Have imposter syndrome? Good. You are exactly where you ought to be. Keep pretending and you will get there you little imposter!
I have this idea that we must imagine ourselves as something before we become it, or at least we can. We certainly become things that we never imagined easily enough. So, if you roll your eyes at this opening sentence because it strikes you as Pollyanna and reminiscent of some motivation poster in your middles school counselor’s office saying “you can be anything you imagine” then your eye roll would be justified and your resistance to this idea acceptable and appropriate – for an adult looking at it that way.
Let’s try to look at it from an appreciative viewpoint rather than a critical one. I think it was Mel Roberts who posted some meme that I consumed scrolling Instagram (yes, no one is immune to the scrolling curse), she said start acting like the person you want to be. It hit me as a very simple but too often missed concept. This connects to why I think you should imagine yourself in the light of what you want to see yourself.
I’ll jump around a bit. This idea is accepted in so many other domains but not much applied when it comes to self-perceptions. We tend to say the goal of a healthy self-estimation (self-esteem) is accuracy not increased volume. To see yourself as you are and to be correct. No good walking around thinking you are god’s gift to the green earth yet are a piece of shit that can’t do anything for themselves – nor – does it do you any good to walk around thinking you are a turd that is of no value when you are overtly talented, able, intelligent, and skilled. Both are sins (sin here being the archery term of missing the mark).
That is all fair, but we aren’t just going about the business of being accurate descriptors of ourselves. We are also going about the task of change. So, the idea of pretending that you are what you are not becomes a mechanism for creating change. It is such a fundamental strategic basic given of our lives – it is one of the first games we learn to play. As children – we play games of pretend. We play. We initiate. We create. Encouraged to use our imagination to play.
How many doctors, teachers, mothers, vets, and counselors even were born in the identity of the pretending child’s mind? The idea that they could become planted in a game -fueled by support, encouragement – germinated and grew into the reality of that child as they acquired the skills, discipline and know how.
As a counselor, as a professional in the counseling field, I had to pretend to be a counselor in order for me to become one. I donned a way of speech, an air, took on the dress of a professional, assumed the attitude, demeanor, read books I thought a counselor would read, did things I thought a counselor would do, avoided things that I thought a counselor wouldn’t do (to varying degrees of success). I invested a great deal in these constructions of an identity. A game of pretend.
Naturally, if you pretend to be a doctor long enough – you end up learning a little bit about medicine (ask an actor from Grey’s anatomy and find out!). You do become what you pretend to be as you engage in acquiring all the skills and knowledge needed to pull off a convincing representation of a counselor are the exact things necessary to being a counselor. So, after playing this game for 10 years I can say that I am a counselor. (I am licensed and legit don’t panic).
It isn’t obvious to me that the process of becoming anything even becoming self-loving doesn’t follow the exact same process. If you want to be self-loving it might be a good idea to start doing loving things for yourself. If I don’t want to be X and would rather be Z then I should at least start acting as if I was already Z.
I want to be the center of my own story. The principal of my own performance. I would benefit from engaging in that way as if I were. Sure, there will be challenge and pain in the process of changing. Discovery of all sorts of error and assumptions that we have made about ourselves and the world around us. As you recalibrate your position in your own thinking as the central figure of your life. I would start by improving how I talked to myself about myself.
As a child it may have worked to be down on yourself – because you likely would have found someone whose job it was to provide you with the validation and supportive encouragement that you were looking for. It was a given. Well, school is out, and the encouragement probably died off long before the classes did. The encouragement isn’t forthcoming, and no one is rescuing. Not a bad strategy when you couldn’t give yourself encouragement and validation – but as an adult as talented, able and intelligent as you are – it is a bad strategy.
