The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It (16 page)

It’s easy to confuse the Superwoman/Man/Student with the Perfectionist. The major distinction is that a Perfectionist really can be content to perform flawlessly chiefly in school or on the job. But for the Super Woman/Man/Student competence rests on the ability to juggle multiple roles masterfully. Although you likely have some perfectionist tendencies, for you competence has as much to do with how
many
things you can handle as it does how well you do them.

Unlike the other competence types, the Superwoman in particular is largely a cultural creation. It came into being when the traditional roles of mother and homemaker were extended to accommodate the additional
role of full-time paid worker. Suddenly “having it all” became “doing it all.” With help from Madison Avenue and the now famous seventies Enjoli perfume commercial that celebrated the modern woman’s ability to “bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan,” and still have the energy and desire to “never let you forget you’re a man,” a collective bar had been raised for women everywhere.

Think of the Superwoman as the Perfectionist, the Natural Genius, and the Rugged Individualist on steroids. Instead of seeing the pressure to have the looks of Halle Berry, the ambition of Anita Roddick, the financial savvy of Suze Orman, the munificence of Mother Teresa, and the domestic flair of Martha Stewart as societal in origin, you tell yourself,
If I were really competent, I would be able to do it all
.

Increasingly I hear from students—male and female—who relate to trying to be the “Superstudent.” You may not be concerned with domestic prowess but you may feel pressure both internal and external to overextend in other ways. You play sports, serve on student government, spearhead any number of civic or charitable activities, maintain a perfect grade-point average—and make it all seem effortless to boot. You can do it for a while, but sooner or later you’re bound to drop a ball. And when you do, you’re extremely hard on yourself. Even if you can keep up, you never feel satisfied because you think you could do more.

And when the Superstudent meets the Superwoman/Man—look out! After a presentation at Duke University I was approached by two doctoral students who were managing to meet rigorous academic demands while simultaneously holding down full-time jobs. That would be impressive enough, but they were also raising young children who had their own overly full roster of extracurricular activities. I was exhausted just hearing about their overextended lives. I assumed that they approached me for advice on how they could offload some responsibilities. Instead these
women wanted to talk about how guilty they felt about not having time to do volunteer work in their community.

Perfection is impossible to sustain in even one area. To shoot for it in all aspects of your life is a recipe for failure—and disappointment. By striving to be the best student, worker, spouse or partner, mother, friend, homemaker, hostess, and more, you’ve succeeded at only one thing—setting yourself up to fall short in multiple roles.

The major reframe for the Superwoman/Man/Student is that competence is not a function of how many things you can do. In fact, rather than make you feel better about yourself and your level of competence, your constant striving to be everything to everybody can make you feel even more inadequate. Plus there’s a good chance that sooner or later you’ll hit a wall in the form of illness or exhaustion, and possibly resentment.

On the bulletin board at my post office hung a quote from the Women’s Theology Center in Boston. It read: “We must go slowly, there’s not much time.” Instead of attempting to operate at warp speed packing ever more into your already jammed schedule, experiment with what it feels like to ease up now and then. Years from now no one will remember all the extra projects you took on or your meticulously organized garage. What they—and you—will recall is the time you said no to a work assignment to take your kids to the science museum or when you ignored household chores to enjoy the sunset.

The major behavioral change for the Superwoman/Student can be summed up in two words: Do less. One reason why it’s easier for men to say no is because their interpretation of competence keeps them from taking on more than they need to in the first place. Just like the Rugged
Individualist, you need to ditch the guilt and recognize that truly competent people delegate whatever and whenever they can.

If you live with anyone over the age of five, chances are you can delegate more on the home front. In addition to saving you time, you also instill in your children a strong work ethic and give them the opportunity to learn how to function as part of a team—both of which will serve them for the rest of their lives. Not a parent? You can still offload more tasks at home. Delegate the holiday planning to a sibling, set up online bill paying, or, if you can afford it, hire someone to clean the house, paint the living room, or mow the lawn, and use the extra time for yourself.

I know you pride yourself on your ability to multitask, but just because you
can
do something doesn’t mean you
need
to. There are some things on your to-do list that you can eliminate altogether. If you like the idea of gardening more than the backbreaking reality, grass over your garden and support your local farmer instead. Instead of baking holiday cookies yourself, buy them from the PTA fund-raiser. Use the saved time for more important things like catching up with an old friend, reading, or any activity that renews you.

