Finding Confidence Amid Self-Doubt: A Discussion on Imposter Syndrome and Dunning-Kruger Effect
Do you feel like you should not be in the room? I had imposter syndrome for years without a name for it, and hearing that Richard Branson has it too undid most of it.
Do you feel like you should not be in the room? I had imposter syndrome for years without a name for it, and hearing that Richard Branson has it too undid most of it.
When I sit with other councillors and other mayors, the voice says I am not intelligent enough to be there. Then there is the opposite, the Dunning Kruger side, where you know a little and overestimate wildly. I have done both, plenty of times. Anybody genuine has the self doubt. The difference is whether you say it out loud to somebody.
One thing to try: Tell one person the self doubt. Not to be fixed. Just to have said it to somebody.
In this episode
(0:03) Imposter syndrome, and overcoming it almost instantly
(2:28) Dunning Kruger, and how it sits alongside it
(4:41) Sitting with other councillors and other mayors
(6:31) Hearing that Richard Branson has the same fear
(9:12) Overestimating yourself when you are the expert
(13:12) Being totally dismissive of it in my twenties
(17:36) Knowing what really goes on in my own head
(21:47) Share it. Not to be fixed, just to be heard
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
What do you do about the feeling that you should not be in the room?
I sit with other councillors, and with other mayors, and a voice says I am not intelligent enough to be there. When people said I did a good job as mayor I said nobody else wanted to do it. I was joking. The voice was not.
The heart of it
Imposter syndrome doubts what you have actually done. The Dunning Kruger effect is confident about what you have not.
Everybody sits on both ends of that scale, and which end depends on the day.
You do not get over it. You get a better relationship with the voice.
The tells are worth knowing. Fear of failing. Perfectionism, which is procrastination wearing a suit. Waving away every compliment. And the odd one nobody expects, fear of succeeding, because then the light comes on and everybody sees what you are.
I had it for years without a name for it. What loosened it was hearing that Richard Branson has it too.
The opposite end is where I lived as a teenager, certain I knew everything. Now I only think I know everything about three times a day rather than twenty. The phrases give it away. I do not need any help. It is not that hard. Anybody could do it.
The moment it broke for me was eight months into being mayor. I was put on a panel at a climate conference between a professor from Exeter and two people who genuinely knew the field. Eighty people in the room. The first question came, and it came to me first, which was not the plan.
I said what I actually thought. I have never met anybody who does not want cleaner air, more trees and a healthier place to live. So let us build that, because nobody argues with it, rather than keep arguing about whether the science is real.
I thought it was a wishy washy answer. Then the microphone went to the professor.
Exactly what he just said.
In that moment I thought, perhaps I do have a place here.
And to be clear about the other half of it. People tell me I have no ego. I have an ego the size of this planet, and it is why I ended up on the council at all. That is probably why I need the practice so badly.
One small thing to try
Write a list of your achievements, and start lower than feels reasonable.
I survived primary school. I survived my first swimming lesson. I got a C in maths. All of it goes down. Then read it back. Mine made me cry, and I had not expected that.
Then tell one person about the self doubt. Say up front that you do not want fixing, you just want to say it to somebody. That alone takes a surprising amount out of it.
Questions people ask
Will imposter syndrome ever go away?
Not in my experience, and I would be suspicious of anybody genuine who said theirs had. Mine still speaks up. I just say hello to it now, thank it for looking after me, and go anyway.
What if I have the other one?
Then there is not much I can offer you, because you already know it all. That is only half a joke. The tell is how you take criticism, and if the answer is dismissively, that is your end of the scale.
Can you have both?
Yes, and most of us do. Catch me on a sunny confident day and I will overestimate myself happily. Catch me on a flat one and I do not deserve the chair I am sitting in.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
confidence · self-worth · overthinking
Read the transcript
So welcome to this week's podcast. I want to talk about imposter syndrome. Something that I had no idea I
suffered from massively, but I overcame it almost instantly at one given moment.
And I had no idea it was about to happen. I'm going to share that story shortly. But before that,
Let's get on with the introductions. And I want to say a little thank you to a few people that
have bought me a coffee this week.
So to a someone and a someone, thank you very much to you two. Thank you to Paula. Thank you
to Mia. You guys are absolutely awesome and I'm humbled by it. Thank you very much. And it really does
help make a difference. The actual money goes towards, The hosting of the podcast and the hosting of my other
podcast, inner Peace Meditations, and I'm releasing a new podcast in about eight
weeks. I'm super excited about this. It won't change this podcast. It won't change the Inner Peace Meditations podcast,
and it's something I think you guys are going to absolutely love. It's going to complement these two
podcasts. But I'm not going to say any more about that right now. I'm just super, super excited. So
thank you very much to you guys that treat me to a coffee. That's where your money goes, to the
editing, to the equipment, and to the hosting of these podcasts. The more popular they get, the more you share
it, and the more people we reach and the more people we help. It really is. And I say we
deliberately because you guys been part of it. The emails you send me, the ideas you give me for the
shows, you guys make it so much more deeper and so much more satisfying and I love you guys. Thank
you very much for all of the support. So yes. Anyway, let's move on to today's show.
