🎭🎭🎭 Oh, yes, I’m a great pretender! 🎭🎭🎭

Every now and then, I get a feeling that I’m trying to fend off, albeit not very successfully as it keeps coming back again and again. It is a feeling that is most likely familiar to many of you too — that of being an impostor, a fraud that is about to be disguised and displayed for public mocking and shame.

A quick Google search yields five categories of the impostors by Dr. Valerie Young. Let’s go through each and analyse on my example how I relate to each one of these.

1️⃣ The Perfectionist

Perfectionists set excessively high goals for themselves, and when they fail to reach a goal, they experience major self-doubt and worry about measuring up.

I used to doubt and still doubt whether I have enough talent for singing. Growing up, I’d try to measure myself up to someone like Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey who have great vocal ability in my mind. When I couldn’t quite hit that perfect note or sing the “I will always love you” in that same mesmerising manner Whitney did, I’d always feel that I didn’t have enough talent.

Or I’d listen to a singing teacher praise someone else’s voice for its colour and think to myself: “Hm, I don’t have that same rich deep timbre that guy she’s referring to has”.

Gradually, I’m embracing the fact that although my voice may not have range of Whitney or the velvety timbre of Nat King Cole, it is unique and beautiful in its own way.

2️⃣ The Superman

Since people who experience this phenomenon are convinced they’re phonies amongst real-deal colleagues, they often push themselves to work harder and harder to measure up.

Truth be told, I don’t see myself as hardworking as some other people I’ve met in my life. I do love my downtime and hobbies. Perhaps, this is also why I wasn’t feeling absolutely satisfied in my previous job.

Reading through the symptoms, I can see how I inadvertently fell into this category. I did feel somewhat heroic when I had to stay in the office late with a handful of other people around, when I had to take that midnight conference call from home or when I had to miss a social gathering because I had too much to do on my plate.

The work crowded out everything else including my hobbies and I felt a rush of guilty adrenaline running into my yoga class just in time from work to refresh and then go back to work again.

In my current life, I’ve veered off far from the traditional business careers of majority of my classmates. So, in some ways it’s easier for me to stop comparing myself to others. I know that I’m less well off financially than many of them, but I do get a lot of freedom to do what I want and I find this invaluable.

When I sing into the night, it’s not because I have to but because I thoroughly enjoy it!

3️⃣ The Natural Genius

People who struggle with this, who are also natural “geniuses”, judge success based on their abilities as opposed to their efforts.

Where do I begin?!

I come from a family where the academic excellence was praised. We had a sibling rivalry with my younger brother as to who gets home with all straight 5 (or As in the American system) at the end of each school semester and a special diploma “gramota” in the end of the year.

I’m sure our parents meant well. They wouldn’t have been familiar with the work of Carol Dweck on growth vs. fixed mindset. In her book and experiment, Carol shows how damaging it can be to praise the child based on the outcome vs. the effort he/she puts into achieving something.

So, when my teenage years came and with them the hormones decided to stage a French revolution, I successfully chatted and giggled with my classmates through some of the important concepts in the math class. Previously a star student who swam through the math like a fish, I quickly fell behind the theory, my confidence plunged and I feel like it’s never quite recovered from that. This was exacerbated that I enrolled into a liceum where every one of us had been in one way or another a star student in their previous schools.

Our teachers were the teachers who were teaching teachers from other schools. I think some of them including the mathematician were probably more capable and used to dealing with adults than teenagers. I remember that I was always feeling half scared by our math teacher there, and I was by far not the best math student in the class given my history.

That “Natural Genius” belief is probably not fully gone and never will be, but based on the academic research I’ve become familiar with I constantly remind myself that I should focus on effort and not the outcome.

4️⃣ The Rugged Individualist

These are people who are afraid to ask for any help and refuse assistance to prove their worth.
I am very much like that or I was. I’ve often felt that if I don’t do all of the aspects of something then I can’t put my name next to it and claim it as a personal achievement.

Asking for someone’s help requires a degree of humility and vulnerability. That goes against the “Supermen/Big boys don’t cry” mantra — that internalised societal belief that probably applies to men more than women due to cultural norms and upbringing.

I believe my new life has made me a better person as I’ve learnt to accept help when it is offered. And must I say, I feel I’ve been blessed with people who are ready to help!

5️⃣ The Expert

People who fall into this competence type deeply fear being exposed as inexperienced or unknowledgeable.

Oh boy, can I relate to this category?!! Somewhere internally, I’m an addict of certifications, trainings, you name it. Perhaps, these pieces of paper provides me with the comforting external validation of my skills and knowledge.

This is why I went on to get several degrees and a couple of professional qualifications along with it. This is why more recently I’ve researched getting into a music or drama school. Again partially for validating externally that I’m a musician and an artist.

On a brighter note, I feel I’m a recovering addict. I will still probably feel not quite adequate as a musician without knowing the musical notation or knowing how to play an instrument, knowing how to sight read. The list goes on and you can keep adding to it endlessly.

Deep inside, I actually hope this feeling doesn’t entirely leave me and pushes me to learn those things. But, partially out of circumstance, I am also getting to believe that I don’t need to get a formal music degree to call myself a musician.

💖💖💖🌟🌟🌟🍀🍀🍀
The feeling of being an impostor will likely not fully abandon me for life. For now, the mantra I may need to chant for a thousands of times before it does sink in is: “I am enough!”