Michael Mashkevich explains imposter syndrome as your brain's protective voice, not a character flaw. He describes how self-doubt hits hardest in mid-career when you're trying new things, and reframes those feelings as a signal you're about to grow.
What even is imposter syndrome? I started asking myself that because every time I tried something new, I'd hear this little voice in the back of my mind say, don't do it, you're not ready, you're not good enough. So I looked a little further into it. So imposter syndrome is basically your brain trying to protect you from being judged or failing or convincing you that you're basically not ready, you're not good enough yet. But you know what, I figured out that, uh, that's not how growth works because nobody basically started doing something before they actually You gotta start somewhere, and wherever you start, you're gonna feel like an imposter because you're not good enough yet. You're not really ideally awesome to be as good as you want to be. And it's particularly harder for your middle years. Like, I'm in my middle years because we're used to knowing what we're doing, and that is hard because we want to be the best. But I found out that imposter syndrome isn't a stop signal. It's a signal that you're about to grow. You're about to try something that you have never done before. So maybe the question isn't, am I ready? Maybe it's, what could I do, what could I try that I could evolve into be the best version of myself?
