Feeling like an imposter? You're in good company

I'm going to tell you something I don't usually share openly.

I've felt like an imposter. Many times.

That first Senior Leadership role? I'd walk into meetings thinking, "Why would anyone listen to me?"

When I jumped from manufacturing to tech? Every day I wondered, "When will they realise I don't belong here?"

Chief of Staff to the C-suite? I'd wake up thinking, "Today's the day they figure out I'm just improvising."

And now as a consultant? Still there. Still wondering if I have enough real-world experience to be advising others.

You've heard the stats. 70% of people feel like imposters. And that proportion is slightly higher for women. Women tend to blame themselves for failures while men often blame external factors.

But statistics don't help much when you're in the middle of doubting yourself.

What I really needed was to know how actual successful people deal with this feeling. Not theories. Real approaches.

So I went looking...
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Michelle Obama

The woman was First Lady of the United States and still felt it.

"I've been there plenty of times," she told Vogue. "What's helped me most is remembering that our worst critics are almost always ourselves."

She doesn't try to banish the thoughts. She just doesn't let them stop her from "occupying space and doing the work."

That resonated with me. You don't eliminate the fear. You move through it.
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Sheryl Sandberg

This one made me feel better about my own doubts.

When Forbes ranked her as the 5th most powerful woman in the world — ahead of Michelle Obama — she was embarrassed, not proud.

She was so uncomfortable that she asked friends to take down congratulatory posts on Facebook. The company she helped build.

Throughout her career, she kept thinking her success was just luck, timing, or other people working hard.

Her solution wasn't complicated: acknowledge it. Find mentors. Talk about how you feel.
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Maya Angelou

This one surprised me most.

"I have written 11 books but each time I think 'Uh-oh, they're going to find out now. I've run a game on everybody, and they're going to find me out.'"

This is Maya Angelou. Pulitzer Prize nominee. Five-time Grammy winner.

And she still felt like a fraud.

But she kept writing anyway. She focused on the work, not the doubt.
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Here's what I realised

Dr. Valerie Young (who studies this phenomenon) says something that changed my perspective: "Do the thing that scares the heck out of you, realise you survived — or maybe you fell flat on your face. But you gave it your best shot."

The secret isn't eliminating imposter feelings.

It's not obeying them.

I still feel like an imposter sometimes. I probably always will. But now I see those feelings as signs that I'm pushing myself, not warnings that I should retreat.

What about you? What would you do if you stopped listening to that voice?

What would you attempt if you knew that even Michelle Obama, even Maya Angelou felt exactly like you do... and did it anyway?

That's the real question.