Feeling Like an Imposter? | by Aysha Ali
Feeling like an imposter at work may be a familiar feeling. From criticising yourself more than your colleagues do to having exceptionally high expectations for yourself. Sounds like you? These are just a fraction of things that over 55% of workers in the UK, apprentices and non-apprentices alike, experience regularly.
As I’m still struggling with feelings like this myself I’m here to tell you that you are not alone! Here are some tips that I use that help me to overcome feeling like an imposter at work:
Have open conversations.
As scary as this sounds the first tip is to just be honest with how you’re feeling and have open conversations. You will be surprised about how many of your colleagues, family and friends completely understand and have been in your shoes. Talking to your colleagues can be very reassuring as you can get honest feedback on how you are doing. From my experience, the feedback from your colleagues will be constructive and positioned in a way that will help you to progress.
Having open conversations includes talking to yourself. Acknowledging your thoughts can be the first step to understanding them. Taking some you time when these thoughts occur can also build or rebuild the relationship that you have with yourself, becoming your own friend can remind you about why your negative thoughts are untrue.
Become comfortable with the worst-case scenario.
Have you ever considered following your thoughts down the rabbit hole of what if? “What if I’m not capable enough?” might lead to “What if I get fired?!”. My initial instinct when these thoughts popped up was to try not think about them and push them away. This would only make them linger throughout the day and eventually cause me to feel exhausted.
What if the worst-case scenario came true? Would my whole world end? The answer is always a no. Life has a funny way of simply working itself out. There will always be possibilities for plan A, B, C down to Z. Being comfortable with the worst-case scenario made me enjoy my work more. I was not doing my work to prevent the worst-case scenario; I was doing my work because I loved it!
Take short breaks.
Feeling like an imposter may cause you to push yourself into more work. Saying yes to absolutely everything and not being able to balance your time. I have often found that taking things slowly and taking a learning approach over a doing approach has made the quality of my work better. Remember that you are always still learning. You will be surprised about how much you can do by taking things slowly and taking short breaks where you need to. Even if it is a short snack break or spending a couple of minutes outdoors.
Everyone has a different way of coping with these complex thoughts and this is what has worked for me. I hope that this article is helpful to those reading and I wish you the best of luck.
Aysha Ali is an Advanced Data Fellowship apprentice at Trainline PLC and has written for the Apprentice Lens.