Once you’ve shed some nonessential roles and responsibilities, recalibrate your success measurements by establishing attainable goals and realistic due dates. Things always take longer than you expect. If you think the project will take a week, give yourself three. Having a realistic picture of how long things really take will help you say no when new requests come along.

I understand that it may be hard for you to lay down your cape for your own sake. If that’s the case, I invite you to consider the message you’re conveying to the next generation, a message that can only contribute to ensuring a never-ending stream of capable females growing up to feel like they’re never good enough. Not that they need your help,
mind you. A study titled “The Supergirl Dilemma” reports that 60 percent of girls grades three through twelve say they often feel stressed. As one ninth-grader puts it, “Girls are very pressured today to get good grades, look good, have a lot of friends, do a majority of the chores, and still have time for family.”
⁶
Sound familiar?

In their own way, all five competence types hold an extreme view of competence. Whether you are a Perfectionist, a Natural Genius, an Expert, a Rugged Individualist, or the Superwoman/Man/Student, for you there is no such thing as a competence middle ground. Instead, from moment to moment you judge yourself based on where you think you are on a continuum represented by dazzling brilliance on one end and a dimly lit bulb on the other.

If you’re not operating at the top of your game 24/7, then you’re incompetent. Since your view allows for no in-between, you are left with the belief that
If I don’t know everything, then I know nothing. If it’s not absolutely perfect, it’s woefully deficient
.

It’s understandable that you constantly teeter on these extremes. After all, you
really do know
what it’s like to feel brilliant. Like everyone, you’ve experienced those exhilarating times when your brain is firing on all cylinders, when everything just seems to click, when you think,
Damn, I’m good!
Of course, being human, you also know what it’s like to not be able to think to save your life. To feel like you are wearing a big sign that says, S
ORRY, BRAIN CLOSED FOR THE DAY
.

And herein lies the problem: Because you know you’re
capable
of brilliance, if you’re not there all the time, you automatically thrust yourself to the other end of the continuum. And once there, you’re very unforgiving of yourself.

To be clear, it’s not that extremes don’t exist; they do. In fact, when it comes to achievement, extremes go with the territory. Whether you’re conducting a scientific experiment, creating art, managing a project, starting a business, or doing anything of significance, it’s always an exercise in extremes. Clarity and confusion, deficiency and mastery, knowing and not knowing, all are part of the creative actualization process. However, once you recognize these extremes for what they are, you’ll be able to accept your own low points without self-incrimination.

Regardless of your competence type, you can and should strive to do your best. Just stop expecting yourself to remain in a constant state of extreme brilliance. Instead strive to feel comfortable with being fabulously adequate. The reality is, even the brightest and most talented among us spend the majority of their waking hours smack in the middle of the competency scale. Just like me—and you.

When you feel yourself sliding into competence extremism, recognize it for what it is. Then make a conscious decision to stop and really savor those exhilarating mental high points and forgive yourself for the inevitable lulls. That’s what Tina Fey does. “The beauty of the impostor syndrome,” says Fey, “is you vacillate between extreme egomania and a
complete feeling of: ‘I’m a fraud! Oh God, they’re on to me! I’m a fraud!’ So you just try to ride the egomania when it comes and enjoy it, and then slide through the idea of fraud.”
⁷

Few things are black or white, and that includes your competence type itself. Obviously, your old rule book has enormous downsides. However, you don’t have to ditch it entirely. For example:

The trick is to make a conscious choice to hold on to these positive aspects of your type while letting go of the far-more-numerous unrealistic and self-limiting tendencies that are fodder for impostor feelings.

N
o one
likes
to fail. Impostors positively hate it. The fact that researchers have found a strong link between fear of failure and the impostor syndrome is hardly surprising.
¹
In one way or another you’ve spent your entire adult life trying to avoid stumbling. In the impostor world there is no such thing as constructive criticism—there is only condemnation. To not make the grade in some way only serves as more proof that you’re a
fraud. And to receive less-than-positive feedback from someone else—well, that just makes it official.

The Competence Rule Book for Mere Mortals
you received in the last chapter will help for sure. But taken together, failure, mistakes, and criticism constitute another piece of the competence puzzle. How you think about and handle these inevitable parts of life has an enormous impact on how competent and confident you feel. See for yourself: