Impostor Syndrome: How Self-Criticism and Perfectionism Hold Us Back

Impostor Syndrome: Why Self-Criticism and Perfectionism Prevent Us from Becoming Geniuses

How Fear Affects the Mind

Think back to a moment when you felt paralyzed during an exam or, even worse, on stage. You froze like a deer in headlights, your heart pounding and your palms sweating. You tried to remember what you were supposed to do, but your mind went blank. Your higher cognitive functions simply shut down.

Intense stress puts the brain into high-alert mode, shutting down functions it deems unnecessary at that moment. Unfortunately, this means your cognitive abilities are blocked precisely when you need them most. It’s hard to remember this during a wave of anxiety, but know that it’s a completely normal reaction designed to protect your well-being.

Philippe Goldin, director of Stanford’s Clinical Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, says, “The threat response can shut down attention, making us use primitive thinking algorithms and habitual automatic solutions.” David Rock, founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute, explains, “The threat response disrupts analytical thinking, the creative process, and problem-solving abilities.”

The types of fear we’re talking about manifest as social inhibition in the form of impostor syndrome and the inner critic, as well as perfectionism and its close relative, maximalism.

Social inhibition is essentially the fear of “what others will think.” This fear of looking foolish or being judged is the flip side of our social consciousness. Social inhibition is useful-it’s part of what makes us civilized-but it also has its downsides. Breakthroughs can only happen when the activity of the frontal lobes is reduced, and that’s exactly where inhibition resides.

The problem is that these inhibiting factors can suppress thoughts and ideas that might lead to major breakthroughs. In some cases, reduced social inhibition caused by degeneration of the prefrontal cortex results in a burst of creativity in art and other fields. People who never considered themselves creative suddenly become prolific creators.

Social inhibition is probably the most serious blocker on the path to breakthroughs. Does this mean we should intentionally damage our frontal lobes? Of course not. You may have heard of Phineas Gage, who suffered frontal lobe damage in a railroad accident in 1848. Afterward, he became “prone to fits of rage, lost respect for everyone, and constantly indulged in terrible profanity and blasphemy, which was not his habit before.” He was “obnoxious, rude, unpleasant, and vulgar to such a degree that his company became unbearable.” We need our frontal lobes to live in society.

But it’s certainly true that creative people have long sought ways to “quiet” this part of the brain. The saying “Write drunk, edit sober” perfectly captures this and embodies the process of revolutionary thinking.

  • “Write drunk”: Alcohol inhibits the frontal lobes, the part of the brain responsible for social inhibition and reality-checking. You put your Inner Critic to sleep and let your Default Mode Network fly free, sparking revolutionary ideas.
  • “Edit sober”: Then you bring your Inner Critic back to evaluate, check, and prioritize. This is the phase of convergent critical thinking.

Social inhibition arises in the prefrontal cortex and appears in our minds as impostor syndrome and the inner critic.

Impostor Syndrome

Impostor syndrome affects successful and competent people who feel they don’t know enough and constantly fear being exposed as frauds. Most of us experience this deep conviction that we’re not good enough from time to time.

Since impostor syndrome was first identified and described by scientists, studies show that over 70% of people experience it at some point.

Impostor syndrome is also an obstacle to revolutionary thinking. If you believe you don’t really know what you’re doing and your mental energy is spent fearing others will notice, how can you believe you’ll achieve something no one else has? Can you imagine Thomas Edison thinking, “I’m not an inventor,” or Steve Jobs tormented by thoughts like, “Who am I to build computers?”

Strangely enough, impostor syndrome is most common among successful people. When we discuss it at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT, the room gets so quiet you can hear a pin drop. When students learn that this feeling has a scientific name and that they’re not alone, you can see the relief on their faces.

Impostor syndrome can be a powerful motivator, pushing us to work harder than others. But at what cost? First, part of your brain is always busy arguing with it, trying to get rid of it, or hiding from it. Second, if your brain decides, based on arbitrary criteria, that you haven’t had “enough” success, it activates the sympathetic nervous system and deactivates your creative abilities. Third, and most sadly, impostor syndrome keeps you from taking the risks necessary for revolutionary innovation.

Today, we finally have effective tools to deal with impostor syndrome. But even simply knowing how common these feelings are can help neutralize their impact and weaken their hold.

The root of impostor syndrome is the feeling that you’re not competent for a particular job, activity, or position-in our case, that you’re incapable of achieving a breakthrough.

This self-image is formally called self-perception. Simply put, self-perception is what we think about ourselves, our personality, abilities, and so on.

Once a person forms a self-image, there’s a strong tendency to maintain it, influenced by our impressions, memories, and what we’re willing to accept as true about ourselves. In other words, self-perception becomes self-preservation.

