Photo by carolyn christine on Unsplash
Written by Noorin Chowdhury
There is a strange part of growth that I do not think I was prepared for: sometimes you can work incredibly hard to get somewhere and still feel like you do not belong there.
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about imposter syndrome and how difficult it can be to believe that the opportunities and accomplishments you receive are actually a result of the work you put in. You can spend years building your skills, learning from mistakes, and pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, only to finally reach something you wanted and immediately question whether you deserve it. I think that is something I am personally learning how to navigate right now.
When something goes well, the first instinct is not always to think, I worked hard for this. Sometimes, another explanation is easier to reach for instead. Maybe it was luck. Maybe the expectations were lower than assumed. Maybe someone else could have done it better.
The strange thing about imposter syndrome is that it can make your own effort invisible to you.
You remember every mistake, every moment you felt confused, and every person who seemed to understand things faster than you did. What you forget is everything you did in response. The hours you spent learning, the times you kept going when something felt difficult, and all of the small decisions that slowly brought you to where you are now.
We tend to see other people’s accomplishments as evidence of their capability while seeing our own as a combination of luck, timing, or circumstance. But struggling on the way to something does not mean you were never qualified for it. If anything, I am starting to believe that the struggle is often part of what makes you qualified.
Being capable does not mean knowing exactly what you are doing at all times. It does not mean walking into every new opportunity completely confident. Sometimes, being capable simply means being willing to learn what you do not know yet. I think there is often a gap between becoming the person capable of doing something and actually feeling like that person.
Your circumstances can change much faster than your self-perception does.
You might already be sitting in rooms that a previous version of you hoped to enter, while internally still feeling like the person who was trying to figure everything out. Maybe part of growing is allowing your perception of yourself to catch up with the person you have actually become.
When I question whether I deserve to be somewhere, I try to look at the evidence instead of the feeling. I remind myself that I showed up, I learned, I made mistakes, I kept going, and I put in work that other people may never have seen.
There will always be someone more experienced, more confident, or seemingly more qualified than you. But someone else’s strengths are not evidence that you do not belong.
You do not need to be the most impressive person in the room to deserve a seat in it. You are allowed to still be learning. You are allowed to feel nervous about something you are capable of doing. And you are allowed to be proud of how far you have come without immediately moving the goalpost.
If you are struggling with imposter syndrome, stop asking yourself whether you feel qualified and start looking at what brought you there. Your feelings might tell you that you got lucky, but your effort tells a much longer story.
Confidence does not always come before you step into something new. Sometimes you step into it uncertain, do the work anyway, and confidence slowly follows.
Sometimes, you just have to let yourself believe that the work you put in counted.