically everyone in my Part-Time YouTuber Academy
who's struggling with getting
their YouTube channel off the ground
or growing their YouTube channel
suffers from this, the same imposter syndrome of,
well, I'm not an expert about the thing
therefore I'm not allowed to teach people about the thing.
But the key thing
that I always have to remind myself of
is that you don't need to be an expert.
Like I don't have to pretend to be a guru,
I can just be a guide
and I can help people, you know, explore,
you know and go on the same journey that I've been going on.
And actually recently
I've been reading loads of scientific papers and stuff
and books about meaning, values, vision, purpose,
and it's all really interesting stuff.
And it's all helping me kind of figure out
what I wanna do with my life.
And that's the journey
that I hopefully wanna take the readers on as well.
If you're interested in keeping up to date
with my book, "Writing Journey"
then I have a special email list where I send out updates
like every few weeks and ask questions
and, you know, I'll send like drafts of chapters
and stuff to that mailing list as well.
So feel free to join it.
That's linked in the video description.
And if you've gotten to the end of this video,
I would love it if you can leave a mask emoji,
you know that drama mask emoji,
if you can put that mask emoji in the comments,
because I'm always curious about
who watches to the end of these long rumbly videos.
I've always like,
I always have imposter syndrome about this.
It's like, why would anyone watch the end
of like a 20 minute video?
Like, you know,
surely no one wants to hear me talk for that long.
And on the YouTube analytics,
it shows that most people only watch like 30% of the video.
So it's always nice, seeing emojis in the comments
where it's like, it feels like real people
have actually watched through to the end.
And if you wanna leave a comment
about anything that you've thought about in this video
or anything has reminded you of,
or any ways in which you've been
overcoming imposter syndrome
that would be really nice to hear it well.
And if, for example, you're thinking of
starting a YouTube channel or starting a blog
or putting yourself out there in some way
and imposter syndrome has been holding you back,
you might like to check out this video
which is my 10 top tips for beginner YouTubers
which also applies to other creative things
that you might wanna get started.
Thank you so much for watching
and I'll see you in the next video.
Bye-bye.