The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It (18 page)

When you imagine a different way to handle the conversation, you essentially prepare yourself to know what to say—or not to say—as similar occasions arise. Plus a mental do-over helps you to depersonalize the situation. When you focus on what you can learn, you automatically make it less about you and more about growth and moving forward. This is important, because when you internalize failure, there’s a greater chance that you’ll give up following a setback. Don’t. Instead study famous “failures” who pressed on despite the odds and the critics.

Creativity icon Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper job for “lacking ideas.” Rowland H. Macy’s store failed seven times before it caught on. Michael Jordan was cut from his junior varsity basketball team. Abraham Lincoln suffered repeated failures on the road to success, including losing in his first bid for Congress, when he sought the appointment to the United States Land Office, and when he ran for the United States Senate. From time to time everybody makes bad decisions. We all get egg on our face sometimes. The key is to see failure for what it is—a curve in the road, not the end of it. Like Billie Jean King said, “Be bold. If you’re going to make an error, make a doozy.”

Besides, it’s how you handle failure that matters. Imagine literally taking a tumble with no fewer than a billion people watching. That’s what Miss USA Crystle Stewart did when she fell during the 2008 Miss Universe pageant. She handled the fiasco by putting on a radiant smile, picking herself up, and clapping her hands over her head as if to say, “Let’s have a round of applause.” This was not the first time Stewart had to pick herself up after a failure. It took her five tries before being crowned Miss Texas. Failure is a given. You can’t control what other people think. You can only control your own response—which begins with giving yourself permission to literally and figuratively fall as flat on your face as the next person.

Because it’s coming from the outside, learning to think about and respond to criticism differently will probably be more challenging than dealing with failure. There will be times when no matter how thick-skinned you are, when someone criticizes you or your work it will take all of your emotional strength to quiet the relentless critic in your head. Precisely because criticism does pack an emotional punch, depersonalizing it requires a major shift in thinking.

Here again sports analogies can be useful. In international competitions, for example, judges recognize that even supposedly objective assessments involve a certain amount of bias. That’s why they routinely throw out both the high and low scores and instead go with the average. You need to apply the same filter yourself. Hillary Clinton says she’s “heard the nastiest of smears about myself [and] the most inflated and overheated praise.” Which is why, she says, her general rule is to “disregard comments that are at either extreme and focus on what I believe to be true of myself. I try to take criticism seriously, but not personally.”
⁷

The next time your work is subjected to unflattering remarks, step back and ask yourself, “How would a person who took criticism seriously but
not
personally respond?” Then proceed to assess what’s useful, what’s not, and toss out anything that’s not true to you.

Better yet, what if you were able to see critical feedback as a form of compliment? That’s not to say it doesn’t hurt, because it does. Once you’ve licked your wounds, remind yourself that those whose opinions matter are not going to give you feedback if they didn’t think you were competent enough to use it. That’s what Walter Cronkite did. While he was writing for his high school newspaper, the fourteen-year-old’s confidence was badly shaken when his mentor sat him down and told him a story he’d written was “simply terrible.” That one comment could have completely squashed his journalistic dreams. Instead, Cronkite says, as he gathered up his article and headed for the door he consoled himself by thinking, “Well, he couldn’t be that mad at me if he’s suggesting ways I could do better.”
⁸

Your best defense against criticism may be to go on the offense by proactively seeking it out. In decades of observing negative feedback in various work environments, Boston University psychologist Peter Gray found the most constructive and amiable interactions were those in which an individual reached out to an older mentor or peer for advice. Gray says its human nature not to want unsolicited advice. However, advice you ask for, even when corrective, is apt to be perceived as more helpful and less personal.
⁹

Some of the feedback you’ll receive in your life will be dead-on. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of critics who will get it wrong. Jack Kerouac, George Orwell, Anne Frank, and Sylvia Plath are just a few of the authors whose books were turned down—all by a single publisher.
After Elvis Presley’s first—and last—appearance at the Grand Ole Opry, a producer advised him to go back to his previous job as a truck driver. And following dance legend Fred Astaire’s first audition, a producer famously observed, “Balding, skinny, can dance a little.” Let’s face it, you don’t like everyone else’s work, so why should you expect everyone to love yours?

A certain amount of criticism and rejection are inevitable. Why not have a bit of fun with it? Wallpaper a room with your rejection letters, write a rap song about all of your bad reviews, or craft an imaginary future award speech in which you thank all the admissions officers, hiring managers, casting directors, or whoever turned you down (won’t
they
feel embarrassed)! Whatever you do, don’t burn those rejection letters or bad reviews. After all, they’ll make for great reading when your biography is written!

