Fakin' it

The new work life that I have found myself in is really quite different to my previous familiar worlds of public and charity sector employment.

It is a tech-driven industry in which a whole host of remarkably impressive people stand up on stage in front of hundreds of their peers and present brain-frazzlingly complicated talks.

It's quite the spectacle.

And while I am enjoying it, I do often find myself so utterly bewildered by the amount of stuff I don't know that I wonder how on earth I manage to stumble through the day.

But then I heard a podcast from one of these Silicon Valley types about something called Impostor Syndrome and I suddenly felt a lot better.

In essence, this hugely successful and obviously immensely brainy chap was speaking about how he doubted his achievements and worried about being exposed as a fraud.

From an outside listener's point of view, this was clearly bonkers. But it did make me stop and wonder about just how many of us are going through life feeling this way too.

I know I have achieved some stuff in my working life, I know I have done the same in my personal, but I do feel a lot of the time that it's been down to luck or somehow talking a good talk.

I'm not sure it's false modesty, I really do feel like I've gotten away with stuff for quite some time.

Yet if my friends were to say the same, I'd easily be able to sit them down and list the things that they've done and the qualities they have that make them nothing like an impostor.

In fact I used to make lists for my friends to stick on their mirrors detailing all the attributes they have and why they should be proud to be who they are.

Much as I don't want to do the same for myself because a) cringe and b) I don't believe it anyway, perhaps we all need to ask a friend for a bit of positive feedback.

It'd be nice to know that we're actually not the impostors we feel we are.

:: Fakin' it by Simon and Garfunkel