If someone tells you after a big success how they felt like an imposter and wanted to quit desperately, you shrug it off as poster-humbleness. I feel like an imposter way more often than I'd like to admit—e.g. while writing this sentence. I have reasons to figure out a coping strategy; I have skin in the game.
I tried to imagine my wish never to feel like an imposter was granted. So what? As these feelings bubble up when I face a challenge, this implies that I must be doomed to be coasting! While the reduced anxiety is a relief, never doubting myself means I have stopped growing. Repeating the same without stretching yourself brings you the same results—though repetition leads to mastery, it only affects fluency and does not enlarge your circle of competence.
If you never fail, you won't learn. The ideal difficulty level in learning is failing 15% of the time. Even this 15% could make you anxious, not to mention if it's more. Don't fail for failure's sake. But you need to be in a place with a potential for failure.
You need to struggle—not in a grandiose, self-important way—to wrestle with complex problems and emerge, perhaps beaten, but wiser. I am not fond of "“aking it '‘ill you make it,"“though it contains a kernel of truth: you can become competent while figuring it out. But be nice, and don't pretend you know everything.
Why am I emphasizing the importance of struggle?
That's when you fall prey to imposter syndrome and when you can learn and grow. The voice telling you that you are bound to fail also implicitly signals a learning opportunity.
Am I telling you to look for feeling like an imposter?
Almost: I am telling you to frame this feeling as a learning opportunity. Carol Dweck's classical result on growth vs fixed mindsets is about framing. Thinking about stress as excitement, a mental trick differentiating pros from amateur athletes, is about framing. That is, the same physiological response implies different psychological effects.
If your inner voice questions your capabilities, flip the script to defuse it. Treat your inner voice as the herald of potential growth.
This requires an attitude change towards failure. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman learned to enjoy being wrong. He said
the last times I was wrong I learned something from it.
Sian Beilock even argues how imposter syndrome can be helpful because
imposter syndrome can help to maintain Beginner's Mind and humility, and the eagerness to accept feedback.
If you don't have any doubts, you might have stopped learning.