Writing with Impostor Syndrome: On Why You are Enough

I have not been on this earth very long, but I know what it is like to not feel good enough; to feel as though your work pales in comparison to your peers, to wonder who you tricked into letting you enter a space, or to have found an answer but lacked the confidence to suggest it. I have known wrong answers, poor test scores, and sleepless nights spent pouring my soul into something only to have someone you admire say, “I’ve seen better writing from you.” However, I have also known thought provoking replies and the smile on someone’s face that arises when they consider something they never have. So, naturally, the question arises, “how can we always be the best?” How do we consistently inspire others, how do we ace every exam, how do we turn in thought provoking papers that challenge the status quo?

Undoubtedly, the answer is we cannot. And that is okay! To always be right, or thought provoking, or outstanding would surely be exhausting. Perhaps sometimes our work will be just that: work. Maybe we will spend hours researching and writing, revising, and editing, for someone to gloss over it once and check off a grade in a gradebook. In considering this possibility, we open ourselves up to the idea that it is not the product that matters, but the skills we hone along the way. Of course, we strive to create something that lasts, that inspires, but if it does not, we need to be able to start over again.

So, we must practice our writing. To write is to create. We must write incorrectly, or with big letters; we must write down things we would be embarrassed to say out loud. It is imperative we write something, even if we only write for ten minutes. We must create bad work. But be careful! The bad work will cast its reflection on us if we let it. Remember that we are not our work. We must leave behind the tortuous thoughts of if what we create is good enough and ask ourselves how it can be better. The worry behind impostor syndrome is that our work, and more importantly ourselves, will never be good enough. The truth is we are already good enough.

Furthermore, even Buddhist monks who have attained enlightenment do not pretend they are impervious to these same disheartening thoughts; but they have accepted these parts of themselves as extensions of their humanity. Enlightenment is not an explosion of epiphany in which the universe’s secrets reveal themselves to you; it is you, right now as you are, sitting wherever you happen to be reading this. Some monks spend lifetimes pondering how to be Buddha-like and fail to realize they were already the Buddha. In the same way, we spend lifetimes searching for reassurances that we are good enough, when the truth is we have always been good enough.