The untold truth about imposter syndrome

Last year I achieved a goal that had been ten years in the making. This was a moment I had been building up to for years.

I placed it on my vision board. I visualized it in my mind, again and again. I read books about how to do it well. I practiced it with other people in a club, and even won a national competition doing it. And I transitioned my career from working in corporate tax, to one where I could practice doing it for groups of people I had never met before.

The skill I was learning was public speaking. And my goal was to give a TED talk.

In October 2021, at the beautiful 830-seater Volkstheater in Vienna, Austria, I gave my first ever TEDx talk on one of my favourite topics - the power of reading books by authors of colour. 

This was something I had wanted, badly, for many years.

And, for years, the idea of actually doing it terrified me.  

The truth was, despite all my actions and successes - I felt like an imposter. 

I couldn’t actually see myself up on that stage. I couldn’t actually imagine talking about something that I was passionate about with confidence. I couldn’t actually imagine walking off that stage without feeling an immense sense of shame and self-loathing.

I felt like I was an imposter.

And dream and hope as I might that I could make my mark as a changemaker on one of the biggest thought leadership platforms in the world, the thought of actually doing it made me feel physically sick.

And yet, when I finally did get to fulfill this lifelong dream last year, it was one of the most remarkable moments of self-love and self-honouring that I have ever experienced in my life.

So what shifted for me?

How was I able to go from feeling like a fraud who didn’t deserve to be on that stage, to feeling like a worthy human being who didn’t need to earn anyone’s approval because she had her own?

Well… a lot of inner work for one. Years of it. Because there is no quick strategy or simple technique that can replace the humbling, challenging, cumulative work of learning to love who you are, as you are.

And, I made a significant shift over the last few years when I came to understand the ways white supremacist capitalist patriarchy gaslights us into thinking we are not good enough unless we are perfect.

This pursuit of perfection, fueled by systems of oppression, makes us feel like we are imposters anytime we try to do something novel, or challenging, or meaningful.

And what is changemaking if not novel, challenging, and meaningful?

For years I had seen my imposter syndrome as a ‘me’ thing:

I wasn’t strong enough.

I wasn’t confident enough.

I didn’t know enough.

I wasn’t perfect enough.

Perhaps you can relate? 

• The feeling that you don’t know enough and one day other people are going to find out too?

• The feeling that you’re not good enough and you’re eventually going to let people down?

• The feeling that no matter how hard you work, how much you learn, how much you achieve, it still doesn’t fill that dark void in the pit of your stomach or silence that inner critic in your mind?

• The feeling that when (not if) you mess up, it will be catastrophic and you’ll never recover from it?

• The persistent feeling of dread and anxiety about your ability to do things that matter to you?

Imposter syndrome.

It holds so many of us back. And stops so many changemakers like you and me from doing the work that needs to be done to build a better world.

As I deepened my journey as an antiracist leadership educator, I came to understand that these paradigms that we live in as the status quo are not actually designed for any of us to thrive. It doesn’t matter how many achievements or accolades we gather, we never see ourselves as enough because the world is designed for us to not see ourselves as enough.

Coming to this understanding completely shifted the paradigm for me. Not only did it help me reframe how I show up in the world (from inherently flawed to inherently worthy as both resistance and reclamation work).

But it also made me question why I even wanted to be on that stage in the first place? 

When I got really honest with myself I realised that I had wanted to be on that stage because I thought if I could achieve that, it would finally mean I was worthy.

Whew. Talk about an a-ha moment.

From then on, there was no more holding me back. I did the work of loving myself today, now in the present. Rejecting the idea that any person, place, or thing could make me feel the thing that I actually wanted to feel - worthy.

So when an invitation to speak at TEDxVienna arrived, I said yes because I saw it as an incredible opportunity to talk about something novel, challenging, and meaningful, and not as an opportunity to try to love myself through other people validating me.

I asked myself, ‘How can I embrace this desired invitation to share my work, and do so knowing I am already worthy before I even step on that stage?’

That’s the work.

When I look back at that TEDx experience now, my favourite moment is not what you see on stage as I talk with confidence, courage, and clarity. 

It’s actually the moment just after I’ve walked off stage…

…I’m in the stage wings in the dark. The conference is getting ready to move on to the next speaker. There are no more faces, cameras, or lights angled at me. And my heart is full of gratitude and self-love that it feels like I could burst. I am proud beyond words that I spoke on one of the biggest platforms in the world as my true self.

Not as the ashamed self I want others to love. 

Not as the pretending self I hope others will love.

But as the real self I know I love. 

When we’re full of that kind of love, there’s no limit to what we can do to change the world.

To our healing + liberation,

Layla 

P.S. Check out my Say Goodbye to Imposter Syndrome Workshop. Get access here.