We're talking today about imposter syndrome, and I'm going to talk about effectively the opposite to imposter syndrome,
the dunning-kruger effect So because they kind of go together on the opposite side. Very often we talk about love
and hate, although they're not opposites. The opposite to love is fear, ironically, but we often see
it as polar opposites. So Dunning Kruger is not necessarily the opposite to imposter syndrome, but it is certainly
on the same scale somewhere, or so I'm not a psychiatrist, but I, I think, I think you'll understand by
the end of this podcast what they are, and we all suffer from. These in some way I'm not just
talking about professional people. When we talk about imposter syndrome or the dunning-kruger effect we're all human. We all suffer
from these things, and we all fluctuate in and out of them at times. You know, I suffer from the
dunning-kruger effect especially in my teenage years where I thought I knew everything, and now sometimes I only think I
know everything about three times a day. As opposed to 20 times a day as a teenager. And I suffer
from imposter syndrome more often now than I did as a teenager, but it's less than, it doesn't hold
me back so much because I recognise it now. It's not something that you suddenly completely get over, but it's
something you recognise and you go oh hi I recognise that voice that's first of all, what is imposter syndrome?
Well, imposter syndrome is, it's a psychological pattern in which individuals doubt their
accomplishments. You don't believe that whatever you achieved, really, you did it. You
think it was somebody else and you just got a good memory, or you know, it was a lucky day,
or I happened to win that race because they were having an off day. And it was like when I
got elected on the council, it's like, yeah, they didn't really want me, nobody else wanted to do it. And
I still say that now about the mayor when they, I was on the BBC radio yesterday and Justin Lee
said. How come you done two years I just looked up and said, yeah, nobody else wanted to do it.
So that little voice, although I was joking, that little voice is there still. We basically
don't think we're capable. We don't think we're intelligent enough. We don't think we should be in the room. So
when I sit there with other councillors, when I sit there amongst other mayors, I just don't think I deserve
a place in the room. So how does imposter syndrome really manifest itself? How does it show? Well,
we're constantly fearing failure. We want to run away. We don't want to do it because we don't think we'll
achieve it. We think we'll let people down and. We also want to become a perfectionist.
We want to make sure we cannot release it into this Absolutely. Perfect. It has to be perfect. So really
we're procrastinating We're. Totally not leaning into it because we worry about what people
will say. We worry about what others say. So
if other people's opinion is stopping us from doing these things, then we're allowing them to have too much influence.
Another thing we do is we discount our successes. So someone comes along and says, you've done a really good
job of that and you go, yeah, yeah, no, I didn't really, there were there's so many things I could
have done better. There's so many things I could have improved and no, someone else would have done a better
job than me. So there's that. And then the other way that is not, it's very huge, but it's more
subtle as well, is that fear of success. The worry that you're going to succeed and you're going to be
shot the light is going to be shone on you and everybody's going to see exactly what you are. Everybody's
going to see how awesome you are. Wait a minute, but you're not awesome are you
So that fear that the world's gonna suddenly see that you're that imposter, you're not really there. Well,
I think everybody that has a genuine, authentic side to them fears that, and
when I heard Richard Branson has that fear, and
Alexander Cortez and all of those they have that fear as well. I've just bit my tongue. That hurt. I'm
back and I'm okay. I'm going to survive. I think definitely survived long enough to finish this podcast, but
boy did that hurt. I don't know if you noticed it when I was talking. Then I said, I said
a name and I bit my tongue I was like ow. Anyway, God done that hurt. Wow. I
suppose if it didn't hurt, we would bite our tongue all the time. Wouldn't we
Make sense? But the other way it manifests itself is over compensation We really
work really, really hard and we're trying to convince people all the time of how we got there and what
we did to get there. And our qualifications we're having to re-emphasize it all the time, which really, we're not
talking to them, we're talking to ourselves. And I can think of a person that ironically suffers from imposter syndrome,
but he's over Over compensated with confidence and that's Donald Trump, he's still trying to convince his father
that he's a successful person, then okay, you can define success, you know. He became the
president of the United States, and in the scheme of politics and the hierarchy, that is pretty successful. What you
do with it is a different story. I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about the actions. I'm talking
purely about the achievements of getting elected and doing that at the moment. So and This is why he
overcompensates about the next election fraud and all those other things. And he's got to tell everyone because he cannot
face the real reality because he has, he has a real mix of the dunning-kruger effect and
