Transcript
The impostor syndrome really is the feeling of not measuring up, a feeling like you behave a certain way or portray a certain role, but you’re really not the role or the persona or the skillset behind it. I think there are different explanations for why impostor syndrome occurs, it might be negative messaging that you received in your childhood. Maybe you just don’t have a very confident personality. There are really different reasons or drivers for that. You can even suffer from impostor syndrome with respect to romantic relationships. So it’s really not limited to money, career or other more professional aspects of your life. It’s really important to become aware of it because as you mentioned, there seems to be more of a tendency among women to suffer from the impostor syndrome and that can manifest in different ways.
So when you see a job and you will only apply for it if you feel like you really fulfil 100% of the criteria that are mentioned, where somebody that doesn’t suffer from impostor syndrome may actually apply only if 65% of the skillset matches with his and that person is going to be fine about it.
Or another one would be a salary increase. If you don’t feel like you belong if you don’t feel like you’re actually qualified enough for the job you’re doing, how will you ask for salary raise if you don’t even have that level of confidence? As with any other mindset, it’s just really important to become aware of it, to talk about it with other people, to find out about their strategies, how did they overcome it, and maybe even adapt a different persona that is more confident than your usual self and play the role or assume the role of that persona when you really want to go for what you want. That actually has always helped me a lot in the past.
Impostor syndrome also applies to investing. So a lot of women that we have talked to in the course of workshops and one-on-one conversations always say they want to invest once they have full knowledge of everything, but that could take years, so it’s important to start. Action in general really helps to overcome your impostor syndrome.
And, some of the things that have helped me in the past – once I had to apply for a job and I was like: Oh, this is a very cool company I’m not sure they will like me – actually I just wrote down all of my achievements and made it as tangible as possible. So actually I wrote down which key performance indicators I hit during that job, or whether I made a certain sales target or whether I managed to convince a certain number of partners, to team up and help me with the project or whether I was able to ask for a certain daily rate as a freelance consultant.
Another activity that will definitely help you overcome impostor syndrome is actually ask[ing] your colleagues and your friends about your strengths. And you’ll be surprised. I once asked my colleagues back at Deutsche Bank about my strengths, and they said that I have an ability to do soft sales and I wasn’t aware of it. I knew it was good at networking, but I wasn’t aware of the fact that I was also good at soft sales, which is a pretty good business skill to have.
It’s also good to talk to somebody who has more professional experience and is probably in a job that you would like to have in a couple of years. And talk to that person, ask them, how did you get there? How did you overcome any impostor syndromes in case you had them? What are your recommendations for me? And what else could I do?
And lastly – but I find this very important – is consider doing positive affirmations on a daily basis. The mind is quite a powerful tool, at least in my experience, and if you start suggesting to yourself that you get this, that you’re good enough, that you can achieve this goal and do this on a daily basis, for instance, 10 minutes before you go to bed, or maybe first thing, once you’ve had your coffee, it can really help you. So I like listening to various psychologists on YouTube, or I like listening to meditations with positive affirmations. And that really helps me overcoming impostor syndrome.