Imposter Syndrome

Hey this is Alicyn. Welcome to the inaugural episode of Underwithheld - the podcast by accountants and for accountants where we talk about our ubiquitous professional and personal struggles. You are not alone.

This first episode will by necessity have just this one accountant. I’m going to be talking about our industry’s close and personal friend, Imposter Syndrome. What is Imposter Syndrome? Why might it be so prevalent among accountants and other professionals? I’ll also share with you some tools I use to help me work through my *own* Imposter Syndrome.

In case it needs to be said, I’m not a therapist. I’m not offering therapy. I also may say things that just don’t resonate with you and if so, that’s totally, cool. There’s nothing prescriptive here - it’s just me talking about an issue that I see as huge in our industry and I hope talking about it and sharing how I approach it will help someone else. If something sounds helpful to you here - cool. If not, just ignore it.

Welcome to the show.

What is Imposter Syndrome? It’s feeling like a fraud. It’s feeling not good enough. As if you are *less than*. As if you don’t belong. As if you’re not worthy. Imposter Syndrome is feeling as if your accomplishments are insufficient.

If Imposter Syndrome had a voice, it might sound like “someone *else* should be presenting this, not me”, “I don’t know enough to be talking about this”, “I don’t deserve this promotion”, “I’m not working hard enough”, “that person is *so* much smarter than I am. they know *so* much more than I do.”

I wonder - how many of us are moving through life feeling like we’re not good enough? Society often tells us we don’t belong. *Culture* often tells us we don’t belong. *Laws* often tell us we don’t belong. Sadly, some of our closest relationships are telling us we are less than. To me, it’s no wonder that we then turn around and tell this to ourselves. We do it so much, I wonder if we even know we're doing it when we’re doing it.

Feeling inadequate isn’t *unique* to the accounting profession, although I do see some aspects to our industry that come together to make it a perfect breeding ground for Imposter Syndrome:

1. In public accounting at least, we’re often encouraged to be perfectionists. For those already that way, this is the perfect professional home! For those who aren’t naturally this way, they may leave before they’ve had a chance to explore other options within the profession

2. Somewhat related is that we’re taught to be skeptics. As professionals, we’re taught to assume there’s something wrong with everything we look at - our clients’ situation needs a deeper dive, the data they’ve provided isn’t correct, draft deliverables from a staff must have errors, our own workproduct must be scrutinized for faulty logic. To be clear, there’s a line between healthy skepticism of inputs or output vs finding fault with the individuals involved. We *can actually* look at our work product with health skepticism, find a mistake, and say “the tax return I prepared has an error” without saying “*I am an error”.* But *that* difference *isn’t* something our industry teaches us. If your experience is anything like mine, you have found these two things are often inappropriately correlated.

3. We’re competitive. We are competitive with other professionals outside of our firms. We are competitive within our firms, even. More and more, I find myself among peers who choose collaboration over competitiveness, however the competition mindset is still here in the very foundations of the accounting industry as its how many of us currently practicing “grew up” in the profession. With this atmosphere of competition, what we’re expecting is that when we ‘put ourselves out there’ we’re going to be verbally attacked. And, sadly, often, we’re right. I have seen it; I have it experienced it.

I do want to share some anti-Imposter Syndrome tools with you, but first some thoughts on what this does to us as individuals and as professionals.

If Imposter Syndrome were a tree, it would have deep, strong roots and its fruit would be rotten and we would eat it all the same. Feeling like we’re not worthy, like our accomplishments aren’t good enough - it’s so draining. It’s exhausting. It consumes emotional energy that could be used for greater purposes. It robs of us of enthusiasm for things we are passionate about. It keeps us frozen. It keeps us small.

Our family, our friends, our colleagues, our clients - they don’t want us to be frozen or small. The people that we care about need us. They need us to show up for them. Counterintuitively, even when *they’re the ones who* are contributing factors, they still need us to be big. For me professionally, my lowest points with Imposter Syndrome have been not doing more to talk clients out of bad deals thinking maybe I just wasn’t smart enough to know what they were getting into. On a personal side, my lowest point was many years ago not showing up for someone because I was too busy trying to not be noticed and not be verbally attacked. That person isn’t here anymore and I often wonder if things might have been different if I had chosen to be big for them rather than stay small for the sake of my ego.

Antidotes for Imposter Syndrome include empathy, kindness, understanding. Grace. These are all easier said than done. I haven’t found just *wishing* myself to be more understanding of my errors to help me move past self-doubt. Pep talk like “you got this” or “it could have been worse” - yeah, that’s never helped me with insecurities, either.

