Let’s talk about imposter syndrome. Not just about imposter syndrome, but about how obnoxious it is.
Today, we’re going to be talking about this weird feeling that everybody gets, but we only think we get. This weird feeling that can make it incredibly hard to publish or share your work. This weird feeling that is actually a lie. Imposter syndrome is a twisted perspective at the end of the day. It’s a lack of awareness about how the world actually works, and specifically how skill acquisition works.
Skill acquisition is actually one of my favorite topics, so excuse me if I get a little bit nerdy here. The thing about becoming good at something is that you first have to be bad at that thing. If you want to be better at shooting baskets, you have to be bad at shooting baskets first, because otherwise there’s nothing to improve. If you want to be better at writing, then you have to first be worse at writing.
Now, what does that have to do with imposter syndrome? See, imposter syndrome is based on this lie that we should be good or better at something than we currently are. And the reason that imposter syndrome feels so real is because we believe that other people are judging us at this same standard. That they’re saying, “Ooh, this author put out a book and it’s not very good, but it should be really good.”
Listen, unless you are a multi-published author, nobody has those expectations of you. I’m sorry, that’s just the reality. If this is your debut, guess what? You have complete free reign to suck. Now, obviously, it’s better not to suck, but you have the freedom to do it. And then you have the freedom to be better with every single book you publish after that.
Now, it’s a little bit different, of course, if you are a multi-published author and then you just phone a book in, and then your audience is like, “What the heck? You went backwards?” That’s a different thing. That’s not imposter syndrome. That’s doing worse than you should have, or maybe laziness.
We’re talking about imposter syndrome, though. This idea that you are an imposter, that you can’t claim the identity you want to claim. Now, if you are an author, you have published, and you’re feeling like an imposter, then the reason is because you are measuring yourself against standards that you shouldn’t measure yourself against.
A big reason people feel imposter syndrome is because they might not have as many reviews as other people, or their books might not be as widely read, or they just don’t feel like they’re quite as good as other people’s. But the reality is that when you’re up close on something, when you’re examining it very carefully, as it is when you’ve, let’s say, written it, then it’s really easy to see the faults. It’s much harder to see the faults when you’re coming in from the outside, because you’re not so intimately involved in the process.
So the same thing that’s happening to you when you read other people’s books, and you’re like, “Man, these books are so much better than mine,” that’s happening to them too, because they can see every fault with their own work, and they can’t see the same faults in yours. Again, the standard we use to judge our own work versus other people’s work is completely different. And so you shouldn’t use that as a metric for judgment.
The same thing is true with reviews. The number of reviews is not a cast-iron indication of how good the book was. It’s just about how much people enjoyed it, and how many people happened to encounter it. I’ve read tons of books with significantly less reviews than they should have, based on their quality, simply because not as many people had read the book.
So the next time you’re looking at your work and you’re saying, “Man, I don’t feel like I should be here, I don’t feel like I belong here, because my quality is not up to snuff,” understand that your expectations for yourself are probably wildly misaligned. If you’re an author and you’re publishing, you’re supposed to be here. If you’re a writer who’s looking to publish a debut novel, you’re supposed to be here.
And just because your stories or your books are not as high quality as you would like doesn’t matter. You can always improve. In fact, you should always improve. You should constantly be seeking to do better.
And you know what’s fascinating? The way that I deal with imposter syndrome is to say, “Good, I recognize my books aren’t perfect, but that means I can improve. That means I can get better.” And when I get myself into that mindset, that growth mindset instead of the fixed mindset, guess what? All of my imposter syndrome vanishes, because my expectations are properly aligned.
I understand that I’m not going to release the perfect novel. Instead, I’m going to write a better novel than I did last time. And then I’m going to do it again and again and again and again. I just don’t have time for imposter syndrome, because I’m busy working on my craft. I’m busy telling cool stories. I’m busy engaging with my fans.
And that, in my opinion, is absolutely the best way to just crush imposter syndrome.
YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/QdzXw1I0-Uo
Thanks for reading and watching.
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