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Are You An Impostor?
Psychology, Human Behavior, Leadership, Reflections Dion Le Roux Psychology, Human Behavior, Leadership, Reflections Dion Le Roux

Are You An Impostor?

There is a strange paradox that often accompanies success. 

You finally get the promotion, win the contract, publish the book, step into the executive role or find yourself sitting in a room with people you have admired for years. From the outside, everything suggests that you belong there. 

But inside, a different conversation begins.

“They think I know more than I do. Sooner or later someone is going to realise. Perhaps I was just lucky”.

And the higher the stakes, the louder that voice can become.

In a short Harvard Business Review video, behavioural social scientist Arthur C. Brooks offers an intriguing way of looking at this experience. Rather than treating impostor feelings simply as a confidence problem to be eliminated, Brooks suggests that we should “lean into” them without letting them control us. 

That idea deserves closer examination because impostor feelings occupy an odd place in modern psychology. 

They can become debilitating. They can also, under some circumstances, keep us curious, humble and attentive to other people.

Perhaps the goal should not always be to silence the voice. Sometimes we need to listen more carefully to what it is actually saying.

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