Imposter syndrome is faced by people of all ages. Embarking on life after college can be especially daunting and you may experience self-doubt. Recognize your hard work, preparation, passion, and drive have prepared you for this point. You are not alone. Believe in yourself.
But how?
This week marks the culmination of the 2022 March Madness tournament. The tournament is filled on both the men’s and women’s sides with athletes who have worked long and hard over years to play their sports at the collegiate level. Many seniors who graduate will not play another minute of competition for their sport, but nonetheless, all of them made it to this elite level through time, preparation, and determination to follow their passions.
We hear from one such athlete on the Rutgers basketball team after they were eliminated from the tournament. In this video (minute marker 25), Ron Harper Jr. says “Growing up, all I ever wanted was somebody to respect me, somebody to tell me I’m good enough, and I found that here at Rutgers.” He went on to express the camaraderie in the locker room and how they, as a team, were able to accomplish so much together.
Oftentimes, we’re all looking for someone else to recognize our expertise, recognize our passion, recognize our drive in order to feel accomplished. But it can be tough when they do if you haven’t taken the time to believe in yourself, often resulting in imposter syndrome, or this feeling like you’re playing a role, something that can be taken away from you if you’re found out, instead of living your life.
How do you believe you belong? Here are three tips to internalize and work toward
We are often our own worst critics. Paying attention to how you speak to yourself in your head, is a good place to start in combatting feelings of unworthiness that come with imposter syndrome. A good rule of thumb? If you wouldn’t feel comfortable saying it to a friend, don’t say it to yourself.
If you went to school, completed a degree, hustled through an internship, and done all that has been asked of you up to this point to be an engineer, journalist, entrepreneur, finance expert, lawyer, etc., you are all of those labels. As you get further down the road and your preparation, drive, and determination continue, you’ll add accolades to your repertoire to achieve that external validation – believe them. Believe that you put in the time and effort to achieve this, that you make choices each day to maintain it, and that your passion continues to push you forward to attain the next thing. An imposter does none of those things.
Although you may feel so alone in this space and like all of your friends have a job lined up post-graduation, the reality is that you’re in good company. Be brave enough to give voice to those feelings, and share them with a friend, trusted confidante, or mentor. At the very least, you’ll find you’re not alone. Perhaps taking action steps together will help you bolster your confidence. You two may swap resumes to review and make suggestions, set up appointments with your career services office to go together, and read over each other’s LinkedIn pages to make sure you’re conveying what is needed to reach your goals. As any good athlete knows, failure to prepare is failure to succeed.
Anyone who reserved some of their time this semester to binge-watch “Inventing Anna” on Netflix will both understand what a true imposter looks like and remember these next lines “You’re not special.” In the series, it’s used to describe how the reporter isn’t special because she’s having a baby because women do this every day with fewer resources than what are at her disposal. Here, I use it to say that there will be no Netflix special about your fraudulent lifestyle, no newspaper articles written about how wrong you were, and no trending hashtags. However, if you work hard and believe in yourself, you may one day find yourself on a world stage telling a wide viewership about how you couldn’t have made your dreams happen without the companionship and hard work of others. And that will be true, just remember who believed in you first — you!
Many of these points come from the American Psychology Association which wrote a great article that’s well worth reading in full.