Translator: Mohand Habchi
Reviewer: Ellie Green I make my living working at a company
that has a reputation for hiring geniuses. We've all seen pieces like this; they talk about all the ways
you can hack to get a job at Google, and there are these elaborate pieces that sort of portray an image of being
a job candidate that doesn't really exist. So when I went in for my interview, I was really intimidated,
like you would be. I didn't know if I would stack up to this image
that I had painted for myself. But of course, fast forward some time, and I've now worked there
for a bit of time, and it's a good job, and it became my turn
to interview people. And I remember my first interview. I walked into it thinking, "How would
I know how to evaluate this person?" What if midway through the interview, they were going to find out
that I didn't really get design, and that I should not be
interviewing them? So reflecting on all of this, I wanted to understand
why that's happened. Why, in the position of being
the interviewer, had I felt intimidated? And when I was the job candidate,
I felt that same level of intimidation. So luckily there's a whole field
of study about this. And that sensation of feeling like you don't deserve to be
in the position you're in, is called imposter syndrome. In 1985, Dr. Pauline Clance published
a study called the Imposter Phenomenon. In this study, she detailed
that really high performing people, people that all of us
would consider aspirational, don't always feel like they've earned
the praise they've been given. And so she goes on to show
that this causes maladaptive behavior and stress and overworking yourself
and other toxic work-life-balance habits. You see, a lot of really famous
and successful people have exhibited this. Maya Angelou once said,
"I've written 11 books and I think each time, 'I've done it,
they're going to find me out. I've run a game on everyone.'" But the thing is you don't have to be
a beloved American figure to have this experience. It's been shown that at least
seventy-five percent of people experience at least one episode
of imposter syndrome, and it's not just limited to men or women. Mothers experience this,
students experience this, PhD candidates, designers, performers, and really any social situation
that involves some kind of a ranking. You see, it doesn't take a lot of research to know that our culture
has painted a really interesting image of what succes is. Social media is bombarding us
every single day. We see posts all the time about
what we could be and where we are. You have to paint this image
of being the best version of yourself, you need to be authentic,
but you've got to be more. And so, a San Diego study found
that the average person today is bombarded with at least
a hundred thousand words of content and around 12 hours of content
and media every single day. And all those words are just telling you that you can be doing
something better with your life. There's lists top 30 under 30.
There's lists top 20 under 20. And there's these infinite ways that you can be better
than who you are today. You see, it kind of makes
this gap in our minds, right? There's this version of ourselves
that is achieving classic success, and then there's what we are
accomplishing today. And even if you do something that feels
like it is where you could be glowing, the problem is it's your accomplishment. You see all the moments
it took for you to get there. You know all the moments of self-doubt,
all the times you second-guessed yourself. So when you get that award or that job,
it doesn't feel like anything special, because it didn't just come to you,
you had to really work at it. You see, the human mind is a funny thing. When we're born,
we're completely blank slates. We have to set up how we're going
to see the world throughout our lives. So as a baby, your DNA encodes
in you certain survival skills. And everything else is up to
your social situations to teach you. Psychologists call these models schema. And we set up schema
over really basic things, like furniture or cars, toys and food. We know that if we're hungry,
we might take an apple; it'll look a certain way,
it'll taste a certain way. When we eat, we will be full.
Well, it depends - (Laughter) But the thing is that
you're going to be setting up more complex models
over emotional situations. We're being sold these ideas
of success over and over, so you're going to start setting up
your model, your schema around the concept of success. So it might look something like this, "Okay, success is good.
That's the goal. I need to do that." All the while, our culture
is promoting this idea of the genius. And this is pretty heavily
saturated in today's world, this concept of these people who are
on this planet, and they just get it. We've got Steve Jobs.