If you still need help depersonalizing things, try this approach I learned from a couple of Coast Guard Academy graduates. In advance of their first deployment, a senior female commander offered the female cadets some final words of wisdom and a Q-tip to serve as an acronym: Quit Taking It Personally. Try it yourself. Tape a cotton swab to your bathroom mirror, tuck another inside your desk drawer or bag to use as a visual reminder.

Realize too that just because you
feel
inadequate doesn’t mean you
are
inadequate. I can practically guarantee that sometime in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours you will have the opportunity to feel stupid just like the rest of us. It’s called life. Again, the words you use really do matter. You’ll be amazed at how differently you feel simply by changing your response from “I am so stupid!” to “Boy, did I feel stupid.”

There’s no quick fix for ruminating. Just as with a song you can’t get out of your head, stopping those pesky recurring thoughts begins with becoming aware of what’s happening. Sharing your feelings does help.
When you talk things through, you’ll probably see that whatever you were obsessing about is not as big a deal as you thought. You can also practice using what psychologists refer to as stop-thought techniques. The moment you realize what’s happening, silently shout STOP! Repeat this as often as necessary. You can also try techniques like tapping on a table or deep breathing.

When the self-blame game begins, consciously call upon your more logical self for a “second opinion.” In other words, the instant the thought
My proposal was so lame
enters your mind, check in to see what the “other side” thinks. With emotions out of the picture, allow your rational mind to counter with
I’m sure it was better than I’m giving myself credit for
. Even if by objective standards your proposal was weak, counter the impulse to blame yourself with the rational reminder
The more I write, the better I’ll get
.

T
hroughout life we are all presented with the opportunity to say
yes
to success.
Yes
to applying to school.
Yes
to moving far from home in search of that big break.
Yes
to hanging out your shingle or showing your work.
Yes
to a huge promotion or another chance to prove your mettle.
Yes
to changing careers or changing course entirely. Part of you is excited, perhaps even giddy. And why wouldn’t you be? You’ve just put yourself
one step closer to achieving your goals and realizing your full potential. Life is good.

But then the impostor syndrome kicks in and with it all the self-doubt and fear. Suddenly, merely
entertaining
the thought of saying yes makes you anxious—maybe even terrified. That’s when the second-guessing starts. You worry,
Can I really handle it? Do I know enough? Am I smart enough?
Obviously the fact that you feel like you fooled people all these years complicates matters right off the bat. If only you felt surer of yourself, saying yes to success would be so much easier. Or would it?

Believing in yourself will certainly get you far. But shoring up your confidence alone may not be enough to completely squelch the anxiety you have about saying yes to success. That’s because even though you are achieving as an individual, you’re not in this success game alone. Simply put, to grow up female means that other people’s feelings, needs, well-being, affiliation, acceptance, and opinions matter. Not just a little bit—they matter a lot.

And the fact that you
do
care means there will be times when it’s hard for you to know where the fear is coming from. Are you hesitant to forge ahead because you don’t think you
can
do it—or because on some level you understand that saying yes to success has implications for your relationships with others? This is your chance to find out.

It was the work of social psychologist Carol Gilligan that introduced me to the central role that care, concern, and connection for and with others plays in women’s lives and choices. Her 1982 book,
In a Different Voice
, broke new ground when it challenged the prevailing theory of developmental psychology that said girls were largely incapable of achieving the
same level of moral reasoning as boys. Rather than being lesser, she argued, women’s moral reasoning is simply different and has at its core an “obligation to exercise care and avoid hurt” and to avoid isolation.

The reason this matters is because the road to success is nothing if not a series of choices. Choose to attend a local college or move halfway across the country or the world. Pick this major or career path or that. Take the job or turn it down. Negotiate for more or take what’s offered. Share your accomplishment with others or keep it to yourself. Not coincidentally, these are also the very decision points where your impostor feelings get triggered.

Women in my workshops speak often of the real or perceived consequences of their achievement choices. These consequences play out in seven distinct ways, what I refer to here as “success scenarios.” Two involve possible consequences of success
on
others, while the other five speak to the potential of success to impact your connection
with
others. Here’s a summary.

Before exploring each of these success scenarios, there are a few things you need to know. For starters, if one situation jumps out more than the others, feel free to start there. However, to understand the larger picture I recommend you read all seven. Also, even though in some cases I do offer advice on dealing with certain scenarios, in the end there are no one-size-fit-all solutions to what are often personal situations and decisions. Instead, at the end of each scenario are questions to help you decide if you’re dealing primarily with a confidence issue or if your reaction is more relationship-based.