Imposter Syndrome, that is to say the sense that you are doing something that you’re not qualified for, is something I struggle with quite a bit, especially in these last few weeks where everything is harder than it absolutely has to be. It’s something that I see reverberating around the music industry and something that I think doesn’t really get addressed head on enough.
So how do you deal with it? It seems to require a look at past successes and reminding yourself that I wouldn’t have gotten to this point if a bunch of previous things hadn’t gone right. Then it’s important to look at recent successes as proof you haven’t lost your touch. So yes, maybe you feel like you’re in over your head right now, but a lot of other cool things happened before this so that now you feel this way. And remember – everyone deals with it.
3. Remembering Past Successes And How You Got Here
There’s a Buddhist proverb that says ‘You can’t fall off a mountain.’ I think this is important to remember. It’s easy to suffer from Imposter Syndrome and feel like you’re an incompetent loser who can’t do anything, but again – you can’t fall off a mountain!
When you take the time to build yourself up slowly and build relationships, ultimately it means that you do belong because you have a spot in the community and people are engaging with you. For you to get to a certain point, especially in music, it requires a lot of hard work. You can’t let yourself forget that.
2. Looking At Recent Triumphs
I think most important to look at is recent successes. It’s easy to forget some of the things that made past successes possible and thus doubt your own role in them. However, if you look at recent things that helped you grow I think it’s a lot easier to feel good about yourself.
This is also part of why it’s important to constantly be doing things. So that you can continue to remind yourself, ‘Oh right, I didn’t lose my touch, I’m not a colossal screwup.’ People will often forget your failures, especially if it didn’t impact them directly. So realize you just need to grind through it and keep going.
1. Everyone Deals With This
Ultimately – I think this is something we all deal with. We all worry that what we are doing isn’t right and what we are doing isn’t making an impact. We just have to remind ourselves that we ARE in fact making an impact and people do in fact care about what you do.
Obviously this isn’t always easy, and sometimes we do in fact screw up really badly. However, from what I understand about life, that’s like… most of it. You do stuff that you think can help you, you screw up really bad, you learn and then you move on. That’s what the game is.
Suffice it to say this isn’t easy, but we’ve got to deal with it, and discuss it. When suffering from Imposter Syndrome it can only be overcome by remembering how you got here, why you’re still good and realizing everyone has to deal with this.
How do you deal with Imposter Syndrome?