The most effective way to fight (and even completely get rid of) impostor syndrome is to change your self-perception.

Before moving on, here are two simple methods you can try to change the playing field so that impostor syndrome becomes irrelevant.

Method #1: Change the Label

Try calling the role you’re aiming for something else and see if there’s a term that better matches your current self-perception. For example, Olivia doesn’t consider herself a creative person. Clever-yes. Inventive-yes. She’s comfortable with those labels. But she’s not comfortable calling herself creative, because it doesn’t fit her self-perception. For her, “creative” refers to people who are deeply attuned to artistic intent-artists, musicians, actors. Creativity, to her, is something intangible and elusive. But with the self-image of being “clever and inventive,” she maintains the same creativity.

Method #2: Flip the Script

Ask yourself which elements of your experience (or lack thereof), personality, or past your impostor syndrome uses to make you feel like a fraud. Consider them one by one and turn them upside down.

  • “I’m too young for this job” becomes “My youth is a huge advantage because.” Maybe you’re better with new technology? More in tune with the client base? More willing to take risks?
  • “I’ve never worked in this field before. I’m not a specialist here” becomes “Not being a specialist is a big advantage because they already have plenty of specialists. I can bring a new perspective and use everything I’ve learned outside this field to solve problems.”

And so on.

“At Microsoft,” says Kevin Sauer, “impostor syndrome has a life of its own. One of our famous technologists blogs about what it’s like to be a fraud taking someone else’s place, and everyone keeps it in mind. Being a fraud has become almost cooler than not being one.”

To change your limiting self-perception, three quirks of your brain can help. Your brain isn’t good at:

  • Scale: Handling several small tasks can be as hard as one big one. Our brains aren’t naturally good at prioritizing, so you can use this to your advantage. This is the science of small wins. Harvard Business School’s Teresa Amabile found that even small wins can have a huge impact on a person’s inner state. “Many of the positive events participants described were just small steps forward. Yet they often triggered disproportionately positive reactions.”
  • Time: A vivid event from 30 years ago can feel as fresh as if it happened yesterday. What matters is how vivid and easy to recall it is, not how long ago it happened.
  • Distinguishing between imagined and real: as mentioned earlier.

The Science of Small Wins

Remember, scientific data shows that small wins are powerful. As Charles Duhigg describes, “an impact disproportionate to the achievements themselves.” Small wins fuel significant change by convincing people that bigger achievements are possible. For you, this means starting with steps so small they’re easy to accomplish, helping you build momentum.

Duhigg adds, “As a Cornell professor wrote in 1984, ‘small wins are a steady accumulation of small advantages. When a small win is achieved, forces are set in motion that favor another small win.’ Small wins create a pattern that convinces people that bigger achievements are also possible.”

Apparently, our brains don’t distinguish much between big and small successes. So your achievements don’t have to be huge, like cleaning the whole house. Even just wiping the bathroom sink can help you build momentum-if, and this is key, you feel like you’ve accomplished something.

Here’s how small wins can help you create a new self-perception. If you’ve lost touch with your inner creative genius, start with any small creative act, like giving your houseplants or objects around you nicknames-say, the copier is Philip. Then start making up stories about them. Philip is from Minnesota, loves football (“Go Blue!”), and so on. Accumulating lots of small wins can eventually lead to a big win and a new self-perception.

The Inner Critic

The inner critic is that annoying little voice in your head telling you that you did something wrong, your life is a failure, or any of the endless variations it can come up with. It’s especially dangerous because it’s perfectly designed to trigger the sympathetic nervous system and block our attempts to act.

A good way to know if your inner critic is active is to notice how often you hear the word “should” in your head. “I should have left earlier,” or “I should have practiced every day.” The inner critic makes you “should” yourself constantly.

Because internal attacks are perceived by our brains much like real, physical attacks, they can trigger an automatic physical “fight or flight” response.

Professional basketball and football players often taunt opponents to make them doubt their abilities. Michael Jordan was famous for this. Unfortunately, many of us taunt ourselves. We criticize ourselves, doubt our abilities, and trigger the threat response, which can negatively affect our ability to act.

As Dr. Philippe Goldin says, “When people miss work due to illness, their lack of productivity is obvious. But a more insidious productivity killer is when people are consumed by negative thoughts during the workday. Internal self-criticism can seriously limit innovation and creativity.” People may be physically present at work, but they’re stuck in a duel with their inner critic, unable to move forward. And because this mental absence is invisible, nothing is done about it.

Self-criticism is one of the most common obstacles to success in any field. We consider self-criticism and self-doubt the silent killers of business. Many top managers suffer from it, but few dare to talk about it.

