In Praise of the Imposter Syndrome: "Accept yourself" is a destructive fad.

Today’s motivational gurus are hell-bent on boosting our self-esteem: “We’re okay just as we are.”  “We are worthy just by virtue of being human.” “There's genius in all of us!" Hah! 

Thinking you’re great is a fast way to ensure you stagnate, probably in mediocrity...or worse—There’s no need to work on growing if you already think you’re fine.

A common manifestation of low self-esteem is the Imposter Syndrome: You have a degree that says you’re a qualified professional but you feel you aren’t one. That’s often an accurate assessment because school-based training, often longer on theory and arcana than on practice and essentials, can easily leave you less than real-world competent. That’s why, for example, many law firms provide extensive post-law-school training for their newly hired lawyers.

The answer to the imposter syndrome is not to dismiss it. My PsychologyToday.com article today tells what to do instead.

Curing Career Fear

Even competent people can suffer from career fear: the imposter syndrome, fear of failure, and/or the Peter Pan syndrome, the fear of growing up. Of course, there are no magic pills but in my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer the tactics that have most often helped my clients.

Letter from a Therapist: "I'm Successful but Not Effective"

In each installment of this daily series, I respond to a composite letter asking for my career advice. 

Today's offering is my response to a letter from a psychologist who feels he's an imposter.

Addressing the Imposter Syndrome

In just the last few days, two clients said they suffer from the imposter syndrome, professional self-doubt. So my PsychologyToday.com article today shares my thoughts on how to address it. HERE is the link.

Curing the Impostor Syndrome: Work hard then forgive yourself

I've had the privilege of being career coach to some of the world's most successful executives, lawyers, physicians, professors, etc. And it may surprise you to know that even most of them often feel like impostors.

It's not that they're inferior. It's that there's a gap between what even stars can do and what complete knowledge and perfect judgment would enable. It's simply impossible for a CEO to know for sure whether it's wisest to be incremental or bold, for a lawyer to be certain s/he's picked the right defense, for a physician to be sure when saying, "You're fine," Even eminent experts, those who appear in the media, according to U.C. Berkeley research, have prediction rates no better than chance!

So after you've done what you can reasonably do to become competent and you've reached that sweet spot where yet more study is likely to only minimally improve your success rate, it's time to give yourself a break, time for acceptance of your fallibility, of humankind's fallibility.

I heard a perhaps apocryphal story that at one of America's leading medical schools, the chief resident welcomes each year's interns by telling them, "Each any every one of you is entitled to one clean kill. A patient will enter the hospital reasonably expecting to leave healthy and you'll kill him. Sure you must learn from your mistakes but you must forgive yourself, because medical errors are part of the cost of a medical education. Your worth as a physician is defined by the net effects of your lifetime as a physician."

Whether or not your workplace decisions are life-and-death, work hard to become competent, learn from your mistakes, and then forgive yourself. We're only human.