Hey everyone, it's Stefany.
Throughout your studies or throughout your life, have you ever had moments where you sort of ask yourself
what am I doing here?
Do I belong here?
Am I worthy of being here?
And if it happens recurringly and often, there's a chance that you might be experiencing the imposter syndrome.
Basically what the imposter syndrome is, is when you have feelings of self-doubt and just questioning your talents, skills, and capabilities.
The syndrome makes you feel like your achievements, your accomplishments and where you are today are only thanks to luck and timing,
instead of your own merits, talents, and skills.
As scary as it is putting a label onto what you're experiencing, the imposter syndrome is actually very common, especially at an institution like LSE,
where it's known to be very competitive and there's just lots of high performing individuals,
and just really amazing people in general.
And just to share from my own experience, I figured that I had the imposter syndrome when I was in my first year at LSE.
I remember it was just a few weeks into the start of term,
and I met lots of people and they were just really amazing people, with really great achievements and accomplishments.
They were the same age as me and so I was like "why are you doing all this great stuff and I'm like right here,
not like them."
So it's just it started as self-doubt, about like questioning my presence at LSE,
but then it snowballed into this whole thing where I get really anxious about getting into classes
because I was afraid that my classmates would see me as an imposter among them.
So today, I will share with you guys how you can identify if you have the imposter syndrome and how you can overcome them.
According to research about imposter syndrome, there are actually five different categories of the syndrome
The first one we have the Perfectionist.
The Perfectionist is when people set really high standards and expectations of themselves
and so when the result is any less than perfect,
this leads the person to have anxiety and just feeling like a failure or incompetent.
Next, we have the 'Superheroes'.
Superheroes tend to feel like they are the only fake amongst a group of high-performing individuals,
and therefore they tend to put more and extra work harder than everyone else to feel like they are worthy to be where they are.
The third one we have, the Natural Genius.
If a Natural Genius has to exert extra effort into what they are doing, they will feel not good enough.
The next one we have the Soloist.
The Soloist is a category in which the person feels like if they ask help from anyone else, they will reveal themselves as a fraud,
and therefore they will try to do everything alone.
The fifth one, we have the Experts.
They measure their competency based on what they know and how much they know,
so they tend to shy away from new opportunities and new tasks because of this.
Did you see yourself in any of these categories?
Well if you did that's fine because we're gonna work through this together!
The first thing that really helped me with overcoming my imposter syndrome was talking to my friends and family just people who I really trust.
I feel like it's important to acknowledge the self-doubt in the first place,
and a great way to first acknowledge that feeling is to share them with your friends and family,
and they can be someone who can listen to you while you share your thoughts and concerns,
but at the same time, they are just also really great people who's known you for a long time for example
and can remind you of the great things that you've accomplished
and just the great things about you in general as a person to remind yourself that you are an amazing person.
This next step is actually the most crucial one,
is that you have to stop comparing yourself to others.
Instead of comparing yourself to other people,
I think it's best to just compare yourself to the person you were yesterday,
the person you were weeks ago to the person you are a year ago.
Just see how far you've come.
And if you are already at LSE and you are having a hard time with imposter syndrome as I did,
I feel like an important thing that helped me snap out of it was just,
realise and contemplate that you are at LSE and that has to be for a reason.
It is only human nature to sometimes feel moments of doubt about yourself,
but don't ever let the doubt take over you and change you into an imposter.
I hope this video helped you and your overcoming of the imposter syndrome.
Thank you for watching and I'll see you in another video,
bye!