The Surprising Solution to the Imposter Syndrome | Lou Solomon | TEDxCharlotte

good-afternoon years ago I was sitting across from Barbara in her office I think it was my third or fourth visit Barbara was a wonderful and warm human being and a brilliant therapist and she also had a great sense of humor I think it's really important that your therapists have a great sense of humor really important well she was asking me about my career and suddenly she said well now loo you've been successful haven't you I mean you've had some big jobs you have a big job now I said well I've been lucky mostly I just hope that I can keep that up but the look holds out mostly I just hope that I can pull off another success she said well you know it sounds like modesty but I'm not buying it she said really you know there's a name for this push back that I'm always getting from you when it comes to any of your achievements having anything to do with you or your talent and it's called the impostor syndrome so I mean a little kidding I had to I said well this is not a good day this is not a good day I knew something was off but you're telling me I have some weird condition that has a name that sounds like the name of an Alfred Hitchcock movie the impostor syndrome well you know Barbara would go on to tell me and I knew something was important was being said anyway and she would go on to put a name to a condition that I've been suffering with since I was a kid and that's been over two decades and today my life's work is helping people call out that impostor like thinking now you can't get rid of it completely but you can definitely you can definitely learn to call it out so back to that conversation with Barbara I became a self researcher from the inside out I learned that the imposter syndrome is a feeling of phone enos and I'm worthiness among people when it comes to their achievements and even though we're highly motivated we don't really believe any of the credit that comes our way I like to say that we feel like we have snuck in the back door of life's theater and snuck up on stage and there's a big bouncer out there and we know that if he sees us we're out of here and so we're constantly looking over our shoulder for the bouncer it's true Mike said 70% of the people in this country have at least a passing acquaintance with the feelings or the symptoms that are associated with the imposter syndrome I like to call them the Fantastic Four and they go like this anxiety perfectionism self-doubt and fear of failure so back to the 70% I think that's low don't you I mean that means that only two out of every three people in this room have ever experienced self-doubt for example I mean I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands but I bet if I did I mean almost all of us have experienced some form of self-doubt or one of the Fantastic Four in our lifetime it's the human condition isn't it even the great Maya hello love her the great Maya Angelou after having published one of her books said you know I wonder if this will be the time when they figure out I've been running a game Maya Angelou brilliant poet playwright author and maybe you felt that way someone gave you some recognition and you stood and thought oh I don't know what I'm doing here I haven't done anything to deserve this it has got to be a mistake well people like me just have a whopper version of the feelings that go with thinking that anything that comes your way is a mistake there's deeper worry there's deeper anxiety there's more suffering so what's the cause of the imposter syndrome hold you in suspense a minute one of the main reasons is growing up and a home with an alcoholic parent or with domestic violence or with physical abuse or any serious conflict such as constant criticism it's a response to the trauma that comes from that now for me it was my father my father was a brilliant pilot highly decorated adored on the outside respected but at home he was a raging alcoholic at home he berated us for being incompetent the worst kind of abuse I believe is verbal it's been the worst for my family to recover from and this was a tortured man I mean he was raised the exact same way but what I did with that is I devoted my life to proving that I was competent and of course it never works because even when I brought home straight A's he would say well the school year attending must be pretty easy so it's tempting to say that you know a bad childhood is what it's about but I've worked with people who didn't have a bad childhood and a happy childhood but instead they chose careers that require constant critiquing constant critiquing I bet there's a good many artists in the room and artists have to live with that constant critiquing I have a dear friend Susan and she once said to me Lou not until I have an entire body of work and a gallery showing do I feel like I will have deserved the right to call myself an artist but for whatever the reason some people just get it into their heads that they are not good enough and that if people really knew them that they would know that they have no right to be here they haven't done anything to deserve where to be where they are well if this isn't you and you don't have this you may know and love someone who does you can catch them and that modesty ploy I told you about where they shun compliments to the point of its it's not modesty they even may hide achievements from friends and family because they don't really feel like they achieve them so you know they're the folks that don't tell you they got the award somebody else tells you we're also gluttons for punishment because we are attracted like bugs to the light to really high stress jobs that wear you out because they demand too much and take everything that you've got and for me I worked for big broadcast companies for a long time and loved it really loved it but I suffered over every tiny mistake I ever made just suffered over it because the imposter syndrome almost always comes with painful perfectionism I remember one night I came home from working late I was getting into bed and I remembered I left a typo a little typo and a memo that I had distributed I mean this was before email and I couldn't sleep so I got back out of bed I got dressed again I drove back to the station retyped it redistributed it got home at 2:00 a.m. but it was perfect and nobody ever knew about it because any little flaw like that would reveal something about me and my incompetence well the easiest way that I can describe to you what having the imposter syndrome is like is to tell you that it's like having a crappy best friend in your head who says mean things about you and listen I've named mine her name is miss Bader after Darth Vader and Miss Leader says awful things she says things like well you got close but you still screwed it up or you know deserve to be here these people are really smart or yeah you might have done it this time I don't know how you do it next