What *has* helped me is not necessarily trying to *feel* differently, but instead *do* things differently and then let the change in feeling appear on its own time. First the doing, then the feeling. In that doing over time, I have found that I feel less and less like an imposter who’s not good enough and hasn’t earned the right to be *wherever* and more and more like I’m good on my path and that I belong.

We’ll take a quick break and I’ll talk more about all that.

Here are just a few of the things I *do* that have helped me get where I am and I think will continue to help me get wherever I’m headed. Like I said earlier, if you find something useful here that you want to give a try, awesome! If not, it’s just a podcast and you can just ignore it. I’m not trying to “correct” or “fix” anyone - only sharing for maybe just that one person who finds something valuable in all this. For those of us who experience it, Imposter Syndrome is rooted so deeply and likely baked in with so much other mental and emotional baggage that it would be a Pollyanna oversimplification to say “here do this and you’ll be FINE”. So no “fixes” here, just some ideas that have helped me and might help someone listening.

1. This is my FAV - it’s a praise folder. Years ago, a colleague of mine shared with me that he kept a folder filled with times when a manager, partner, or client would say how much they appreciated him, kudos for a job well done, etc. He used it as a raise-negotiating tool which I thought was pretty clever. I started doing the same. My praise folder goes back years. Not necessarily every time, but often when I get a note of thanks, I’ll stick it in the praise folder and then look back at it when I’m having a down day. It is really hard to feel not good enough when I see how much something I did meant to someone. If this idea resonates with you, start your own praise folder and let me know how it goes!

2. This one is a bonus that I’m going to give to you now. *Give someone something to put in THEIR praise folder.* When you say thank you to someone in a way that is honest, warm, and specific to the situation *and* they receive it in the way you intended, you’re showing up for them, you’re connecting with them. Imposter syndrome cannot thrive in connection. I know I don’t know you and I don’t know what’s going on in your life. But I do know this: there is someone that you could connect in this way with right now. If you’re able, give them something to put in their praise folder.

3. Turn your to-do list into a ta-da list. We’re accountants. We love lists and we love checking things off our lists. When you check things off - don’t just get rid of them. Actually move them to a ta-da list. Not only this practical so that you don’t find yourself again trying to do something you’ve already done (did I check out that software already or not?), this gives you a clear, objective look at your accomplishments. And if you already have a ta-da list, check it out if it’s been awhile.

There are two more tools that I’ll share with you. They’re similar. They involve word choice, saying something differently than you might ordinarily.

1. Word replacement #1 - find ways you can replace the word “should” with the word “could”. We often see options as binary and mutually exclusive. Simply changing the word “should” with the word “could” opens you up to bigger thinking. Let me give you an low-stakes example. “I *should* do this podcast.” vs “I *could* do this podcast.” Let’s say I tell myself “I *should* do this podcast.” Now imagine how I might feel when what actually happens is that I don’t make a podcast? I might feel like I haven’t lived up to my own expectations, that I can’t meet goals, that I’m a failure. But instead if I say “I *could* do this podcast”, that feels more like opening a door of possibilities. “Yeah, I *could* do this podcast, but I could also start a YT channel or I could also read a book or I could also go to bed early.” And then I’ve opened myself up to analyze the pros and cons of various options rather than setting myself up to feel bad if I later decide a podcast isn’t for me. If this sounds as radical to you as it did to me when I first started doing it, go slowly.

2. Word replacement #2 - consider replacing “I’m sorry” with “excuse me”. Have you truly wronged someone? If yes, then apologize. If instead, you’re interrupting them consider saying “excuse me” rather than “I’m sorry”. “I’m sorry” both puts you in a position of inferiority *and* devalues your contribution before you’ve even gotten to the meat of your sentence. If someone interrupted your conversation to tell you you’ve won the lottery, would it not be odd for them to start “I’m sorry, but…”? I wonder, too, if it doesn’t do something to our self-esteem to consistently here ourselves say “I’m sorry” when we haven’t done anything hurtful. It may be polite to say “excuse me” when interrupting someone/something, but consider reserving “I’m sorry” for when you’ve actually caused injury.

That’s a wrap, my friends. Reach out, let me know what you think. I appreciate you listening in to this first episode of Underwithheld - the podcast by accountants and for accountants where we talk about our ubiquitous professional and personal struggles. You are not alone.