Author: tahmidchowdhury

Overcoming the dreaded ‘Imposter Syndrome’​

Imposter Syndrome is the feeling of being a fraud. Rather than getting to your current position, you feel like you have lucked your way through. You now fear being found out for this fact.

Imposter Syndrome sadly is a fairly common trait in the modern world; probably due to the prevalence of social media leading us to compare our lives with one another, mixed in with impossibly high requirements for entry-level jobs.

in my own experience through coaching, it is a topic that has come up alarmingly frequently and is seemingly more prevalent in women and ethnic minorities (probably due to a sense of being an outsider).

So what can you do to overcome Imposter Syndrome? Here are some ideas to support you:

Defining ourselves by our achievements is killing our success

The modern world is competitive, and the importance of being ‘the best’ is drilled into us from an early age.

Unfortunately, what we do not realise is the negative effect this whole experiences causes. Constant striving for greater achievements is actually harmful: both for ourselves in our wellbeing and in our professional career.

we owe it to explain these realities to those coming through the education system expecting big and bright things society has promised them, only to find an impossible job market.

Feeling Uninspired? Challenge yourself by learning something new

Remember the excitement of our first day at work, or taking up a new hobby – When was the last time you experienced that? If it hasn’t been for a while, perhaps you might want to think about finding something new to do to rekindle that creative energy.

If you feel like you’ve got some room for some inspiration, why not learn a new hobby or skill?

Change your relationship with learning new skills

As the old life-script goes, we are born, we go to school, we work, we retire and we die. The suggestion is that we spend the early part of our life learning, until we hit the working age where we are ‘doing’ until we retire.

In modern times however, this script no longer works. Unfortunately our education system was not built to prepare us for these new realities, pushing us to focus on what we are ‘good’ at, rather than developing the skill of getting better at what we are ‘bad’ at.

Your biggest productivity hack? Give yourself a break

If you’re in the UK, you’ve probably just come back into work a bit bleary-eyed after a long weekend with the bank holiday. It’s a nice novelty, considering as a country we have one of the lowest amount of public holidays in the world.

We usually appreciate the feeling of having some time off, so this is a good moment to reflect: what if we could tap into bringing ourselves out of our work routines more often?