imposter syndrome

Who let me in here? How did I get where I am?  Why do I deserve this?  What if I … (fill in the blank – forget my lines, play a wrong note, say something stupid in a meeting … You get the idea.)

We all have these thoughts.  We all wonder how we got any of our successes – and if we deserve them.  We all dwell on the one negative comment, and forget about all positive ones.   It’s human nature.  And it’s called Impostor Syndrome.

How do we combat this?  I don’t know about you, but when I see extremely talented and successful people admit to feeling this way, it kind of makes me feel better.  After all – if someone as successful as David Tennant deals with this sort of thing on a regular basis, who am I to deny my own feelings of inadequacy?

Enter – Off Camera, with Sam Jones.  He has some remarkably candid conversations with some very successful people and lots of interesting perspectives on what we all deal with.  Ultimately, these people are just like us.  And just like us, their brains can play tricks on them.

Here’s a small sample of Sam’s interview with David Tennant.  And besides wanting to give the man a hug, I found a lot of what he said to be fascinating.  For instance, he reveals that he actually improvised during a performance of Romeo & Juliette (while playing Romeo) – and it turns out, no one noticed.  Isn’t that interesting.

The audience was full of theater critics that had probably seen that play a hundred times or more – and no one noticed.  Lesson learned.  If you don’t draw attention to it, and your audience is entertained, it’s likely they won’t notice a mistake either. This can apply to a bunch of different things such as live music performances, business presentations, even keynote speeches.  We’re all human.  We all make mistakes.  It’s what we do after we’ve made them, that demonstrates who we are.

This sample of David Tennant’s interview definitely shows who he is.  And if you want to view more of these candid interviews, there’s more on Netflix (3 seasons of it, in fact).