Over the years, we’ve heard from all kinds of people-from junior assistants to top executives-admitting they spend most of their workday battling negativity, an army of inner critics pointing out disappointments, predicting failures, and beating the drums of despair. In some cases, they (and we) are amazed that we manage to get anything done at all. One top manager said he spends 80% of his work time fighting his inner critic.

“The fear of looking foolish or being judged is the flip side of our social consciousness.”

People know that self-doubt and self-criticism don’t help, but they can’t do anything about it. The vicious cycle can be broken by understanding the meaning of these reactions (“My body is reacting because it’s trying to protect me”) or by self-compassion (“Of course I’m reacting this way-this is scary”).

This is how the inner critic blocks breakthroughs. Imagine you’re thinking of a new way to run meetings. Your brain, with its built-in negative biases, starts imagining possible failures. You immediately picture others’ reactions to your failure. Your sense of shame and fear grows. You want to stay silent, run away, hide, and definitely not try this experiment in real life.

But what’s really happening? What you’re experiencing is your internal discomfort, triggered by your inner critic’s verdict about what others might think. But here’s the good news-it’s all happening in your head. And you can change this internal experience.

To unlock your breakthrough potential, you need to know how to rein in your inner critic. Unfortunately, our first reflex is to argue with it. And this is where methods like cognitive behavioral therapy, which encourage distancing yourself from your thoughts to gain objectivity, can backfire.

Trying to suppress thoughts can make things worse. But you can learn to dance with your shadow; to rein in your inner critic. By practicing the methods described here, you can move away from your inner negativity and maybe reach a point where your inner critic’s voice just makes you smile. We promise.

Who Are Your “Everyone”?

Dr. Martha Beck says she developed a close relationship with her inner critic thanks to three Harvard degrees (including a PhD in sociology), and explains that “each of us has an ‘everyone’ made up of a small number of people who matter to us. Our social nature makes us want to fit into a large group, but it’s hard to keep track of more than five or six people’s opinions in our heads. So we create a simplified method: we pick a few people’s opinions, fix them in our minds, and extrapolate that image until it covers the whole known universe. This not-so-accurate sample of people we define as ‘everyone’ is what psychologists call the ‘generalized other.'”

The tool Beck recommends to get rid of these limiting “everyones” in your mind is the most effective we know. Here’s how it works: find all the statements about creativity, innovation, and breakthroughs you’d like to apply to yourself and that could objectively be true.

  • I have a very capable brain. We guarantee this is true. Your brain processes millions of bits of information every second, and you don’t even notice.
  • I am naturally creative. Look at the lists and pictures you’ve put up on your walls. Remember the adventures you’ve invented for the objects around you.

And so on.

Create New “Everyones”

Because of our innate respect for authority, these encouraging positive “everyones” are most effective if they’re made up of people you admire. You can choose people who succeeded after many failures, like Lincoln, or those who enjoy success despite failing two out of three times, like Babe Ruth. For example, hang a photo of Babe Ruth on your wall with the caption:

Missed 6 out of 10 times. Greatest player of all time.

Sounds silly? Maybe. Effective? Absolutely.

Famous athletes are a great source of examples of imperfection: Michael Jordan missed 50% of his free throws, and Pele and Maradona, two of the greatest soccer players ever, scored on only 5% of their World Cup shots. Yes, 95% of their shots didn’t result in goals.

If you prefer non-sports examples, Tom Hanks himself said of his 100+ movies, “Seven or eight were good, another dozen were decent, and the rest were just awful.” And he’s one of the most famous Hollywood actors!

If you want respected business figures, here’s what legendary inventor James Dyson says about failure as a driver of success: “Before I succeeded with the vacuum cleaner, I made 5,127 prototypes. 5,126 of them failed. But I learned something from each failure. And finally, I found the solution.” Dyson spent 15 years making 5,126 failed models before creating the one that worked. The result: a multibillion-dollar company and a personal fortune estimated at $1.6 billion.

The Perfectionist

Perfectionism can show up as a nagging feeling that you never do enough, that you’re always behind, or that you’re not achieving what you “should.” The perfectionist makes you focus on what you haven’t done, on everything you’re not good at, instead of what you do well.

You think about all the books you “should” read, the exercises you “should” do, and so on. It’s an endless string of “should, should, should.” Like the inner critic, the perfectionist makes you “should” yourself constantly. But unlike the inner critic, the perfectionist focuses mainly on the goals and activities you’re not succeeding at, not your value as a person. It’s about what you do, not who you are.

Perfectionism can be related to social inhibition, but not always. Some people strive for perfection not because of what others might say, but for themselves. Some artists are perfectionists purely for the sake of art.

