Impostor Syndrome- Simple Ways to Reclaim Your Confidence

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. We are back on the rails. If you listened to the last episode or maybe not, in any case, this is the Developer podcast. This is Building Better Developers. This season we are Building Better Businesses. This episode, spoiler alert, we're going to talk a little bit about imposter syndrome. What are we going to say? Even we don't know. But I do know that I am Rob Broadhead, one of the founders of Developer and also the Building Better Developers podcast, the site, the YouTube channel, all of those things. Also a founder of RB Consulting, where we help you wrangle technology basically. It is one of the biggest things that you're going to deal with as a business owner. It is one of your biggest investments outside of your people. And it is for a lot of people sort of nightmarish because it changes all the time. The people that are experts, some of them are, some of them are not, is sort of a scary place, almost like doing your taxes on a regular basis. Technology can be top. But we sit down with you and help you craft a custom recipe for success for your business. And then we talk about the technology you have and the technology that you need to use to make your business better, not the technology that we think is the coolest or the most expensive thing. And we do this through integration, simplification, automation, innovation. We may build something for you or we may help you find the perfect tool that's sitting on a shelf somewhere that you can pull off and leverage that to make your business better. Both today and into the future, we're going to be doing a lot of this. Both today and into the future, because along the way of learning your business, we help you develop a technology roadmap. We do an initial assessment, figure out where you're at, and then use that to build your path to a brighter future. Good thing, bad thing. So this time around, I guess I'll start with the bad thing is that we're in a, we're in a season where we have just recently like sold a house and we got an apartment and now we're taking some of this and we're going to find a townhouse. So we spent a good deal of the last couple of weekends going through and doing the house hunting thing and stuff like that. This last weekend in particular, we like had a very circuitous route. We're sprawled out over the greater national area looking for some stuff. And it turned out that the last place that we went, which was like we had a cluster of stuff and had about a 45 minute drive, went to the last place and it was not good at all. It was like the worst of the less practically. Actually it was second, second from the bottom. And the one that was on bottom, my daughter that was going with this just referred to it when we're taking notes as scary house. So that tells you not a really good place that you're, that's something that you want to put on the top of your list unless you're doing Halloween hunting. So that was a bad news. Spent a lot of time, probably had an extra little jump there that we could have done without the good news related to that is that we did find a place. So the second to last place we went, we found an awesome one. Lots of fun stories with it. Short of it is now we don't have to go out house hunting in the near future, nor do I have to go out and do a podcast partner hunt because mine is right on the other side of the screen for me. And Michael, go ahead and introduce yourself. Thanks for everyone. My name is Michael Moulache. I'm one of the co-founders of developer building better developers. I'm also the founder of a company called Envision QA, where we offer tailored software and quality assurances solutions to optimize the performance and reliability of your e-commerce platform or your current inter-office software. You know, picture a flawless user experience, increased sales and a competitive edge in the market. We do all this through creating and crafting precision and tailored software that meets your business needs. No two applications are the same. They're all tailored to your unique needs for your business. We do this through more than just websites, desktop applications and mobile apps. We do this by actually walking through your processes, doing assessments like Rob mentioned, understanding your business in and out. And then we build something that seamlessly identifies your products, your processes, or facilitates and streamlines your transactions within your business. Good thing and bad thing. Good thing. I had a chance to go catch Thunderbolts. I'm a big Marvel fan and I was not disappointed. It was actually a very good movie. Bad thing. I now can't wait for Fantastic Four. So it kind of not a super bad thing, but just I just ready for the next one. You're on mute. I also have learned myself occasionally when I accidentally do so. Recently saw Thunderbolts. Great movie. I highly enjoyed it. If you like the sillier ones, I guess, like the Guardians of Galaxy, very much worth it. And no, Michael did not give you any spoilers whatsoever in his earlier comments. So we'll move along very quickly. Like shuffle on nothing to see here. These are not the droids that you're looking for. What you are looking for is imposter syndrome right now. That is what we're going to talk about this time. And we will start with, as sometimes we have to do, essentially a definition. And now I am not going to go out to the book of knowledge known as Wikipedia or a dictionary or something like that. So my definition may not be completely what you hear from somebody else, including those that have written books on it, things like that. In general, imposter syndrome is you're somewhere you have achieved some success of some sort. And essentially it comes down to you don't feel like you should be there. You don't feel like you worked hard enough or you're smart enough or somehow that you have earned it. And that can be quite a challenge. And it's actually very common, particularly these days when you have these people with the internet and some of these other things that they can be an overnight success that they suddenly are, you hear their name everywhere and they've gone from, especially as part of the challenge, if you've gone from just slogging your way through life and then suddenly you get a big customer, you get a big break or something like that. And now you haven't really changed what you were doing, but it did actually pay off. And now you are rich and famous or whatever it happens to be. The sad thing is you don't have to be rich nor famous to have imposter syndrome. It basically does come down to you just don't feel that you've earned where you're at. You don't feel that you are worthy of the accolades or the success or something like that. The challenge with the thing that from a business point of view, as I want to focus on a bit as an entrepreneur, what imposter syndrome can do is it just, it sucks. It can