The more successful my business gets, the more often I feel like a fraud and wonder whether I deserve it. These are often called impostor feelings, and entrepreneurs are far from the only people who experience them.
Impostor syndrome describes the feeling that you don't deserve your success. It can make you doubt your intelligence, creativity, or talent. It is a psychological pattern in which you doubt your accomplishments and fear being exposed as a fraud, despite external evidence of competence.
An estimated 70% of people experience these imposter feelings at some point in their lives.
Researchers and writers describe five archetypes:
- The "Perfectionist": Setting excessively high goals for themselves and experiencing major self-doubt when they fail.
- The "Superhuman": Pushing themselves to work harder than those around them to prove that they’re not imposters.
- The "Natural genius": Feeling they aren't good enough when they have to work hard to accomplish something.
- The "Soloist": Wanting to accomplish tasks on their own and thinking they are failing if they need to ask for help.
- The "Expert": Feeling the need to know every piece of information before they start a project and constantly look to improve their skills.
I think I'm a combination of the first and last one.
Psychologist Pauline Rose Clance was among the first to study impostor feelings and developed a test to help people assess the extent of those feelings.
A score above 40 suggests you may be experiencing impostor feelings, which are common. Calling it a syndrome can make an ordinary experience sound more unusual than it is.
One of the first steps to combat imposter feelings is to acknowledge the thoughts and put them in perspective, recognizing the pattern. You can document positive feedback and revisit it every time you're feeling like a fraud.
For my photo business, the number of positive reviews I get and the high Net Promoter Score help me realize I'm building something people really value.
Likewise, for every single blog I publish I worry that the information is inadequate, but the positive comments I receive help me put that worry in perspective.
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