time well the one good thing about Miss Vader is that once you can hear Miss Vader once you can understand that voice you can do something about it that's what Barbara and I figured out you can do something about it and like every villain she calls out what I like to call the radical hero and the radical hero is wiser and doesn't buy it and has a deeper point of view I've named her - her name is Betty Lou and betty-lou is southern and strong and irreverent uses a smidge of profanity with Miss Vader occasionally and absolutely has a fabulous laugh and one of the best things that I can say about the radical hero is that she calls out the lies and the limiting beliefs that isolate people like me I think we all could use the support of a radical hero couldn't we you know let's face it in a way we're all imposters aren't we because whether it is that tough college admission that we over identify with or it's that image in the media that we compare ourselves to or having to crush every project at work in order just to be on par it seems to me that we all are tempted to measure ourselves against someone else's idea of success well my radical hero started doing the work of calling out my lies and my limited my limiting beliefs and one of the first things she did was look at this idea of vulnerability as weakness you know everybody talks a pretty good game about vulnerability you know it's popular to do that but deep down don't you kind of suspect this for losers see I grew up in a military family and there was nothing good about the word or the concept of vulnerability you know in wartime that means deficiency it means exposure for damage and imminent attack and I grew up thinking the best thing I could do is pull myself up by my bootstraps never ask for help and never let them see you sweat and I secretly believe that vulnerability was for losers well in my early 30s I had a bit of a breakdown I wound up in the wall with physical mental and emotional exhaustion and I did a very rare and miraculous thing because I hadn't planned to do it that day and what that was was reaching out to my good friend Greg my dear friend Greg and I said you know what I can't do this anymore I constantly feel like I don't deserve to be here and what we did was put together an action plan that would eventually lead me to Barbara and do you know I know today that the single most important thing that you can do to sustain Stu sustained strength in your life you know is to is to live and fail and love and ask for help so another lie that was very important for me to call out was that a successful career leads to a successful life well I mean I grew up believing that and for many years I thought my career in broadcasting was going to save me I mean I worked so hard and I got promotions but you know every time I got an achievement it was like cotton candy you know really sweet blast of air and then nothing and then you had to do it all over again and in the sweet blast but I believed in my job until my beloved parent company decided to sell my beloved radio station and the way we found out about it was that we watched it on the 6 o'clock news on my sister TV station and as you can see I've gotten over it very well Greg occasionally says are you still holding the grudge about that I say damn straight that was absolutely rotten well what what happened was that suddenly the people that we had called family as a core value all those people that we had held in this idea this vision for the station that I bought into a thousand percent they were hurt I was upset and one day Chuck shows up now Chuck is the new general manager and Chuck wore a silk suit Chuck told me the way things were going to go and I heard Betty Lou say good luck with that and I walked down the hall to my office banged out my resignation and I was out it was just absolutely amazing my friends thought I was crazy I thought I was crazy and I don't mean to say anybody needs to quit their job you'll have to figure that one out for yourself but I will tell you that I had to quit mine so that I could move from a career to a calling another lie that was really important for me to call out was you should never air your dirty laundry have you heard that one that old saying that old terrible saying I grew up thinking that any past mistake or obstacle or descripton whatever it was was dirty you better hide that thing you better be embarrassed to better it's dirty and what I have learned today I've done some homework on my hardships and I've added with the hardship the wisdom that I've gained and it's as though the fragmented pieces of me come together and when I can tell you what my life has taught me I'm suddenly a whole person now people will say well loo and it dangerous to overshare and inappropriate situations well of course it is commonsense must prevail and the where and when matters but if you can help somebody if you can help somebody with your experience and strength you'll know it you'll know when and finally for a kid who was so shy I never spoke up until I was about 10 this particular limiting belief was important for me to debunk and that is this talkers rule the worldé now a advertising man named Barton over 50 years ago famously said that people who succeeded in life were talking well in high school I had a biology teacher coach Tavernier we called him coach I love this man and he used to say I'm listening for brilliant people and you know what we were brilliant in his class we sure were and this troubled kid was empowered by that and I have never forgotten him or the idea of listening for brilliance so what's at stake if we don't empower brilliance what's at stake well one thing's for sure we won't ever tap into the best ideas from people who could solve the problems in the world because you see the impostor syndrome if left unchecked can cause anxiety depression addiction stalled projects unfinished masterpieces an unhappy life for sure and it doesn't take much it's about telling a friend you know you're really good at that or telling it coworker hey I've noticed you're gifted there you know I don't spend too much time with Miss Vader anymore it still shows up but you know Betty Lewis is doing a pretty darn good job these days but when Miss Vader shows up on an off day and hurls an insult at me I take a breath I feel compassion and I remember what that sad cartoonish voice sounds like and I remember that there's plenty of work to go around and the exact nature of that work is to help our students and our friends and our family and our co-workers confront and call out the lies and the limiting beliefs that could isolate them and perhaps most of all to listen for brilliance thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 483,364

Rating: 4.8715954 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Achievement, Career, Life Hack, Psychology

Id: whyUPLJZljE

Length: 21min 1sec (1261 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 30 2016