From One Imposter to Another: An Olympic reporter's advice on self-doubt | Cat Hendrick | TEDxUGA

[Music] so a little over a year ago I was sitting on a bus freezing my butt off riding up a mountain in South Korea on my way to see the Nigerian bobsled team as it made history I was running a little to no sleep and had hand warmers stuffed places hand warmers should never go I was just a few days away from closing the chapter on one of the hardest greatest years of my life and as I sat on that bus I checked my email and I saw a message for my favorite professor back home she's a cat I've been thinking and you might want to look into something called imposter syndrome I had it before my first Olympics - and I think you might relate to it professor Michaelis so naturally I googled it and I was only a few sentences into the Wikipedia page still on a bus full of strangers when I started sobbing not cute single tear looking out a window sobbing and I'm usually usually not a crier but I couldn't keep it together because I had never understood the phrase it feels good to put a name on it until that moment when an entire year of mental and emotional self torment was validated my name is cat Hendrick and I'm a junior studying sports journalism here at the University of Georgia and in a few years I've been in the sports media industry I've been blessed with some once-in-a-lifetime opportunities namely I got my absolute dream job at 19 years old when I was asked to cover the 2018 Olympic Winter Games and in the year leading up to the games people were always telling me that it looks like I had it all together and I'm sure it did actually I know it did because in hindsight I can look back and see that subconsciously I was where can really really hard to make sure that simmering right beneath the surface was this thing this imposter syndrome and it was slowly and secretly paralyzing me imposter soon was first coined by two psychologists dr. Pauline Rose clance and dr. Suzanne Ames back in 1978 it's defined as a psychological phenomenon in which one doubts one's accomplishments and lives in constant fear of being exposed as a fraud it was originally discovered amongst high achieving women in the academic and corporate worlds but was soon found to affect all demographics somewhat equally and aggressively in fact an estimated 70% of the world population will experience feelings of imposter ISM at some point in their lives but it's important to note that the National Institute of Mental Health does not recognize impostor syndrome as an actual diagnosed until illness and it shouldn't it's considered a phenomenon because it's purely situational if the circumstances in your life are such that it creates an environment in which imposter syndrome can thrive then congratulations you might wake up one day convinced you're a fraud but as those circumstances change or evolve so will those feelings you see impostor cinema operates in a cycle often referred to as can anyone guess the impostor cycle created right scientists you know and it always starts out with a task or a title for me it was getting the job at the United States Olympic Committee but really it could be anything from getting assigned to a special project at work to opening up your own business really just anything that exemplifies your own individual definition of success and immediately or shortly after getting assign that task or title the doubt sets in daunted uh actually ask for jaws music to play when I said that but they said no it was it would ruin the moment but I think I just did that on my own anyway so here we are and this phase is when you start thinking to yourself okay who came to work drunk and decided that this would be a good idea that I was the best person for the job I was in this phase like six minutes ago kind of in it right now like it or not there you are and now you have to do the thing whatever that thing might be for you and that is when most people go down one of two paths over preparation and procrastination I'm just sitting there you probably ready know which one you are right and maybe your spouse and like your kids but regardless of whether you've worked on this thing for months and months on end or just kind of thrown it together at the last second somehow someway it works you succeed and for a moment the weight of all that pressure is lifted off your shoulders and you're relieved that is until you get any form of positive feedback at which point you discredit your success and chalk it up to either an unrealistic amount of work that you're never going to be able to duplicate or maintain or just dumb luck the stage often presents to look a lot like humility but it's not you genuinely believe that you only succeeded because of every reason you could possibly think of other than actually acknowledging your own competence you feel like you accidentally tricked everyone into thinking that you're qualified and worthy of the task at hand you feel like a fraud so what do you do you get a new task to try to prove to everyone that you're not but I'll let you in on a little secret from one imposter to another no one thinks you are and in reality you're just trying to prove it to yourself because that's what impostor syndrome is it's a constant state of irrational paranoia it's waiting for the other shoe to drop waiting for everyone to look up and finally realize that you have no idea what the hell you're doing you have no idea what the hell you're doing I don't know what the hell I'm doing me we all don't but guess what they won't look up because usually we're all so concerned with our own fraudulence that we rarely stop to consider that maybe we're not the only ones that feel that way maybe even those we idolize don't always feel as though they're worthy of their accomplishments because yes the statistics say that it's 7 out of every time but I'd be willing to bet that it's really