I Shouldn't Be Here. I'm A Fraud. And Other Thoughts Of The Incredibly Talented.
“I have written 11 books but each time I think, uh-oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.”
—Maya Angelou
Some years ago, Neil Gaiman was invited to a gathering of artists and scientists, writers and discoverers. “I felt that at any moment they would realize that I didn’t qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things.”
On his second or third night there, Gaiman was standing at the back of the hall. He started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman.
The man pointed to the jam-packed hall and said to Neil, “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.”
Taken aback, Gaiman looked at him and said, “But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something.”
If Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did, Gaiman thought. Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and maybe got lucky and were slightly out of their depth.
Crazy.
If anything, it was the people gathered in that room who should have been doubting their own achievements compared to what Gaiman and certainly Armstrong had done. And yet, there the two of them were, wondering if the truth about who they believed themselves to be squared with their enormous accomplishments.
Imposter syndrome, a phenomenon characterized by persistent self-doubt and fear of being exposed as a fraud despite evidence of success, has long plagued human beings across every nook and cranny of human endeavour. But its grip on the creative mind is far more common than most of could ever have imagined.
We all know Shel Silverstein. Beloved childrens book author. Poet. Songwriter.
But when he was just starting out, Shel was a cartoonist at Playboy magazine. He loved his job but he was obsessed with getting reassurance from Hugh Hefner. Despite his work regularly appearing in one of the world’s most famous magazines, Shel was deeply insecure.
"After Shel delivered a new batch of cartoons for Hugh to review, he couldn’t work up the courage to ask Hef if he had seen the cartoons yet.” That’s Lisa Rogak, Silverstein’s biographer. “ Since Hef was so preoccupied with the magazine, he didn’t bring up the cartoons either. A curious passive standoff occurred, at least in Shel’s mind.”
Hefner’s silence was driving Silverstein insane. So much so that he was ready to give up his career as a cartoonist altogether.
Eventually, Shel finally did see Hefner. And when he finally did, he lost it. Why hadn’t he heard so much as a whisper from Hef? Did he hate Shel’s stuff? Did Hefner think his work sucked? Hefner looked at him with utter confusion, explaining to Shel that he hadn’t yet had the chance to look over his latest batch of cartoons.
Shel would then settle down and get back to drawing more cartoons.
Early in his career, Henry Fonda would get extremely anxious and would often fall physically ill as a result of his nerves and, at the core of it all, his self-doubt. The fear of facing a live audience, combined with the pressure to deliver a flawless performance, would sometimes overwhelm him. Fonda was one of the most brilliant actors on stage or screen we have ever known and yet something inside gnawed at him, that kept whispering in his ear, “You’re a fake, Henry. You don’t belong here.”
In a way, we’re all imposters at one time or another. What are first time parents if not imposters? You take a job in a city you don’t know with people you don’t know. Imposter. You think the first spacecraft to Mars won’t be filled with imposters? No one is born an authority. So it’s not hard to see why we’d doubt ourselves, at least for a while.
Some of the biggest targets of Imposter Syndrome are perfectionists. "I should have used blue instead of purple.” “I should have left that chapter out.” “I didn’t hit that high note.” The combination of setting unrealistically high standards, a fear of failure, and seeking external validation can make perfectionists incredibly vulnerable to believing they’re abject frauds.
Maybe it’s like Neil Gaiman says. Maybe we’re just people who’ve worked hard. Maybe we’ve gotten a lucky break somewhere along the way. And yes, maybe we’ve all been a little out of our depth now and then.
Or maybe it’s that creative people understand more than most that it’s that terrible yet misguided secret we carry inside us, that we are all just a pathetic band of shameless phonies, that pushes us ever harder to pursue greatness.
If you or someone you know suffers from Imposter Syndrome, this episode from the VeryWell MInd podcast might be useful.
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