Hey! This is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today, let's talk about the "Imposter Syndrome."
Alright. So, I was just having a chat with somebody on our Facebook page, he was asking a few questions about -
he was just starting out, he was asking a few questions about apps and
and marketing and just putting yourself out there and stuff
like that. And it was a a nice conversation. But sometimes, it takes me a
while to get to you. If you do ask me something through Facebook, sometimes it
takes me a day or so to get around to it. So, I apologize for that. But he was
asking about different things then he asked about impostor syndrome.
Basically, yeah, he has a few apps out there, have a lot of downloads and
somebody had offered him a job like a contract to do a certain piece of work.
He turned it down because he said he had this feeling of the imposter
syndrome, because he's never done any paid work like that before. And he
didn't - you need to feel like that was his thing. Even though he
could do it and he kind of wanted to do it, he felt like that wasn't his thing.
And he said what do you do about this imposter syndrome? I
said, you know, and I was saying, yeah, that's something that I know really,
really well. This feeling where you start to downplay all the things that you can
do and you start to focus on the things that you can't do. And you feel like,
you're not deserving where you're supposed to be. And yeah, just
because you haven't done it in the past, you think you can't do it in the future.
This is something that - I go through all the time, in fact I go
through it now. I mean, it's nothing - it's something to get over. I mean,
I used to always say and I think I've done - I may have done a video about this
before, that if you don't feel like a fraud every once in a while, then
you're not pushing yourself hard enough, right? We, you know, if you're like - if
you're working in a company, you stay in the same company for 20
years, like they used to back in the old days, I know some people still do. And
you staying in the company for 20-30 years and you retire. You might
be working in one position then, after three, four, five, ten
years or whatever, somebody would come and put their hand on your shoulder and said,
"Johnson, it's time for you to move up to the next level." And you'll get promotion,
you'll get new responsibilities and you'll go like this to the next thing.
But when you're working for yourself and especially in this economy, like if
you're trying to just make things work for yourself, there's usually nobody to
tell you to do that. So, it's like it's up to you to push yourself to that next
level. To assume new responsibilities. I say, "Hey, I want to try this new thing. I
want to do something else. I - I'm fed up with my - I'm bored.
I'm tired ,whatever of my life at the moment and I want new challenges and new
responsibilities ." So, you branch out to do new things whether it's do apps
or working for clients or making music. I don't know. it's
anything. Anybody who ever does anything like that. It's something
in them that has to say, "Okay, I'm going to do this now and it has to be that
first time. That first time is a bit where you feel like - do you most
feel like a fraud. You put yourself into, like into you put yourself
in a situation where you're way over your head. This is something
that I go through over and over and over again. My dad once said to me that
we all have this fear that if every - if anyone knew what I was
thinking at the moment they would not hold me in such high esteem.
And it's true. I think it's probably true. Anybody - we all have to convey this air
of confidence. I know what I'm doing , but a lot of times, you know, we think about
the things that we don't do. I can remember - I can
remember going to - joining the army. I can remember when I was 18 years old, I
joined the army and I remember thinking I'm not the army kind of guy.
This is, you know, I don't belong here. This is not my
thing . If they only knew how scared I am, then they'll be - they would
be really, you know, they would kick me out. And the
same thing in university, I think - you have to be - even though I was
getting good grades, I'm thinking if these people knew I got bad grades in
high school, then they'd be really disappointed in me. And then,
when I was going into the my first job, my first IT job here in the UK,
I'm thinking, if they knew how I didn't know everything
they seemed to think I know, even though I've never lied about anything.
But it's just this kind of feeling that I don't belong here. You're sort
of - you starting out all the time especially like with Overpass.This
is - this sounds so stupid when I say it now, but like with the first few clients,
my biggest fear was they were going to find out I didn't know about business.
Even though I knew all about the technology, I knew all about the kind of
stuff, but I think if I send off an invoice, I was afraid I might format
it wrong or something like that. And even though that was like- like now, it's
funny because I know that wasn't their concern at all. They needed a developer.