as common as a headache we all know what a headache feels like right I don't have to explain it to you but I will it's that annoying throbbing like right here like right here or like right here and when you feel it you might not know what caused it but you recognize it and you can call it out and say that's a headache and because you can recognize it you know exactly how to treat it you drink a coke take an advil and eventually it fades away but imagine a world where we didn't know what a headache was because we had never talked about having those feelings and we were all walking around with that same familiar feeling but we might not know that a there's a name for it be it's not a brain tumor and it's actually really common and see to take a dang Advil but there's things you can do to alleviate those pains because you're not alone and just like a headache imposter syndrome isn't always that bad it's only when it's left to run rampant that it can and it will you I should know it crippled me you see I stopped sleeping because I couldn't justify sleep as anything other than eight hours that should be spent back rounding and researching and trying to understand curling yeah you get the point system that's what I thought there were days and even weeks that I didn't leave my house because leaving my house meant running into people and that meant talking about the Olympics and that just made all my feelings of anxiety that much worse I was absolutely terrified terrified of checking my email because I was convinced that every time I hit refresh that that was going to be the time that a message popped up from the United States Olympic Committee saying that they finally realized they made a mistake in choosing me that they had taken a chance on me and they were wrong I had full-blown panic attacks on my kitchen floor at home as my sweet sweet parents called every therapist in the county trying to find someone anyone who would try to get through to me and ultimately and the months leading up to the games I was literally dreaming brainstorming different ways that I could sabotage my entire career the one that I loved the one they had worked so hard for just so I didn't have to get on that plane I was so afraid of going and of not being good enough and of disappointing everyone in the process that I didn't want to go at all I'll never forget a conversation that I had with my dad maybe two weeks before the Olympics okay conversation probably isn't the right word I was I was having a breakdown and let me just preface this by saying that as far as I'm concerned that man walks on water he is amazing and by every definition has had a very successful life so there I was rattling off all my usual phrases of I'm not as good as I think I am they're gonna fire me and send me home and finally he got down on the ground and he held me and he said sweetheart there has not been a single day in my entire career that I have ever felt like I actually earned my success and that was a powerful moment for me once I wrap my head around the idea that even my hero had ever felt as unqualified and unworthy as I did in that moment because even though I was still in a pretty dark place I was no longer alone in the darkness like now is the time that I should probably acknowledge that I skipped a lot of steps in my career in a matter of months I went from the only homework or the only sport stories I'd ever written being unpublished homework assignments that I generally got B's on in my intro to sports reporting class to covering the greatest athletes in the world my circumstances were extreme so my imposter syndrome was extreme but it's rarely over that debilitating more often it's just that little voice in the back of each one of your head saying you are way out of your league here and it's only a matter of time before Evan realizes it and no matter what your individual circumstances are one thing remains the same you will never overcome your imposter syndrome without first reevaluating where your identity lies I let my entire identity become Olympic reporter cat Hendrick so much so but I was so scared of losing that title or just being really bad at it because I didn't know what I would be left with if I did then I would just be cat and for some reason I just didn't think that that was good enough anymore as members of the society we are constantly taught to get the grade to pass the class to get the diploma to get the job to climb the ladder and to never stop climbing the ladder to the point where our entire self-worth lies in what we do as opposed to who we are to combat this I challenge each and every one of you to root your identity not in your career but rooted in your calling take more pride and your purpose than your position and don't get so wrapped up and what you're doing that you forget why you're doing it because jobs and internships and promotions and raises they aren't sure things but your purpose your calling well I could never be taken away from you so spoiler alert I got on the plane I went to the Olympics I published over 20 articles and had the absolute time of my life and I wasn't perfect but I wasn't the failure that I thought I would be and as it turns out I was qualified I was ready and I like to think that I made some people proud along the way I know now that I was not put on this earth to be an Olympic reporter I'm a storyteller and it is within that calling that I find my purpose not the title I just wish I would have understood earlier than I did on that bus ride at that freezing cold South Korean Mountain that I am NOT an impostor because I'm more than just my title and so are you thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 4,367

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Identity, Journalism, Mental health, Psychology, Sports

Id: ndrzyKmxDOs

Length: 15min 11sec (911 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2019