Perfectionism involves elements of control and pride: no one can ever read every book. No one can ever know everything. And even if someone did, it’s impossible to know what it all means and how it all connects. Like it or not, our abilities are limited. In her book “The Gifts of Imperfection,” shame researcher BrenοΏ½ Brown explains that perfectionism is addictive because when we feel shame or face judgment-which inevitably happens for various reasons-we think it’s our fault and blame our imperfections. Instead of questioning the false logic of perfectionism, we try even harder. In essence, shame and guilt fuel our desire to be perfect.

Perfectionist thinking assumes there’s some ideal goal to reach. Perfectionism marches toward that goal with only one acceptable outcome. On this march, there’s no time for rest, which the brain’s default mode network needs, or for mental openness, which would let you notice something new on the periphery and make a breakthrough.

Revolutionary thinking recognizes that we’re on a journey, involved in a process. The result might be a creative act or an unexpected obstacle. You have to remind yourself that this path isn’t a straight line, that it often leads somewhere you didn’t expect, and that doesn’t mean failure.

“Maximalism can easily get out of control, and you suddenly find yourself spending an hour polishing an email or social media post, or choosing laundry detergent at the store.”

Here are some tools to help you rein in your inner perfectionist. Using any one of them alone may not be enough, but together they can help you breathe easier and be quite effective.

  • Remember-what’s rare is valuable. Stamp collectors love “defective” stamps. Most of the world’s most expensive stamps have flaws. The Swedish “Yellow Treskilling” from 1855 (which should have been blue-green) recently sold for $2.3 million. The Mauritius “Post Office” stamp from 1847 (which said “post office” instead of the usual “post paid”) sold for $3.8 million. The defects made these stamps unique and therefore especially valuable-millions of dollars! When perfectionism rears its ugly head, remind yourself that any action you take, any “mistake,” is absolutely and always unique. That exact sequence of events will never happen again. This can help you see imperfections differently, since your brain automatically values rarity and treats it with care and pride.
  • Hang photos of people you admire on your wall, and add quotes encouraging imperfection that you make up yourself. Yes, the first time you write and read it, it may seem silly, but after about a week you’ll get used to it and start to see it as natural. Let someone you respect advise you to “aim for only 70% perfection. No more.”
  • If you know who gave you the mandate for perfection, write yourself a letter from them listing the downsides of perfectionism. The letter should include their apologies for convincing you to be perfect and say that from now on, you should be imperfect. Attach a photo with appropriate made-up quotes.

Maximalism

Maximalism is closely related to perfectionism; it creates a desire, drive, or even an irresistible urge for the “best” solution. It’s not so much about the ideal solution in an absolute, Platonic sense, but about the best possible solution compared to others. Maximalism is the urge to squeeze everything possible out of a situation.

In a way, the perfectionist is more idealistic, comparing everything to an internal standard of perfection, while the maximalist compares to an external standard: “Can someone make a better choice than me? Is there a better choice? Could an even better choice appear over time?”

Maximalism is rarely about social inhibition; it’s more about our internal drive to make the most of a situation. In this sense, it’s more like greed.

Maximalism isn’t as destructive as the inner critic or impostor syndrome, but it can still significantly hinder your ability to make breakthroughs. Yes, focusing on the maximum possible can help you make slightly better decisions. To some extent, it’s a useful tool for success. But maximalism can easily get out of control, and you suddenly find yourself spending an hour polishing an email or social media post, or choosing laundry detergent at the store.

Moreover, leading expert Barry Schwartz has found that maximalism also leads to:

  • Less satisfaction with decisions
  • Less joy from those decisions and their outcomes
  • Lower overall happiness in life

How can you rein in maximalism? Schwartz has several suggestions: for example, set limits in advance on how much maximizing you’ll allow yourself-limit the amount of research you do when choosing a product, or the time you spend calculating the optimal route, and so on.

Unfortunately, setting limits doesn’t work well for people with a strong tendency toward maximalism. Setting boundaries feels morally wrong, almost sacrilegious. If this sounds like you, try delegating or outsourcing your maximizing tendency instead.

For example, you can make a deal with yourself that if you find a product review online for something you want to buy, you’ll follow its recommendations. Organizations that provide such reviews specialize in the comparison and evaluation needed to make the best possible choice (which is the essence of maximalism). Their tests are extensive, detailed, and reliable, and the urge to read more reviews (especially from regular consumers) is simply irrational in this case. Agree with yourself to accept the amount of research and comparison done by these sites as sufficient.

One of our clients decided to rely on a few friends she considers “health nuts” for health products and new information. She decided to delegate her choices, since “they’re willing to spend hours digging into scientific articles and cross-references and keep up with the latest information so passionately and thoroughly that I could never keep up. So I’m perfectly happy to ask them for advice and follow it!”

Leave a Reply