Impostor syndrome – surprising news

With 2 Number 1 albums, 7 Grammys and 104m followers on Instagram it’s clear that Billie Eilish is smashing it – wouldn’t it feel great to be as confident as she must feel as she headlined Glastonbury 2022 alongside Paul McCartney and Kendrick Lamar?

The thing is, in an interview with NME magazine, just 2 days before her iconic Glastonbury performance, Billie said:

“I often feel like I don’t deserve to be here right now, doing this show on this stage” … she continues…"I have to convince myself that I am not a huge loser and accidentally there… I find it very hard to process this life sometimes"

And yet…Billie owned that electrifying, unique headline performance. With a beaming smile throughout, her stunning iconic set on the pyramid stage at Glastonbury made her the festival’s youngest ever solo headliner

How incredible that this hugely brave and talented young woman reveals so openly that she suffers from impostor syndrome

Impostor syndrome is a fear that our capabilities will be exposed as a “deception’, believing that any success is due to luck or chance and that at any minute the deception will be exposed, and people will see us for what we really are

In a new study in Personality and Individual Differences psychologists from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) demonstrate for the first time that even under real-life conditions impostor syndrome can occur regardless of intelligence, gender, and age.

“A healthy amount of reflection and self-doubt can protect a person from acting rash,”

says Kay Brauer from the Institute of Psychology at MLU. However, some people are permanently restricted by deep self-doubt despite, like Billie, achieving external success, such as getting excellent grades, or achieving outstanding results at work 

“They think that all of their successes are not a product of their skill or hard work, instead they attribute their own successes to external circumstances, for example to luck and chance, or believe that their performance is massively overestimated by others. Failures, on the other hand, are always internalised, as the result of their own shortcomings,”

explains Brauer. So what can we do if we too – are successful on the outside, yet feel wonky on the inside?

What we can actually do is Choose Confidence. Choosing Confidence is about learning how to gain self-assurance, poise and self-belief. Learning how to trust yourself and know you are enough. For someone to consistently and confidently Choose Confidence requires a shift in their beliefs, behaviours and mind-sets and is an on-going process

We call these beliefs, behaviours and mind-sets Releasing practices. The Releasing practices provide us with more detail and help us to appreciate the beliefs, behaviours and mind-sets of Choosing Confidence. Putting these into practice daily will enable you to consistently and purposefully ditch impostor syndrome and Choose Confidence – as Eleanor Roosevelt said,

“No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent”

So, let’s stop feeling inferior, feeling like impostors, and start Choosing Confidence! 

At Progressfull, we have an Upskill (our name for a course or masterclass) which will help you to start appreciating the beliefs, behaviours and mind-sets that will release you to progress further by consistently and purposefully applying the principle of Choosing Confidence

You can discover more about our Choosing Confidence Upskill here