How are we all doing today guys?
Enjoying being a self-made lord or lady of leisure?
Good, good.
So, if I asked questions about how legitimate that feeling of euphoric epicness is, what would be your answer?
Would you be honest and answer in a grounded perspective based on genuinely authentic feeling state achieved by being a whole and sovereign individual that lives entirely on your terms with only the consideration for your loved ones giving pause to doing and feeling exactly as you want, all day every day?
Or is it something a little bit… less saga-ish sounding than that?...
What’s that Vince? It’s a little less than that?
Well, I appreciate your honesty.
So, who said they were epic but didn’t really feel it?
Who’s lied on their resume and had sleepless nights about their ability to deliver on the Microsoft excel skills they said they had?
Who’s ever stalked a crush on the Instaface and thought to themselves “Wow! They are so much more glamourous and amazing than me. Guess I better act like I’m the business so they don’t think I’m a loser too quickly…”
I think we all have, haven’t we?
Okay. Maybe not those EXACT scenarios. But something like those, at least.
What we are talking about is imposter syndrome. Sort of.
The idea that we aren’t who we say we are, pretend to be, wish we were. And live in a perpetual state of fear that at some point we will absolutely be called out with our own incompetence and pointlessness, so the whole house of cards our ego has built will come crashing down to finally reveal the pathetic mole-like creature we truly are. Who eats nothing but white bread straight from the bag. With a tin of beans as a garnish. Eaten without a spoon. And you, being honest, kind of like it that way…
No, Callum, I don’t even like beans. They’re gross… Why do you ask?... Did Vince say something?
Anyway…
However true this sense might be, regardless of how unlikely and completely untrue (of me in particular) these examples might be, did you know that that feeling is actually pretty normal?
That even Superbowl winners, CEO’s of Forbes 500 companies and supermodels have that shit going on in their heads?
Show me someone who doesn’t, and I’ll show you a liar.
The short version on this conversation is to say, we’re all human. Fragile, vulnerable, flawed. Human.
The longer version: We are all social animals that live in a society that has written and unwritten rules about how it works and how we take part in it. Weirdly, the unwritten stuff tends to make us question how we are fulfilling our part in it and what the people around us really think of how we go about our stuff. So, we invest harder in the written rules until that’s all we think we are…
The question is, how far do we let that questioning go?
Because that’s really where imposter syndrome comes in.
The huge disconnect from what we think we need to be, compared to what we think we are… its pretty potent. And causes a fairly significant slap of anxiety. But we feel like we need to keep doing the thing because there is no other way to go about things without making ourselves look like less than we want to seem like we are. Even though we are convinced that we aren’t that. So we dive deeper into the things that double down on being THE guy. Or girl. Or whichever seems appropriate to you.
Sounds like a really really fun, spiralling, teetering tower of cards that doesn’t really have much stability and value to it, doesn’t it?
I wonder why people have health issues and coping mechanisms and all that fun stuff when they are up at the top of society? Huh… Guess we’ll never know, right?
Ready for the really ironic part?
The thing that has the power to actually change all that? It’s doing the opposite of what those written and unwritten rules is telling you to do…
Own up to that shit. Be vulnerable. Be honest about it.
As scary as that shit can feel, waaaaay more people will be able to understand and relate to that and the… human-ness of feeling alone and isolated and out of our depth than the person who has everything under control all the time forever with riches and a wizards tower to look down on the rest of us plebs from.
Screw that guy, right?
What’s weirder? Even wizard boy up there, assuming they are genuinely and authentically that superior being who has ultimate control of the cosmos, probably started somewhere a little bit less than that. Feeling out of their depth and convinced that they were going to suck at everything forever.
There’s this idea, from one of my heroes, Carl Jung. He came up with these concepts called archetypes. And ideas of how each of us has all of the types within us, and how we use them to navigate the world and ourselves.
One of his most profound ideas was that the Hero absolutely MUST be precluded by the Fool. The idea being that in order to become the Hero of our own story, a willingness to be the Fool and come to terms with our real (or perceived) inadequacies is essential in overcoming them on the path to being the person we want to be. Our own Hero™.
That willingness to be the Fool? Well, that’s Vulnerability 101 right there. To be prepared to be seen as a person of uselessness and unnecessary air expenditure, in order to learn something more about ourselves and what we can do about that with action.
Imposter syndrome isn’t about actually sucking. Its about thinking about sucking.
Until we can bring ourselves to be honest about it, we can’t get perspective on how true that thinking actually is.
Without that perspective, nothing changes.
Without change, we stay the Fool. In our own heads at least…
So, we pick and choose our battles.
What do you want to feel like? Imposter? Or yourself, being yourself?
I cannot overstate the profound value and strength found on the other side of vulnerability.
Once you’ve been honest about shit, what can you possibly be hurt with for the anxiety to latch on to? By them, or yourself?
Who are you, really?
Be kind, be smart, be your best you. No bar fights.
“I have written 11 books, but each time I think, ‘uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.” Maya Angelou