Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Jul 26

The joy of starting any new venture or learning a new skill can quickly turn into fear. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of being an imposter.

For me, this came suddenly after my wife Ren and I went solo and started selling websites to clients. Initially, I jumped into this website building world and thought I was pretty good at it. But I quickly realized how much I didn’t know. Especially when clients started having more specific and unique requests - “Can I make the logo different on this page?”, “Can we have a portal for our clients to access their project information?”, “Can we make the text a different color only in this one spot?”

It really started to give me impostor syndrome. How could I really call myself a developer or website designer if I constantly told people “no, we can’t do that” or “no Squarespace doesn’t allow that”. These seemed like reasonable enough requests for them to ask, and I just wasn’t good enough to accomplish them.

And I know this is not just me. That feeling of “not good enough” is so pervasive in our culture, and in life in general. It shows up not only in skills-building, but in relationships too. I guess it’s part of what it means to be human.

On thing that’s helped me move past this feeling when it comes to my work is reframing what it means to be an “expert” - or a non-imposter.

First, being an expert is relative. You don’t need to be the utmost authority in web design to be considered an expert by your client. The smartest person you know might be smart standing next to you, but isn’t so smart standing next to Albert Einstein. Likewise, you might not feel like an expert when you’re immersed in your field, but you probably still are an expert compared to your client.

Second, being an expert means you have the curiosity to figure things out. This is especially true in the web design community where design trends, automation platforms, and even website builders, like Squarespace, are changing rapidly. Remember, for most people this amount of change is hard to keep up with, and most people shouldn’t be expected to. In my opinion, a web design expert, in part, maintains a curiosity around online things and internet stuff so their client doesn’t have to.

Lastly, a little bit of impostor syndrome can be healthy. If you’re constantly feeling a little “less than” in your field, it probably means you’ve surrounded yourself with people who know more than you. That’s not a bad place to be! It means you’re curious and want to do better and learn more. And the occasional feeling of not quite knowing what you’re doing can push you to get your skillset to the next level. The problem is less that you don’t feel adequate, and more that you’re not balancing that feeling by reflecting back on how far you’ve come, and re-affirming what you do know and are already good at.

Here’s a silly little visual: