Gabrielle Dolan in her Article to-day in The Australian was recounting the findings of Psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes in their 1978 research in which they referred to the Imposter Syndrome.
Now, from my experience it seems to happen to women more than in men, but they say it can happen to anyone even though it seems to be more prevalent in women.
In the study across five years they studied 150 highly successful women across various fields who had amongst other things attained PhDs. The research showed that the Imposter Syndrome occurs less frequently in men and when it does, it occurs with far less intensity.
My feeling is that it happens with women more often because generally speaking, they are more sensitive than the male species; in the case of men, pressure to provide has in the past been so strong that in the interests of self-preservation the male can justify almost anything, which is not a good thing.
The findings indicated that amongst the sufferers of the Syndrome, they felt that they were just in the right place at the right time and did not give themselves the self-praise and appreciation they really deserved. In fact they downplayed their whole success.
As most of us know, if we are a little sensitive at all, the Imposter Syndrome can strike us anywhere and at any time, often belittling our attempts to either forge a career or succeed in our own business or endeavour.
At the beginning of any real challenge most people will feel like an imposter as there is always more to learn, more to experience and more to understand. Unless we feel that this is a normal consequence of taking on a new challenge, more often than not, the combination of not feeling worthy, being found out or even confronted for being a fraud can totally undermine your feeling of self-worth and confidence.
This experience and underlying theme can render you totally incapable of standing your ground and in many cases, charging what your company or business services and products are worth to the market place. In your personal life other issues surface naturally.
As the Article says, and which most now know to be true, the only real antidote is self-awareness and this can best be attained by being very vigilant of your thoughts, thought processes and self-defeating patterns about which any of your good friends will tell you.
If we can remember that in any one day there are about 70,000 random thoughts popping into our head and that they belong to our early childhood conditioning, subsequent peer comparison and a whole host of other less helpful people and habits, we will be moving in the right direction.
Mostly we are brought up to believe that “we are our minds” rather than the watcher of the thoughts that pass on the screen of our minds; this attitude is the root cause of most of our problems; if we can break this identification with the mind, then we will be more the master of our mind rather than its servant.
Cheers
Chris Borrett
Image Credit: FreeImages.com/Justine Furmanczyk
If by chance, you have not encountered my previous posts outside this blog, one of my favourites is about “How To Make A Decision and Stick To It”. You have the luxury of reading it by clicking here.