Mike Julian and Adam Grant seem to have opposite takes re: impostor syndrome.
Mike’s take:
There are people that worked their asses off to become great and they know it. We shouldn’t be minimizing that.
And the other take, from Adam:
Being 100% sure of yourself at all times betrays arrogance and breeds complacency. Questioning yourself reflects humility and propels growth.
Pangs of doubt are a normal, healthy human response to new challenges.
Here’s the thing
Not everyone is an impostor. Not everyone feels like an impostor. And not everyone who doesn’t feel like one is a(n extreme) narcissist.
Knowing you’re good at something (competent, capable, confident) propels you to keep doing things and —hopefully— push boundaries to innovate.
Doubting yourself doesn’t mean you have impostor syndrome.
Questioning yourself, reflecting, reassessing what’s going on, doesn’t mean you’re “doubting yourself”.
Can you feel like an impostor? Fuck, yeah! You can only feel like one when you think you’re winging it and deeply believe that everyone will notice you know crap about what you’re doing.
And also, you can feel you’re doing something everybody knows is easy, but when you ask, that what is like breathing to you, is not so easy nor simple for everyone else.
And that’s when you can see you got something different.