How can I tell the difference between healthily challenging myself, and just feeding my ego?
As someone who has suffered from almost lifelong Imposter Syndrome, I feel as if I have to be especially careful when presenting myself with personal and professional challenges.
You see, until around ten years ago, I had lived most of my adult life feeling as if I was just on the verge of being unmasked as a fraud; like someone was going to walk into the room any minute, take one look at me and say “hey wait a second…what the hell are you doing here?!”
Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time in therapy understanding my programming, unpicking those feelings of unworthiness and offering myself compassion, as well as the reassurance that “I am enough”.
My need to perform and ‘be seen to be doing well’, was something that cropped up for me again and again though, and for a really long time all I did was notice it, and silently tell myself “it’s ok, you don’t need to do any of that stuff any more”.
Lately though, I’ve begun to wonder how I tell the difference between choosing to doing something because it seems ‘impressive’, or because it might lead to actual personal growth.
If I were my own client, my answer to that question would probably be a pretty simple one. I’d ask if it felt like a ‘should’ or a ‘want’.
Does the thing I’m thinking about doing feel like something I should want to do, because it ticks all the boxes of prestige, admiration, financial gain? Does it feel like something I’d want to tell people about, so I can blush and maybe preen a little and say ‘oh no, it was nothing’?
Or does the thing feel like something I want to do, because I’m excited and happy at just the thought of it, fizzy with anticipation and curiosity and filled with thoughts of ‘I wonder if…!’ In other words, am I less concerned about financial gain and kudos, and just genuinely *jazzed* about the prospect of whatever’s going to happen?
When I lay it out like that, it seems like a pretty binary choice:
Should = Bad
Want = Good
But what if my core programming, the thing that kept me behind a mask for most of my life, is still interfering in my ability to make the right choices for myself?
What if my internal barometer is now so very faulty, that I don’t *want* what is best for me? Only what is safe.
I heard David Bowie say something in a documentary many years ago that‘s been coming back to me a lot of late:
“If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in.
Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”
I don’t want to believe he’s right about this, but I horribly suspect he is. I think maybe that’s why I keep coming back to that quote again and again, ever since I first heard it. I don’t want to believe it because I like feeling safe and comfortable, it’s still kind of a new feeling for me, along with the being kind and compassionate to myself, and feeling like I don’t need to impress or perform for anyone.
I go back and forth between the idea of being ‘brave’ and the idea of being ‘enough’, and I still can’t quite figure out where the Venn Diagram crosses. Do I want to be brave? Do I want to — to quote Glennon Doyle — ‘do hard things’, or just things I know that I am capable of, that I’m confident I will not fail at. And is that ok? Does that make me something other than brave? Does that make me a coward, or just content to be what I am?
I’m still trying to figure this one out, and I have the feeling that 2023 — if it’s anything like as challenging as 2022 — is going to be helping me with that task.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
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Law Turley is a BACP Registered Integrative Therapist and Certified Radical Honesty Trainer living and working in the south west of the UK.
