Dr. Aziz explains a practical way to interrupt imposter-syndrome thoughts: challenge absolute self-statements ("I have no idea what I'm doing") by estimating what percentage you actually know, acknowledging partial gaps, and granting yourself permission to be imperfect. He illustrates this with a client who actually knew ~95% of his field and reframes the remaining uncertainty as normal rather than proof of being a fraud.
There's one key thing you're doing that's keeping the imposter syndrome going, and you need to change this to free yourself from this pattern of anxiety and insecurity. Now, when you observe what's happening when you're feeling imposter syndrome, there is a very specific story that's going through your mind, which is something along the lines of, I have no idea what I'm doing and people are going to find out. I was just talking about this yesterday with a client. He told himself, I have no idea what I'm doing. Now, he might not know something. He knows his field extremely well. And I ask him, what percentage do you think you know about this? And he's like, I probably know 95% percent of the things and 5%. I might need to get more information or talk to somebody else. But when you tell yourself, I have no idea, I don't know what all what's going on, and you believe it, your imposter syndrome goes through the roof. So when the next time you tell yourself that, challenge it and say, actually, what percent do I really know and what's the percent that I don't know? And can I allow myself to not know a few things? Because it's about perfectionism then, and you don't have to be perfect to crush it in your job and your career and in your life.