imposter syndrome It's crazy, isn't it? It's really quite interesting actually. I'm sure psychiatrists are going to be analyzing Donald
Trump for like the next 2 000 years So I spoke a bit about imposter syndrome. Let's talk
about the dunning-kruger effect the dunning-kruger effect is, The opposite where you think
you you're qualified you think you have all the qualifications, you know all about it. You don't need to listen
to anybody you already know you're already clever enough. You don't even need to read any books about it because
you already have that knowledge. You did it at school. When you're the expert in it, you know, you overestimate
your abilities. And I do that sometimes on certain things. I do it. So it's not
black and white. Nothing's black and white. You know, everything has gray areas and you catch me on a really
confident day and I'm feeling really good and the sun's out, I'm gonna, I may have that effect on me
rather than the imposter syndrome, but you give me a day that I'm not feeling too good and it'll be
imposter syndrome that I'm suffering with. So, What I'm trying to point out is it's not black and white. It's
not. We sit in this chair, and we stay in that chair constantly. So going back to the dumbing
kruger effects you know, the feelings of there is overconfidence. The learning attitude is that they may not recognise they
need improvement. The
attitude toward task that they may take on tasks that are beyond their capability. Whereas someone
with imposter syndrome, they may hesitate to take on the task with fear of failure. The learning attitude of
an imposter syndrome is constantly seeking to learn and improve. You
know, feelings, anxiety and self-doubt. Whereas feelings of a dunning-kruger effect is overconfidence. You
know the reaction to criticism. You can guess which one this one is. Reaction to criticism, often. Dismissive or defensive.
That's
the dunning-kruger effect Reaction to criticism may take it to heart and dwell on it. That's
imposter syndrome. That's really interesting actually. I thought it would have been the other way around, but I guess it
does make sense and
some of the phrases you might recognise when you're around people that may use these phrases or when you, you
use these phrases, and I think I've used every single one of these phrases on both sides at least a
hundred times in my life. You know the dunning-kruger effect I don't need any help. I've got this. It's not
that hard. Anybody could do it. I don't see why they don't understand. It's simple. I
know more than enough to handle this. They don't know what they're talking about. I'm right. They're all the dunning-kruger
effect and I've said all that Imposter syndrome. I must have just got lucky. I
don't deserve this success. I feel like a fraud. They
must have made a mistake in choosing me. I
don't know why they think I'm so competent. And
I've used those phrases or similar
And especially coming out of my marriage ship I people often say, you've done a brilliant job. I'm like, not
really. I don't know what I've done.
So it's really interesting and my story of when I overcame the imposter syndrome was,
it was about eight months into my first year of mayorship and I was invited to a climate change
conference locally. And I'm not an expert in climate change. I'm not an expert in weather and climate patterns.
And all I know is climate change is pretty real we're learning a lot about it, and we have to
do something about it.
That's the depth of my knowledge and I want to live in a healthy, clean society. That's the depth of
my knowledge. That's where I bow down to the experts. The people that have studied it for
decades, they know what they're talking about because they've studied it. So who am I to know? However, in my
20s I was totally dismissive of it. I thought it was a religion to make money out of people and
I thought it was complete rubbish, I used to repeat the sentence. Yeah, well, the earth used to warm up
and cool down six seven thousand years ago. What's the difference now? There ain't no four by fours back then.
Then I realised when it was pointed out to me in my 30s that yeah, it didn't heat up by
two degrees in the space of 60 years. It took six or seven thousand years to do it.
We've done it in a short time. Anyway, that's the facts about climate change. Get back to the conference. So
I was there at the conference in the afternoon and I was one of the ones to be on stage
as one of the panel. And I say panel because I don't want to say experts because I certainly wasn't.
So I was on this panel with three other experts, or three experts of me, and I was on the
right, right next to me, was a professor from exeter University on climate change. Right next to him was a
local business person that was A Ceo and a trustee of a really big company
locally when it comes to, and I'm deliberately not saying their name I don't know why I'm not saying their
name anyway, but really quite well known locally in the sustainable world, and
right next to him was somebody else similar and they really knew their stuff. And it went to the audience.
The first question came up and it turned around and said,
so climate change is a real decisive
thing among the public. And how do you envisage the future when we cannot even agree that climate
change is real or not real at the moment? And I thought, okay, it'll come to me last. They'll never
come to me first on this. So they came straight to me.
And it's like, oh, so I've got the mic here. I've got like 80 people sat there listening to my
reply and
I just said, do you know what?