drag us out of the rhythm or even the things that we did that got us here because it's essentially imposter syndrome is going to come when we're doing some sort of a sanity check or a self-check of some sort to be like, hey, how are things going? Why am I here? What did I do? And it's usually very, it's essentially introspective because you're looking at it saying, I didn't really do anything different last week than I did the week before, but now suddenly my business is far more successful. I'm selling more products or something like that. I think the first thing you want to do in this is think about the fact that there are watershed moments essentially in businesses and a lot of processes. The good way to think about it would be if you're filling a cup. There's a certain point where you're filling a cup and it's like, it's filling, it's filling, it's filling and filling. And then at some point it overflows and now the water is going everywhere. It's not just contained in the glass. That's sort of what happens fairly regularly in business is that you're just doing the things you need to do and then you catch a break or the momentum builds enough that now you're actually able to, you know, the things that were slowing you down before maybe no longer slow you down because there's too much momentum. There's too much size. There's things like that, that there's obstacles. There is friction that essentially you are able to overcome. And then suddenly now it's that friction that was holding you back and slowing you down no longer is and you're off and running. And that I think is sort of what happens. That is a good trigger for the imposter syndrome in itself is that you're sitting there going, I shouldn't be here. I should be somewhere back here because I was pacing myself based on whatever I did. You know, the pace I was getting a year ago and now my pace is suddenly improved and I haven't really changed anything, but it's because now you don't have the friction. So I think sometimes if you can think about it right, because it's everything that's in our head is always that's the problem. It's in our head. So we have to figure out how to unpack it. One of the things you may be able to use if you get into the imposter syndrome situation is that consider that maybe the fact that you're questioning this shows that there was a payoff for some of the work that you did, that it wasn't just dumb luck, that it wasn't anything like that. That was actually you were there, that you worked, that you showed up every day. And that now you have a victory or a bigger victory for it. I'll pause there and let you sort of throw in your two cents and maybe even take us in a completely different direction. But let's see where that goes. Yeah. So, you know, you mentioned that imposter syndrome is kind of where we reach that achievement point or we reach a position where we don't think we've achieved. We should have achieved it. We don't think we deserve it. In business, this can happen on a whim. I mean, it could be you're growing your business, you land a big customer that you know you could do. And at the start of it, you think, great, I can do this. I've got everything I need to do it. I got the bandwidth. I got the employees. And you get into the project and kind of like we talked about last episode, maybe your project's or you're getting a little overwhelmed or you're starting to question, was this a good idea? Because you could just start having self-doubt, which leads you to think that, oh, I can't do this. Why did I do this? I don't deserve this. What the hell was I thinking? And in some cases, some people throw in the towel. They think, oh, I shouldn't be in this business. I'm not good enough for this. A lot of times, imposter syndrome just comes from a lot of self-doubt, a lot of questioning, should I really be doing what I'm doing? Do I deserve this? Do I have the capacity to do this? And in business, a lot of times, I've seen it happen where you get on a new project or you finish a project and now you're like, now where do I go? You might be struggling to find that next product or that next customer and you're thinking to yourself, oh, well, I can't do this. I don't have the skills to do it, but yet you do. And it's just a lot of times, I guess to me, imposter syndrome comes from a couple of things. One, overworked or you're on a very challenging project that is taking a lot of time that typically in a smaller project wouldn't take that much time. Two, you are having a hard time figuring out what to do with your business. What direction is your business going in? Am I growing the business the right way? Are you having problems finding customers? That can lead to, well, am I in the right business? Do I even know how to run a business? Things of that nature can lead to that imposter syndrome. And then the third one is feedback. You could get negative feedback about something from your customers, from social media, and that could tear you down. And you really start thinking, what the hell am I thinking? I'm not right for this job. You basically are letting the negative thoughts or the negative feedback push you down, basically make you feel that you can't do the job that you're doing. And to me, that's one of the biggest things that makes me feel like I have imposter syndrome sometimes. Working for over a decade and a half in healthcare, I got into a healthcare position, knew what I was doing, was doing great, got moved up to a higher position, and then immediately felt like I didn't deserve it, like this was not for me. Ultimately, I left that position and went to another company because it made me sick to be there. It made me feel like I did not deserve this. And looking back on it, it wasn't me. It was the environment of the company, the project, and just the way business was done was so negative that it is very hard to succeed or even feel good about yourself if you're in an environment that is that toxic or that negative. So sometimes it's your environment. Look at your environment. If you are finding that you are surrounded by negative people or people basically saying that you can't do what your business needs to do, you may need to pivot. It could even mean firing a customer. That's sometimes firing a customer, firing an employee maybe if they're a poison pill. Sometimes that is the best solution. Sometimes firing yourself, much like Michael said, is that sometimes you need to move out of that situation will help you. If it's, now this is, if it's a very negative situation where it's a draining situation, and sometimes that can. There's so many triggers, there's so many things that can trigger this whole imposter syndrome and it does take different forms. If you read about it and hear people talk about it, sometimes it is very much a, I guess it's like a negative that you're hearing the negatives and it's like, I'm not worthy of this. But then there's also times that it's actually it's almost more of a positive of