OK, so that was a bit of a clickbait-y title, but hear me out, there is a method to the madness, and you might just agree that Imposter Syndrome doesn’t exist by the end of this blog!

Imposter Syndrome

I will not explain what Imposter Syndrome is, and I think @SailingBikerUK does a great job of this in his blog here:

https://vroamam.com/wordpress/blog/impostor-syndrome/

Now, SailingBiker and I have spoken about this for a while previously, and I have spoken to others about Imposter Syndrome and their experiences. There is always this common thread … it is so debilitating.

I can’t do this.

Indeed, I have experienced Imposter Syndrome myself and reading SailingBiker’s blog, I could immediately identify with it regarding my own life experiences. However, I have not stopped myself from doing whatever it was… let me explain my story, and I hope you understand my perspective.

My Story

Picture a very very younger version of me. I had finished my dissertation and was just waiting for the results, so I went and got a Quantity Surveyors job. The role involved working with pen pad computers (in the age of DOS) in York, UK with a team of lads who had been doing this since they could write and working away from home.

I was scared, and I knew I could do the techie stuff. I had never handled a team of people, and staying away from home would be challenging. But sure enough, I turned up at 5 am at their offices, got into a Skoda van and my driver drove me to York. On the way, we chatted on the way about what a typical day looked like.

• Before breakfast, hand out the Dolphin tablets.
• Ensure they all turned on and could see the map data
• Ensure the maps for the areas were loaded up
• Go and have breakfast.
• Split into teams of two
• Spend the day walking roads and plotting onto digital DOS maps:
  • Street lights
  • Street bollards
  • Signs
• Grab some lunch whilst walking the miles you had to do
• Get back to the B&B and hand in the Dolphin tablets to consolidate the data onto one.
• Go out to get some dinner.
• Get very drunk in a pub and nightclub.
• Fall into bed
• Rinse and repeat

Not a bad job for £60 a week, free accommodation and £10 a day for food.

I was not prepared for any of it – I was green behind the ears of living and working away from home. I was OK with computers but had never seen a pen-driven tablet and had never worked in a large team.

I was out of my depth. I wanted to go home.

I was scared, broke (spent most of my money on the first night out) and lonely. I was a newbie and was treated like one too. This was just awful, and I hated every second of it. I hated myself for taking a job I couldn’t do, and I was scared that the team around me would rat me out too. What the hell was I going to do.

Fighting Myself

One of the more experienced lads must have seen something in me and took me out on his route. It was an amazing day. I remember being parked up on a bridge and watching him plot 2 and a half miles of streetlights in about a minute. There is a pattern. Streetlights have to be in certain places. That road is cut off so there will be bollards there, probably three equally spaced apart and so on. This is an A-road and fairly new so it’ll be 3-metre side-entry steel column. So by 12, we were done for the day. He took me to the pub, and we talked about life, family, hobbies, and when I mentioned computers, he passed me his Dolphin tablet. He was having loads of issues with it running out of memory and could I fix it. I opened Autoexec.bat, did an old RAM trick I knew, cleared some temp files and user manual .txt files, rebooted, and it worked. Passed it back to him and asked him to try and break it again. He couldn’t. He just looked at me and said

You’ll do alreet.

When we got back to the B&B there were all the lads sat around looking annoyed, as usual, grumbling about the horrendous kit and he passed out his Dolphin.

Stu knows how to fix them.

There was silence, and all eyes fixed on me. I didn’t go to the pub that night, in fact I had a word with the lady from the B&B, and she let us use her dining room and made us tea (saved us a tenner at least!).

The following morning we set up the tablets, we had breakfast, and everyone was stood outside having their fags and waiting for me.

What we doing today boss?

And somehow, I’d made it. I was the boss, I was the technical guy, I was part of the team, and it worked. I was still scared, but somehow… just somehow I knew I should still be there and be a part of the team.

I haven’t won yet!

Imposter Syndrome - 0

Stuart            - 1

Yes, I had done it, but I didn’t know how! It only took me another 10 years or so before I met a man at a conference, and it all settled into place.

He was a short fat guy, I was a recruitment consultant and we were there at this chap’s gig to hand out business cards. I had got rid of a couple of hundred already with reverse pickpocket – planting them in people’s pockets without them knowing.

Suddenly this chap says:

There is no such thing as stress, there is anxiety, there is fear for sure, but stress … it doesn’t exist.

I just froze. Of course, he was right. I cost £1,000 to be in this room, he knew what he was talking about … and somehow it felt right what he said.

Think about something you are stressed about.

• “Asking the boss for a raise.”
• “How will I pay the bills.”
• “Where will my next meal come from.”

These are fear. We understand what the outcome is if we don’t get money, food etc. We therefore look at the risks, and it stops us in our tracks. We don’t make decisions, and we don’t speak to people. We shrivel inside ourselves, and we die a little more.

I went home and thought about that for a while. It kept coming back to me, and stress died that day for me. I then moved jobs to something I had never done before, Market Research Analyst. I knew I could speak, I knew I could ask questions, but I knew my report writing was awful and would let me down.

And there it was again … Imposter Syndrome. Like a bad smell, it stopped me in my tracks. I was now in London, living with my missus, I had to find this new office in a part of London I didn’t know, with bosses I didn’t know, doing a job I knew I couldn’t be good at.  I don’t think I slept that night. I got to work on that first day, tired, irritable and looking dreadful. Late – because it was London! and not feeling it at all. I failed at that job, and in the end, we mutually split.

