Hello everyone,
Day 8 of the ’30 Ways To Play With Your Imposter Syndrome’ Challenge.
Todays’ theme:
Sometimes the difference between ’special’ and ‘ordinary’ is meaningless. That’s an opportunity. Use it.
Today’s story:
The surprising thing to moisturise skin
Key quotes:
“According to science, we’ve been making a major mistake when it comes to attacking dry and damaged skin.
Many of us have spent years turning to expensive and ineffective beauty products endorsed by celebrities like Goop queen Gwyneth Paltrow.”
“But according to a group of Japanese scientists, we’ve got it all wrong.
A Skin Research and Technology study, released today, has found that we need just one ingredient to achieve beautiful, hydrated skin.
Water.”
“The study, conducted at Aichi Medical University in Japan, examined the faces of 17 healthy adult women, aged between 30 and 46.”
“Scientists found that the women’s moisture levels and elasticity dramatically improved after a good misting with these tiny water particles.”
People with imposter syndrome often shoot themselves down.
If you give these so-called ‘imposters’ reasons why they are the real deal…
… they tend to shoot those reasons down.
Maybe these ‘imposters’ give other reasons for their success.
- Luck.
- Hard work.
- Other people thinking too highly of these ‘imposters’.
Whatever the ‘real’ reasons behind their success…
These ‘imposters’ don’t accept a simple explanation.
That they themselves are competent.
That they themselves are enough.
How exhausting. How demotivating.
But instead of deflecting reasons… I’d prefer to focus on something different.
Results.
If these ‘imposters’ keep doing great work and succeeding…
… well then, I don’t really care whether the ‘imposter’ is just lucky, panics over each project, works hard, gets help from others, or that I’m easily impressed by them.
If the ‘imposter’ continually and reliably produces great results…
(despite their self-doubt)
… how is that ‘imposter’ different from the real thing?
How is that ‘imposter’ different from people who really do have an intrinsic ability to do their job well?
So how does this relate to the above news story?
The message behind the story is that success doesn’t have to be fancy.
We don’t always have to look for fancy or special ingredients, chemicals, creams, conditioners, lotions, serums, butters, balms, scrubs, humidifiers etc…
… to find something that hydrates skin.
We can be much simpler.
Just use water.
That can be good enough.
Those of us with imposter syndrome might give fancy reasons for our success…
Again, maybe we attribute success to hard work, luck, having help from others, etc…
And then we might think because our success depends on those things, we aren’t special.
And sometimes we feel like frauds as a result.
But who cares if the successful version of you depends on hard work, or help from others, or any other factor?
(And if you feel like your success comes from striking it lucky again and again… chances are you do something that ATTRACTS that luck.)
In this weird metaphor…
You don’t have a be a special fancy cream to be successful.
You can be ordinary water.
As long as it works.
And not being ‘special’ or perfect doesn’t make you a fraud.
As long as you find ways to do your job well…
… then you’re not an imposter.
If your results are good… there’s no imposter to be exposed behind it all.
Someone ordinary who does their job well by using the resources around them…
(including luck!)
… is just as excellent as someone special who magically and confidently does it all themselves.
Both might be different.
But neither is an imposter.
So next time you try to explain away any success…
Instead of using that as proof you’re secretly a fraud…
… undeserving of success….
… use that as proof that you know what it takes for you to succeed.
And focus on getting even better at those things as a result.
If you do that, you allow all the ordinary things about yourself, to add up into something extraordinary.
And the people around you are better off because of it.
See you tomorrow,
Lucus “I’m not special, but I’ll get better” Allerton
Screenshot proof below:
(You’ll only see it if you have images enabled.)
Taken 2018-11-08 at 10.54.12 am