That's the reason they came to me. They needed somebody to do -to help them
with technical solutions. That's the reason they came to me and I was fine
with the technical stuff. But I had this fear that if they only knew
that I didn't know how to design a PowerPoint presentation or
whatever in my mind, it was like I'm seeing all these shortcomings
that you have. And every time you try to do something new and try
to grow a little bit, you have those feelings. Do you remember that scene in
Ghostbusters? I mean, the original Ghostbusters, where they go
to that hotel that first job they have, they go tell him all about the
ghosts and they go, "Oh, don't worry, we have all those kind of stuff all the time!"
And we all laugh because we know that it's the first time they've done it
and they're trying to look like they're all confident, everything. Like so many
times, we end up in that kind of situation too. We have this feeling that
you know, you're not lying. You're not saying that, "Oh, I've
done this for twenty years," but at the same time, you're feeling like I
just got to get this done. And you have this fear that
something's gonna creep up, that you don't know what it is. Like you can't
handle it. This is one of the reasons why you don't make that move in the
first place. I like to think of it as as going skydiving. If
you've ever gone skydiving, the hardest part about going skydiving is saying, "Yes,
I'll go skydiving." Or picking up the phone and calling them or whatever
because once you've committed, then you kind of - you're kind of in over
your head and you just - you'll get through it.
Whatever - whatever you have to do, close your eyes, scream,
whatever, you're going to get through it. You'll take the class and all
that kind of stuff. Years ago, I read this book called
"Feel the fear and do it anyway" by Susan Jeffers and it's a - I mean, it was
a good book. I mean, you don't need to read it, but the big take away I
took from it was, she was talking about going through divorce and all
those kind of stuff and all the stuff going through changes. You see the
big fear that we have when we try to do something new, is that we won't
be able to handle it. Like something will creep up that we just can't handle.
She said, what you have to tell yourself is, you'll handle this. You'll handle
everything else. This is - you know, that when you put yourself into hot
water, you're gonna make it work. It's not gonna be a bad thing. A lot of times, the
the situation is like, if you get a job like that, you just say yes, I'll take it.
And you'll be very honest today, this would be
my first time and everything, but I know we can do this or I've
worked with other things and technology like this before and everything. And you
could do it. You know, once you get in there, once you're committed, I
mean, it might be messy, it might be a lot of "Oh, my God!
What am I gonna do?" But you get through it, you'll learn, you learn as you
go. When you get it done it and everything like that. And it's just
a fact of life. When you start off, you have to start
somewhere. You don't start off with experience. People don't get experienced
first and then do the thing that they have experienced it. So, it's
always - it's always that way. Feeling like a fraud, I think is
always going to be there or that imposter syndrome. Like it's
all over the place. I bet when I'm - I bet when I'm 90 in a nursing home,
and they're there - I'll be thinking these people do -
if all these other older people knew how bad I was in shuffleboard, you know,
really or whatever, then you would. Anyway, those are just my
thoughts for today. If you know the hard bit about working for yourself and doing
things on your own, and advancing in life is, that those first few
feelings of being a fraud. I know there's other -
I know this- and I know this people out there who don't feel that. I know these
people who just approach everything with confidence. They could just go in there
and say, "Oh, I can handle this." Like yeah, sure, I don't know what the big deal is.
And if those people are always there, they make me sick. But I'm
not one of them. But I envy them really, because they just go, then go
and do something, it doesn't work at all, you move on to the next thing
and you know, whenever they come, they talk about something. If you
talk to them, you realize, they don't know as much as they sound, like they
know, but they're really confident about it. Alright, so, that's always gonna be
there. Anyway, that's it for today. If you, guys, want to - if you want to share any
experiences of when you felt like a fraud, you know coming up or
even the thing you're working on now or the next thing you're gonna work on, you
know, I'd love to hear about it in the comments. And also, don't forget to like
and subscribe and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, that's it for today. I'll talk to
you, guys, tomorrow!