Imposter Syndrome had won

Imposter Syndrome - 1

Stuart            - 1

I was gutted because it was an awesome job and I just missed out big time. I was determined to beat this thing. I spent 3 months unemployed, sat bumming around not doing anything and getting more depressed. I then went to a pub that I knew very well to drink my sorrows.

The barman asked me to look after the bar for a minute, he needed the loo. I have never worked in a bar, but I’ve drank in a few. I knew his till well … it was … how shall I put this tactfully … antiquated!

I stood behind the bar waiting for him to come back when in walked a friend of the owners. It was a fairly dodgy pub, and I knew not to give anything away. He looked at me and asked where the owner was. I said (lying) he’s up North on business, he’ll be back about 4. All a complete fabrication – by North, meant the North of London, and by 4, it meant come back about 8. He shrugged and asked me for a pint of lager. I got a glass, pulled a decent pint, charged him £2.00 (well, no point of upsetting people in a dodgy pub). He necked the pint and went on his way. The barman came back from the loo, and I sat down. I said who had been in and what I told him. Told him about the beer and the price. He started laughing … properly laughing.

It should be £1.80

we laughed for a while about that… but in that instant I realised something. I hadn’t thought about being a barman. I hadn’t thought about what I was doing, and I just let it happen.

There is no such thing as Imposter Syndrome

Imposter Syndrome - 1

Stuart            - 2

And there it was, Imposter Syndrome was beaten. I now know what it was, I could see it in all its parts, and I knew how to beat it again and again. There was no point in playing the game any more.

• I am not an Imposter, and I am not pretending to be someone, I know who I am
• It is not a ‘Syndrome’; there is no medical thing behind this; it is a human-made construct.

So if it isn’t Imposter Syndrome, then what is it? For this I want to try something with you … get a piece of paper.

Draw 3 columns:

   Column 1     ¦      Column 2      ¦     Column 3

I am an expert  ¦  I know some stuff ¦  I have no idea

OK, take your job that you do and fill it in.

e.g. Fictitious Person 1

• I am a social engineer.
• I am an expert in persuading people
• I know the theory of lock picking, but I’m not good at it
• I have never done it for real

e.g. Fictitious Person 2

• I am a CISO.
• I am an expert in creating Azure environments securely.
• I know a bit about single-sign-on
• I have no ideas on firewalls.
• I am not confident about speaking in public.
• I am fab at project management.

Put as much detail as you like into these columns. This is your piece of paper. You can keep this forever.

So imagine you have to now speak on a stage about your job. You wouldn’t stand on stage as the CISO above and talk ab0ut next-gen firewalls and their impact on your environment. You wouldn’t be the social engineer above stood on stage how you broke into a government office. This would be disingenuous to yourself and others.

So, stay in your swim lane.

I would love to hear the Social Engineer above in a Rookie talk talking about the theory behind certain attacks.

I would love the CISO to talk about their journey in a small round-table environment and how cloud-first is a brilliant strategy.

Our characters above can work on Column 2 to get it into Column 1. They can build their experience in Column 3 to push it into Column 2, and new stuff will appear, and that will go into Column 3. See it?

How do I beat Imposter Syndrome?

I know myself. I have been genuine with myself. I know what I know, I know what I want to know, and I work in that space. For sure, there is a lot in Column 3, but I am no longer scared or fearful as my swimlane is my strength areas. I also know that if I am going for a role I have things in Column 3 in that role, I will be honest to say “I don’t know about X, is this critical for the role?”

So does Imposter Syndrome exist? I think not. I think it is fear. A total fear, a debilitating fear of failure of success, of embarrassment and a whole load of other stuff! For sure, it is fear.

It is also not being genuine with yourself, stretching yourself too far and not being genuine with those around you about what you know and what you don’t. If you are not sure if you know stuff, ask trusted colleagues and friends. Take a course and see if you know it. You then have independent verification that you know what you know. Column 1 is verified, justified and known.

:   F   :   E   :   A   :   R   :

Continuing the Journey

I need to keep beating Imposter Syndrome. I need to beat my fears. I pick up my list and check it twice. I check I know my field. I am genuine and honest with myself. Sometimes, I take stuff from Column 1 and put it into Column 2 or 3. I celebrate each Column 3 to Column 1 victory as it is a new arrow to the collection. It shows I am growing as a person.

I also have started to adopt this with areas of my life.

I don’t run

My body is designed for hiding and walking, not running. Not so much. So the fear had previously stopped me from running. I had that fear of “pains in the knees” or “being out of breath” or worse, puking by the side of the road as I was so unfit.

I have started though. I ran a short distance … very short. I ran a bit more, then a bit more and more and once I even ran a 5k distance. In 2021, I joined an End to End challenge where my daily exercise counts towards 874 miles of the End to End of the UK.

You have to start. You have to check yourself. You have to hack yourself. You have to change. You have to carry on hacking yourself.

Good luck beating your Imposter self up a bit and getting a grip on the course of your life. Taking it by the scruff of the neck and saying:

I am in charge, not you.

Then celebrate your wins. I’ll be along for the same journey too – and I can’t wait to hear about your successes!