I guess this is a very strong and important topic to start the new year, so let’s go!
These days I read a very interesting text by Ali Abdaal about how to end imposter syndrome. In this text, Ali tells us about an interview he participated in with a very important person in the business world and his feeling was of total inadequacy (as he himself says, what would such an important guy want to hear from a 27-year-old guy? ).
If you don’t know Ali Abdaal, he was a doctor and now YouTuber who talks about productivity and other super interesting things on his channel, which today has over 2.46 million subscribers, that is, a lot of people! His contents are very relevant and fun to watch, for those who are interested in the subject, I highly recommend it!
Returning then to the subject, we have the Impostor Syndrome, which is precisely that feeling of not being in the right place, of feeling inadequate where we are, even though this is not true when we confront reality.
I think we all go through this, especially women. How many work situations, or even in schools, where we feel as if we don’t occupy a place that is rightfully ours, a place that we fought so hard to get? There is a lot of debate about this situation and several tips and ways to deal with this feeling are found out there. However, I believe that none made as much sense as the one presented in Ali’s text.
The recommendation given by this “business wizard” who interviewed Ali was this: every time he feels this uncomfortable, this imposter feeling, his thinking turns into something like: “I am uncomfortable right now and this is how it should be, but that’s how I grow as a person, and that’s really interesting!” Looking at it this way, we have the feeling that the situation is in our hands again, that we can change how we see something from great discomfort to a new and growing experience.
Of course, not all situations will be easily resolved like this, with a positive sentence (mainly for us women, in some contexts), but I believe that this could be a path, an attempt to remodel the situation and increasingly reduce the feeling of imposters that we feel.
And you, what do you think of these strategies? Could it work out for you?
