Let me tell you a little bit about myself, I have a job as a Frontend Engineer in a pretty big tech company, the kind of company that has headquarters in several countries and thousands of employees. To get the job I had to go through 5 interviews, three of them technical interviews, one of them being pair programming (which for me is nerve-racking). To be honest, I was sure I wouldn’t make it, how would I? Although I was already working as a Software Developer before, it wasn’t in a big company, plus, I never studied engineering… did I tell you that? Well, that’s right, I studied advertising at the University back in Venezuela, where I come from, and now… I’m here, in Spain, working for an amazing tech company as a Software Developer, making pretty decent money and doing something I actually love.

All this sounds amazing, isn’t it? The problem is that I still can’t believe it at times and to go a bit deeper, sometimes I even feel like I fooled everyone to get the job, does it make sense to you? I mean, when I rationalize it I know for sure I couldn’t have fooled everyone involved in the interview process right? And I have some years of experience now, and the feedback I’ve gotten from this company and the ones before has been really good, so why do I still feel like that? I didn’t know up until a while ago when I told a friend about it and she mentioned something called the Imposter Syndrome, I didn’t know what she meant so I had to google it, then everything made sense.

In this article I plan to tell you what I know about Imposter Syndrome and what I’m doing to overcome it, hopefully, it will help some of you as well, so let’s get to it.

What is it?

Imposter syndrome is a term that describes someone who has feelings of personal incompetence, inadequacy, self-doubt, and fraudulence no matter their education, experience, and accomplishments. To counter these feelings, you might end up being extremely perfectionist, working harder and holding yourself to way too high standards.

But what’s the difference with self-doubt? Well, most experts agree that the difference relies on the frequency of the feelings, it’s normal to feel occasional self-doubt, especially in intimidating scenarios, for example when starting a new job, meeting new people, or speaking in front of a crowd, but if the feeling is persistent we might be talking about the Imposter Syndrome.

So now that we know what is it about, let me tell you what I do every day to overcome it. But before, let me tell you that you have to be consistent, and although sometimes I still struggle I feel that the following tips have definitely been life-changing for me, and hopefully, they will be for you too.

Remind yourself of your achievements

I think it was Kim Kiyosaki who said in an interview she has a wall with her goals and a wall with her achievements, to remember herself of them. We often look forward to our goals, and we work hard until we achieve them, but after we do… we forget how much we worked for them and tend to underestimate them, at least this is something that used to happen to me. So now I do what Kim does, I have a wall of achievements, in my home office I have a corkboard where I put images that represent everything I have achieved, and once I accomplish a goal, personal or professional, I put it on my wall of achievements, to see it every day.

Sometimes I even have to go the extra mile, when I have a pretty big moment of self-doubt and I feel especially down, I make a list of all my achievements, no matter how small they may seem if for me getting myself to go to the dentist is an achievement I will write it down. This helps me to see the bigger picture and remind myself that I have what it takes to accomplish whatever I set my mind to, and I have a list to prove it.

Celebrate yourself

On the same note as before, I celebrate every achievement, personal, professional, big or small. I feel them, I enjoy them and I celebrate them and more than that, I celebrate myself for getting there. It’s not like a throw a party whenever I accomplish something, but I take some time with myself to acknowledge it and even reward myself because it takes courage to do things, it takes courage to move off the status quo, and it takes courage to move one step closer to your goals, to your dream life, it even takes courage sometimes to do things you know that you have to do but you don’t want to.

Remember that you don’t have to know it all

This is a hard one for me, especially being a woman without a tech degree working as a Software Engineer, I used to feel that I had to know everything to prove my value. But while interacting with colleagues and having more experience in my field I realized that nobody knows everything, and that’s ok, we’re not supposed or expected to have all the answers. So let’s be comprehensive and don’t put that much pressure on ourselves, it just makes the journey more extenuating and more difficult to enjoy.

Keep getting better

Brian Tracy, in his book The Power of Self Confidence, explains the Law of Incremental Improvement, which states that a person really becomes outstanding in a particular field of their choice by improving gradually and continuously for a long period.

Try to always go the extra mile to research what you don’t know and to learn new stuff, this has been very useful for me in moving my career forward. But it is important to try to enjoy the ride, get better every day and try to do it with joy, that makes the journey completely different and way more pleasant.

Ask for help

This is the topic that makes me struggle the most. I learned that people who suffer from Imposter Syndrome find it difficult to ask for help because they think is an acknowledgment of incompetence. Let me tell you something (and this goes for me as well), it is NOT. Asking for help makes your life easier, and I’ve found people are more willing to assist than you think, and to be honest, what’s the worst that can happen? You find someone who is not willing to help you… well, that is good information too, don’t you think?

Project Confidence (Fake it until you make it)

How we present ourselves to other people matters, as how we interact and the image we project. I know is super challenging to project confidence if you don’t feel it, but I’ve come to realize it is something that you can become used to, it can be trained and the more you do it, the easier it will be.

So what I do in those moments when I don’t feel confident at all, is Fake It! Yes, I fake the confidence, I try to be mindful of my gestures, of the words I use, don’t look like I’m doubting myself, and sometimes I think about how one of my role models would act in a situation like that. This helps me to navigate through especially stressful situations and to make the most of them, it takes some effort to be conscious about yourself and to project the confidence you don’t have (yet!), but it makes you feel amazing after and it sets a precedent for yourself, that you can actually do it, so its all wins from my point of view.

Final thoughts

As it was clear at the beginning of the article I’m not a psychologist or an expert on Imposter Syndrome, nor do I plan to be, but I talk from my own experience in trying to overcome it myself. Does it ever go away? I hope so, for me it’s getting better although is normal to have ups and downs, as with life itself. I think self-confidence is something you can work on every day and that’s what I try to do, hopefully, you can work on it too, and realize that you deserve everything good that happens in your life.