Imposter Syndrome

It is a very bad feeling when we do something new or what we already know, and we feel like an imposter.. We feel like we are making stuff out..

Like me writing this blog feels like I am trying to make stuff up, which actually doesn’t matter to anyone or maybe somebody had said it before..

When I was doing my master's degree at the University of Calcutta, I joined late and other students have already done some classes… I took notes from other people and tried to cover those topics by myself, but every day when I went to the university, while I was entering through the gate of the university, I felt like an imposter, like I didn’t belong here and I don't deserve to be in this place.. I felt I was trying to pretend to something or someone that I am actually not, that I don’t have the talent or quality needed to be here..

I thought about this a lot, but I came to the conclusion that we are all imposters.. Every day when we wake up we have certain things to do every day, and we proceed with things to do.. But when we do anything in a group or in front of any other people, we try to show our best side, that somewhat means not showing our not-so-best side..

It is like the saying when you are telling a half-truth that means you are telling a half-lie.. I am very much into a growth mindset for the last two and half years, I read a lot of books on how to better myself and my thought process.. Every day when I wake up I think I need to be better than yesterday, which definitely means I am consciously trying to change my bad habits or bad sides.. When we are growing, that means we are trying to control our bad sides, isn’t that somehow mean we are lying to ourselves??

I have had a very bad anger issue since childhood and I am very short-tempered, I am trying to get better at this thing in my life.. I now know when I get angry, and how I react, so I always try to control my anger and don’t show it to other people.. It is a growth for me or anybody else who has anger issues.. But isn’t it lying to yourself and the people you are behaving nicely with..

We are taught appropriate behaviours and things to do from our childhood, and not to do bad things. we got punishments when did the wrong thing, and we learnt from it, and never repeated it again.. But doesn’t that change who I originally was? Isn’t it forcing you to lie to me in front of everyone..

But there also comes the question that when we are born w don’t have any personality, whatever we are we learn from society, so whatever we are is based on the learning that we get from societal norms.. Also, we have certain attitudes or preferences which get from genes, and evolution also makes us prefer and do certain things which our brain tells us to do..

We can think this learning new things and changing our behaviour as a filtration process as we dress nicely when we go out as people will see us, but we dress like a mess in the house.. This filtration process while used for long enough created new habits and new us, which makes us forget the old habits and thinking and routines.. Through this process, we become better every day..

So if it was being an imposter to do anything different from what you are now, then we haven’t advanced a little bit from that early stage of evolution.. We just need to better ourselves and until we could do that, we pretend every day to be better until with make that happens.. It makes the person better, and grow..

So the world is based on the imposters, as without being an imposter, we can’t make changes and grow..

It reinforces the statement- “fake it until you make it”…