Feel Like A Fraud At Work How To Deal With Imposter Syndrome

Feel Like A Fraud At Work How To Deal With Imposter Syndrome Unless youre supremely confident, at some point or another youll probably have had doubts about your ability to do your job and to deliver whats expected of you. Now, whilst this isnt uncommon  and these feelings of self-doubt normally shift after a few weeks/months, for some people  those feelings are much more overbearing and can be extremely hard to shake. For a lot of people, they just cant seem to get rid of the feeling that theyre actually not that talented and that theyve just landed their current job as a result of luck, timing or It might sound extreme but this is actually a real condition. Its known as Imposter Syndrome and is extremely common, particularly in women and in fact some of the biggest names in digital, such as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, are thought to suffer from it. If any of the above sounds familiar, theres a chance you might have the condition and while theres no quick fix, there are a few things you can do to deal with these feelings of severe self-doubt in the workplace. 1. Remember That Youre Not Alone: OK, that sounds a bit cheesy but what I mean If you put on a confident face, theres a chance that youll feel more confident and your feelings of self-doubt might start to disappear. Remember, if you cant show that you have confidence in yourself, how can anyone else have confidence in you?! 2. Remember That No Ones Perfect: Cant stop thinking about that mistake you made on your last campaign? Its time to get over it. Seriously, no ones perfect and mistakes get made (thats why keyboards have delete/backspace buttons after all!) so you need to stop beating yourself up and move on. Remember, being wrong about something doesnt make you a fraud, it makes you a human being with your own opinions. Your boss knows that youre a human and not a robot so at some point or another theyre  going to expect you to make a mistake   and when you do, theyll probably accept it and move on so you should too. Like I said on the last point, everyone makes mistakes and just because you dont see your colleagues shouting about their screw-ups, that doesnt mean they arent making them! 3. Look At What Youve Achieved: When youre seriously low on confidence it can be easy to just dwell on your mistakes and all the times youve done something wrong in your career but you need to stop and start considering everything that youve achieved. While you might be able to attribute one or two of your successes to luck or flukes, theres no way they can all be attributed to that so you need to remember that its your talent, hard work and skills that have attributed to the rest. Make a list of all your successes and achievements and keep it close to hand eg. in your desk, in your bag or even on your desktop so you have it ready and waiting next time those intense feelings of self-doubt start to creep in. On the bottom of this list, you could also add some recommendations or some previous positive comments that youve received either from your boss or a previous employer/co-worker/client. The important thing to remember with these comments is that no one forced them to say these nice things about you. They said them because they wanted to so try and keep this in mind! 4. Re-Assess Your Goals: Another way to deal with the dreaded Imposter Syndrome is to re-assess your goals and your expectations. If you set yourself unrealistic goals, its no wonder that you feel like youre failing all the time because youre essentially setting yourself up to fail. Take a step back and have a think about what it is that you genuinely want to achieve. When doing this its important not to look at anyone else when setting your career goals. Why? Because everyones different and everyone has a different career path and 5. Talk About It: Think talking about feeling like a failure is another sign that youre a failure? It really isnt and it could do you some good. If you talk to someone about the way youre feeling, you might be surprised to find out that they feel the same way too.