Coping with Imposter Syndrome During a Pandemic – Part 1: The Natural Genius
Our professional realities changed this year, for better or worse. If you were deemed “essential” and have been at work, the ways you interact with customers and peers has evolved. Working from home has been a paradigm shift – particularly for those who took on home schooling responsibilities in addition to full-time jobs. You’re Zooming with your team, but the daily give-and-take of teamwork has evolved into more solo projects and individual accountability.
And if you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of folks around the world who lost a job due to Covid, the need to rev up your confidence and find something new can feel overwhelming.
For those of us with Impostor Syndrome, every new challenge can be a trigger. We see changing work situations, unfamiliar software, and new responsibilities as danger zones. This will be it: “the time.” Others will see how truly incapable we are and find out we’ve been faking it all
Impostor Syndrome makes us feel like we’ve been pretending to be someone else. Someone competent, smart, and talented. If you’ve ever looked around a room and thought, “I don’t belong here – everyone else is better than me!” then you’re one of the 70% of folks who have experienced it.
If you identify as a “Natural Genius*” Impostor, you might have spent the last couple of months thinking:
“I know this has been easier for everyone else but me”
The pandemic forced all of us to learn new things – Zoom, remote work protocols, handling customers on the phone, and even ways to wear PPE.
This is particularly tough for the “Natural Genius.”
This inner Imposter makes us believe that if something feels difficult when we first try it, it isn’t because the task is hard. It’s because we’re incompetent.
Almost every time they need to learn something new, these Impostors think, “This is it! I’ve reached my intellectual limit. This is where they’ll figure out I’ve been faking it all along.”
So the Natural Genius is ashamed of how long it took them to learn something new. “If they knew how long it took me to figure out Zoom – how many mistakes I’ve made – they’d realize I’m simply not as smart/talented as everyone else.”
The ironic part is that it really didn’t take them any longer to become proficient. But since all we see is the finished product of other people’s learning curves, we tend to assume ours was longer and steeper.
It’s also typical for the Natural Genius to focus on what they cannot do. They’re convinced that everything they’ve learned up to now is a fluke. Besides, if they could figure it out, it couldn’t have been that hard. So rather than taking pride in accomplishments, they obsess over what they don’t know.
Here’s a couple of tips to help silence the Natural Genius:
Celebrate small wins
Set a goal you know you can achieve – like getting up 5 minutes earlier, or drinking an extra glass of water each day. Write it down. Then do it! Even though it seems minor, your brain will get used to the idea of accomplishment.
Look to be wrong
This one sounds a little counterintuitive until you think about it a bit. When we’re feeling insecure, it’s natural to become defensive. So play some online trivia and see what you can learn. Look up something you’ve always wondered about and see how accurate your predictions were. In other words, focus on learning something new.
Find out how special you are
Go ask Google how many people in the world know what you know. How many can use Power Point? What percentage has a technical degree? Chances are you’re surrounded every day by people who’s qualifications are similar to yours – so you start to think you’re typical. Recognizing that your training and capabilities put you in a small minority can be affirming.
*The Impostor Types come from the work of Dr. Valerie Young. Check out her FABULOUS book, The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer From the Impostor Syndrome and How To Thrive In Spite of It for more details.