How to Overcome Imposter Syndrome

This post was originally published as an episode of the Effective Faith Podcast. You can listen to that episode here but I am revisiting it for the blog because of some things I have seen recently on Social Media. This version therefore has some new elements. The question is what is imposter syndrome? How to overcome imposter syndrome and how not to overcome imposter syndrome.

Specifically I came across a tweet where the author suggested a small trick to increase engagement with you posts. Add the phrase “Psychology says” at the beginning of your tweet. The argument is that this is relevant to any content that may boost mental health or performance. Some of the comments suggest that this is a great hook for your tweets. This is important for the discussion of imposter syndrome. None of us are the finished article and we are all works in progress. In any area or discipline that you may want to speak into, we will all have some experience and some qualification and none of us will be an inerrant authority on the subject with nothing left to learn. Imposters are those who pretend to be something they are not. Imposter Syndrome is when we fear that we are not something that we are. Therefore, I do not believe that claiming an authority that we do not have is a good thing to do, and it is not the antidote to Imposter Syndrome.

But anyway — lets get to the post.

My name is Frank William Abagnale.

From 1964 to 1967 I successfully impersonated an airline pilot for Pan Am Airways and I…