Are you an Imposter Quiz HERE
At this point, the odds are microscopic that I will ever get any tattoos.
It’s not so much a style thing or an avoidance of pain.
It’s that I’ve evolved enough to question just how permanent a statement I want to make on my own body.
If I did reverse my position on body art for myself, I do have a few candidates.
I have so many favorite Bukowski quotes ––
“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire”
—immediately springs to mind-–
But the one I would probably choose is:
“The problem with the world
Is that the intelligent people are full of doubts,
while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
I have to remind myself (and my creative clients HERE) of that several times a day.
All of us it seems, for better are worse, are suffering from some form of Imposter Syndrome.
And yet…
It truly is one of the unfortunate but great paradoxes that the only people who do NOT suffer from Imposter Syndrome…are imposters!
“I am not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people,” John Steinbeck wrote in his diary in 1938.
This was after he’d written Of Mice and Men and Grapes of Wrath (which won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.)
Or my Yale classmate Jodie Foster, with two Oscars sitting on her shelf, at an awards dinner to honor her in 2007, sharing:
“I always feel like something of an impostor. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
I share this feeling every time I’m asked my opinion on something in the Transformation / Personal Growth Universe.
(Which I guess means I’m actually NOT an imposter…yet still…)
But…if we’re being honest…I do confess to a few youthful moments of authentically being an imposter.
Young actors are always told that if asked “Can you ride a horse?” that the answer is always “YES” –– and then you immediately learn to ride a horse the day before shooting.
I had several chutzpah-filled moments with graphic temp jobs in my early 20s where my confidence in a computer design program was far greater than my actual experience merited.
I completely “bluffed” about my qualifications when I accepted the gig, and just hoped I would somehow figure it out on the job.
In the same way, a favorite memory is how I interviewed to be part of a year-long focus group for a university study which would have solved a lot of cash flow problems.
Since it was for medical research (and not just a marketing focus group), I decided to be entirely honest with my answers.
It was a bittersweet, mixed message moment when the consultant, after scoring my evaluation, shook her head sadly, and rejected me from participation in the study with:
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Vilga, but you just do NOT have a substance abuse problem.”
(I’m also reminded of the time I somehow felt youthful hubris that I could take a piano apart and rebuild it. If you missed that newsletter, it’s HERE.)
Yet in all those moments, I always knew I was winging it, using my best improv skills to survive a vibrant but reckless post-college creative life in NYC.
Imposter Syndrome is different.
It’s when you actually have the skills and the achievements but still doubt yourself.
Even just this week, I found myself cringing during a zoom meeting when savvy marketing folks talked about “positioning me” for a project for a very large audience.
As much as I could rattle off my legitimate credits, the imposter feeling crept to the surface.
If you can relate to any of this, I have two things to offer:
• The fact that you’re questioning things means you’re NOT actually an imposter…
(And also that you probably have a reasonable relationship with reality.)
• My dear friend and colleague, Amy Ahlers, an amazing leadership coach, keynote speaker, and bestselling author is offering a quiz and a free workshop on the topic this week HERE.
I took the quiz myself and well…
I like to think I’m good at tests but this QUIZ made me think long and hard about possibilities for growth.
And about getting a tattoo.
(JK––that’s never happening.)
Anyway, I’ll be at Amy’s online event this week.
Maybe you’ll join me.
And even if you don’t, consider these final words from Bukowski the next time you’re feeling like a fake and you’re desperate to retreat:
Drink from the well of yourself
and begin again.
That really is the only way to overcome Imposter Syndrome (or anything else.)
Namaste for Now,
P.S. Again Meditation of the Month is HERE (and thanks for all the lovely comments…this one struck a major chord.)
Amy’s quiz and FREE workshop are HERE.
And finally, please remember, as the I Ching tells us, there’s fuel in the questions…keep doubting, kept questioning, but maybe be a little easier on yourself.
