Imposter syndrome has a particular trick. It keeps your eyes glued to everything you haven’t done yet, while every single thing you have done quietly slides out of view. We’re wired that way. Negativity bias means we default to shortcomings, gaps and failures, and rarely to the wins.
We see this constantly with the people we work with, whether they’re PhD students, academics, or professionals well into their careers. Someone will list off three genuine achievements from the past month and then say, almost as an aside, that they still feel like they don’t deserve to be where they are. The achievements don’t register as evidence. The doubt does.
Building a record against imposter syndrome
The fix we suggest is simple: track your successes as you go. Every skill learned, every hurdle cleared, write it down. Not to be smug about it, just to have the evidence. Some people call this a ‘remarkable’ group, and you can run it with a friend, a peer, your partner, or just keep it private on your own.
The point is to build a record of the things you feel proud of, proof of something your imposter brain will never volunteer on its own: that you are learning, improving, and doing the kind of things you actually want to be doing. It’s a similar idea to what we wrote about in Stop Self-Judgment From Sabotaging Your Business Success, where the harshest verdicts we pass on ourselves are rarely based on the full picture.
That habit can shift you into a growth mindset, and it gives you something concrete to scroll through when you need reminding of exactly who you are and what you’ve done.
If imposter syndrome is something you’d like support with, coaching with us is one way to work through it.
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