like, I've been working very hard and there's nothing really wrong with what I did, but it's just not as good as what the reward is. And so it'd be like, you know, you get, you expect to get your paycheck and you're like, oh, I've gotten my paycheck every week or whatever it is. And then suddenly you get a paycheck that's got an extra thousand dollars in it. You're like, what did I do different? And it could be because now things cost a thousand dollars more. That's a problem. But it could be that things have moved on. It's like seniority in general, like you go for a year and now you get a raise. Hopefully if you've been there, you get a review, you have a good review, you get a raise. Cool. In business, it's not always that it's not going to work like that. It's not like clockwork. So it's not like you've been doing your business for a year and your customers are like, hey, you get a raise. We're going to bring more customers in or we're going to buy more products. No, it's much more sometimes you have good days. Sometimes you have bad days and maybe there's a nice trend in the right direction. But overall, you don't have like a solid like that drumbeat of like I work X amount of time. I get this pay, I get a raise, blah, blah, blah. Then you move up. It can surprise us. It can shock us. And so this is where the going into the negative side of it a little bit is it's like sometimes we don't actually I think a lot of times we don't understand where our limitations are. I think we limit ourselves far more than we actually are. And that's why you see these stories of these people have done all these incredible things and this great stuff they do. And usually it's because they were unshackled at some point, whether they did it themselves, whether circumstances forced them into it or whatever it was that they were just like, I did it because I had to do it. I didn't think about there being another option. And that's sort of what gets us sometimes into that situation is that we can look at it. And I know from discussions I've had where people be like, I can't believe you did X. And I look back at it and I can say I didn't have I can't believe I did anything else because I didn't have another option. I didn't if you told me there was a way out, I would have taken that other way. You know, there's things like that. And so I think it comes down to and this is the little secret sauce and all of this. It comes down to that nastiest thing that's out there, which is comparison to others because their story is not your story. Everybody's got a different story. They've got a different they're built differently. The things that kill you would make somebody else stronger and vice versa. It's just the more we talk, we got this through the interviews. It was amazing how many people we talked through in the interviews. They went through all kinds of just really difficult situations. And they came out shining on the other end because they didn't have any other option but to do so. And it's stuff that you would you can't put yourself there because you haven't done it. You don't understand what it's like until you actually do it. So comparing yourself to what they did and saying that you measure up or you don't measure up is actually just a pile of horse crap, essentially, because everybody's unique. It goes back to sadly or maybe in a cool way. Just why we talk to every one of our customers in my company is that everybody's different. Everybody's unique. And you need to like you're going to leverage it different than everybody else. Yes, there's commonalities and all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, comparing yourself to somebody else is sort of a fool's errand. And so that hopefully would be a way for you to get out of the whole imposter syndrome because instead of saying I'm not this person is realize that you are that person. You are you. You got there. However you got there, you got there. It may seem harder or easier than somebody else, but you got there. You have skills and you can still move forward with those. Now, the challenge for this week is it's actually more of an introspective kind of thing. Have you suffered from imposter syndrome or are you doing it now? Is it something that's challenged you? Is there some little voice in your head that's saying you're not worthy or that you don't belong here or something like that? And instead of just. Tossing it out and saying, okay, that's worthless. I do belong here. I'm awesome is look for see if there are grains of truth in there. And it's that's usually where the power is going to come from is saying, okay, what is it that's making me feel like I'm not where I should be? Now, this could go to a lot of different areas and could actually be very, very much a growth thing for you because what you're going to end up doing is looking into maybe it's like, what are the things that drain me? What are the things that excite me? What are the things energize me? What are the things that I do? Well, what are my weaknesses? There's a lot of areas that you could end up covering when you're trying to figure out. What am I doing here? Do I belong here? And then with all that, how do I take the next step forward? And that's where the actual challenge of this is, is first assess where you're at. How you feeling? How you doing? And then taking that, how do I take a step forward? Whether it is to affirm that I do belong here or whether it is that, hey, I belong here, but now I'm not done. I'm not, I have not plateaued or I haven't peaked. I maybe have plateaued. So how do I start taking that next step forward? If you can do that, then that is going to very much obviously help you out because that's going to continue on a growth path of some way, form or fashion. I would love to hear responses on this one. Honestly, there's so many of the topics we've covered in the last year or so or more. Love to get your feedback info at developernoor.com. I would love to, you know, we'd be happy to even sit down and talk with you about it. If you're open to that, have a nice little interview and go through like some of the things to make you feel like, yes, you do belong. Also, you can reach us on X at Twitter or I'm sorry, at developernoor or at Twitter. I'm not sure if that's going to give you us take a while to get there at developer noor, but you can also catch us on YouTube. There's developer noor channel. Wherever you listen to podcasts, we are there. If you find a place and we're not, let us know. We'll get there. And we also love to get feedback and, you know, pluses, minuses, voting up, down, whatever it is that you do for that feedback of any sort, good or bad, it's helpful to us because it helps us be better and build a better podcast. You go out there today and build a better you because you deserve to be there. Have a great day and great week. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the developer noor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success.