Please Mind The Gap
During a return to work interview, I made an unexpected discovery about where my fear actually lay regarding this transition. Whilst I had heard others voice their fears about ‘failure’ or ‘letting others down’ or ‘getting it wrong’, I discovered that I was fearful of success!!!
That. Sounded. So. Arrogant….. but the words were out of my mouth before I had a chance to vet them.
This didn’t come from a place where I believe that I am so great that I cannot fail. I have proven that I can fail many a time over my 25-year professional history. This fear of failure arose from a place of feeling incredibly responsible and vulnerable in success.
There are expectations around success: Expectation that success will bring money and fame and happiness. My expectations of success were that it would be laden with responsibility and I would feel really exposed in any success that I gained. Driven by the belief that there is always “Pride before a fall” if I gained success, ultimately, I would be exposed as a fraud….
“No wonder I was wary of committing whole heartedly to that kind of roller coaster.”
What I didn’t know, until I voiced this new fear, was that I was not alone. Maybe my inadvertently opening my gob gave other the chance to voice their similar fears…. And it is counterintuitive to say that we fear success when, every system in our society and in our education system, in our work environments and in the media, teaches us to value and strive for this! But there it was….”Imposter Syndrome“, lurking beneath every single one of my endeavours.
My return to work interview hinged on fraudulence!
There is a gap when you make a professional stretch…. a place where you have a sense that you can do this, that there is something valuable in your idea, that it could be really good… but you don’t quite have the experience and thus the words to flesh it out. Without the words and evidence to justify this possibility that it is difficult to justify it to others. It is equally hard to hold onto the thread of its importance yourself.
“You actually have to step over the gap of your own self-defeating narratives”
This is where the cliches of ‘Fake it to make it’ and ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’ come right into their own. (btw cliches are cliches because they hold an oft repeated truth… ). Please mind the gap: You actually have to step over the gap of your self-defeating narratives and onto the first step of the carriage. It does feel like you are stepping out into thin air. That is the only way of proving to yourself, that this is or is not a good idea. if you really want to do it then you have to do it. Only then can we even have the faintest notion of what this reality might grow into? It might even turn out our train was taking us somewhere else entirely, but, unless we get aboard then we shall never know what could have been. You have to enter the feedback loop to evidence what can be!
“You have to enter the feedback loop to evidence what can be!”
Only when we have experienced our potential success, even just a little bit, can we begin to name how it might be and what might happen. Only in doing it can we begin to disable the internal criticism that is Imposter Syndrome. Perhaps we really are as good as people believe that we are. Go do your thing and evidence it!