We live in a world that I've not spoken to one person that doesn't want to live in a happier,
healthier, friendly,
clean environment. Everybody wants to live with more nature, more trees. Nobody wants to sit
behind a gas guzzling car. Everybody prefers cleaner energy. So
we need to work out how to do that rather than keep having the debate whether it's real or not.
We need to move on from that and just work towards a nice, healthier lifestyle because
nobody disagrees with that.
And I thought that's just a wishy-washy answer. And then they went to the Professor of climate Change right next
to me. They put the mic to him and he looked up and goes exactly what he just said. And
in that moment I thought, do you know what? Perhaps I do have a place here.
Perhaps I do know something.
And although I don't totally think that I'm over my imposter syndrome because I don't think anybody will ever get
over it, that is genuine and authentic. And although I don't think I'm genuine and authentic entirely because I know
what goes on inside of my head, you know I've got the inside knowledge of what goes on in here
and, and I wouldn't share it with the world because inside my head is completely barmy really and
it's the same with you. If you think about it I mentioned it on a podcast two or three podcasts
ago. Why do we find it so hard to allow to love ourselves or for one reason is we know
it's an inside job. We know what's going on inside of our head. We know some of the things we
think that are not very lovable thoughts. So how we know all those things. So it's a little more difficult
to love ourselves because we're human and we have that inside stuff. So it's exactly the same as me. I,
I have all the self-doubt in my head. I know what really goes on in there, and I know about
the confident moments when I think of this crazy thing that I think, yeah, I've got this when really I
haven't. So, yeah, I, I don't know. I know the title of the podcast is how I Got Over My
Imposter Syndrome, but really I've learned to have the voice and have a healthier
relationship with that voice. So when it pops up, I'm like, hi, how are you? I know you're looking after
me. Just let me jump out of my comfort zone just for a minute. But thank you for being there
and protecting me.
And having that relationship with the imposter syndrome, voice softens it, makes it easier.
And I, I hope it keeps me humble to a little degree.
Whenever I say that, when I'm talking about me being humble, I'm like, yeah, I'm really not. And when people
say, yeah, but Steven, you really haven't got an ego. I'm like, I got a huge ego. I
wouldn't, I would never have been on the council. I would never become mayor if I didn't have an ego
the size of this planet. You
know? That's the reality. It's probably why I need the spiritual training so much. That's why it's so, so much
hard work because of the ego. So
when people say to me, you know, you haven't got a huge ego cb I'm like, you have no idea.
But yeah, it's an interesting, it's the, the inside job, what we can see on the inside. So
what can we do to try to get over the imposter syndrome, subject to dumping ourselves in the deep end
and going on to stage in a climate change conference? What can we do if we think we suffer from
either of these, the imposter syndrome or Dunning Kruger effect? Now then, I
don't know what you would do about the Dunning Kruger effect. Really, you know, if you think you're brilliant at
everything and you don't need to learn anything and you don't need to go to class and you don't need
to, there's not really a lot I can say or do because you already know it all. But on the
flip side, if you do suffer from not fitting in or not feeling like you're worthy of a place there,
there is a few things you can do.
One thing that I did a few years ago that was really effective is write a list of your achievements.
A whole list of achievements, and write everything down. You know, if you literally, if you
cannot think of anything, say, I survived school. I survived primary school. I survived my first camping trip.
You know, I survived to my first swimming lesson. I survived falling in the water. You know, start
with the, all the things you survived in life. You deserved you survived your first relationship, you
managed to get out of it relatively maybe unscathed you know, and then all the little
exams at school, all the things you passed, all the little achievements, you know, even if they were just a
C or a D in maths, write it down. All the little, in the Uk we have nvq one two
three four and five I suppose. Write down the little exams you do for these jobs and things like
that. Everything, write it down and when you look back through you go do you know what
I'm I'm not paralysed I'm doing okay. It might even make you cry because it did me,
it made me very proud of some of the things I've achieved.
The other things you can do is talk about your feelings. Talk about your fear of taking that job on,
or taking the next challenge on. Just sharing it with someone. Ask them, don't
say something. I don't need fixing. I just need someone to share my thoughts and feelings with, and
ultimately face your fears. Jump into that deep end.
Don't dive into the swim like I did dive into the deep end, but you know, I'm only joking.
Look, I'm Steven Webb and Hopefully this helps you and if it does in any way look leave a review.
That's awesome. That's amazing. That will help us to jump through the ranks and. Reach more people and help more
people. That's what fulfills me. It's just helping people I love it when someone can email me and say, Hey,
you said a little something that helps me, helps me have a little less suffering. Thank you to those that
treated me to a coffee. If anybody wants to download the five Simple Practices for Inner Peace or treat me
to a coffee, you can do so at thankyousteven.com
You are awesome. Take care, and remember, there's always love in the stillness. I