We've got Elon Musk. These people who just accomplish things
and don't have to second-guess themselves. They deserve the positions they're in. So we set up this schema,
and we're not the genius. So even if we accomplish something
that we might have thought was successful, it doesn't feel like anything special. And so the thing is a lot of people
will experience this - people who have gotten their PhDs, people who have gotten
incredible leadership roles. So this is pretty bleak. It seems like we're all here, and no one really feels like
they deserve to be where they are, and they second-guess themselves. But this is a TEDx Talk, and so I'm here
to tell you about a brighter future. (Laughter) If this is such a collective experience, if I can look around this room
and see so many people who feel this way, it's the human condition, we can adapt to it,
we can take charge of that and make it something
that pushes us all forwards. To recap, imposter syndrome
feels like you're in a room with people and everyone has
this set field of knowledge, and you only have
a slight piece of that knowledge. And every time you get
an award or an accolade, or somebody gives you a job, you feel like you're one step closer
to being found out. All those things you've earned, they just feel like they are
getting you closer to the place where people are going to know
you shouldn't have earned them at all. But the reality is,
the world doesn't look like this. The genius is kind of a myth.
Everyone's trying stuff. The reality is that our whole lives, everyone's been developing
the way that they'll see the world. So it's equal sets of knowledge. Sure it might overlap some places, and some people are always going
to know more than you in some areas; some people might know less. To somebody else, you might seem
like you have it completely figured out. You see, it's not what you can do
about impostor syndrome, it's the human condition. Odds are you're going to experience it
over some event in your life. It's what you can do with it
to motivate yourself forwards. When I wake up every day for work, I've been put on teams at Google to launch big products
that launch to millions of people. And I work with people
who I look up to. I've worked with people
who when I was young in my career, I really looked up to them. And now I work alongside them. And the thing is it was scary. I felt like maybe I shouldn't
contribute all my ideas because they wouldn't be at the caliber that was expected
of someone in my position. But by really embracing this, by embracing the fact
that we're all just figuring it out, I was able to push through those feelings
of "I'm not good enough" and find out that I actually
was good enough. People chose me to be on their teams.
They wanted to work with me. And so that's where the power lies. If you embrace your own imposter syndrome, you will find that it will give you
the strength to really move forward. So here's three reasons for that. Number one. If you have imposter syndrome,
it means you have intellectual humility. That means that you are aware
of the limits of your own knowledge. And that's not a weak point. If you're aware of the limits
of your knowledge, you'll learn to lean on people around you and understand the models
that they have set up for the world and learn from those models. You see, you're not an imposter
if something you try fails, the world is full of people
who try things and they fail, and they try things and they fail. And we hear those few
success stories along the way. And number two, it means that
you look at situations like an amateur. An amateur asks questions. They're trying to learn.
They're trying to catch up. If you keep this attitude with you
throughout your life, you'll never stop learning,
and you'll never stop growing. You see, the difference between
imposter syndrome becoming toxic and becoming an asset in your life is how you view
the external gratification. As an amateur, a lot of the reward
is in the process. You get to learn things
and experience things that you wouldn't have experienced before. If you rely on what
it looks like on the outside, you'll end up on a treadmill
of overworking yourself and being stressed and not accomplish
what you want to accomplish in your life. And the last point,
which is the most important one, is that having imposter syndrome
pushes you to action. Toxic imposter syndrome, the kind that makes you
second-guess yourself in an unhealthy way, lives in your mind. All these schemas and all this
complex thing with our mind is a pattern of thinking. It's emotional and thinking,
but it's this endless battle. The thing is that's all abstraction. Once you're putting in the work
and taking the action, all those second-guessing-yourself doubts,
there's no room for them. When I decided to do this talk, I thought, "Oh, how would I have something to share
with a room full of people who all are successful
in their own right?" And I felt worried about it. But that was all in my mind. Once I said yes and began doing the work, I realized I did have something
that I wanted to share with the world. And everyone here has that. So, next time you feel like an imposter,
next time you feel like you don't belong, next time you feel
like you're not good enough for the position you've been placed in, take a deep breath, remind yourself that the people around you
are probably experiencing that same thing, and then go do something amazing. Thank you. (Applause)
