“What if they find out I’m a fraud?”
Almost 30 years working in TV and feature animation, multiple awards and tens of thousands of drawings later and I still find myself asking this question. It happens a lot less often nowadays but the “impostor syndrome” never totally goes away.
What is Impostor Syndrome?
It’s when you don’t believe you’ve earned your success.
You just got lucky is all.
Or the praise comes from people who don’t know any better.
Or maybe you made it because your friends helped you—not because of your actual ability or hard work.
Impostor syndrome can be a serious problem—especially for a creative people who put so much of themselves into their work.
For one thing, it can keep you from trying things outside your comfort zone. Why learn to paint when you believe you can barely draw?
It can also lead to anxiety, depression and crippling perfectionism often requiring therapy to overcome.
I, myself have seen a counselor about this and learned some things that have helped me.
First, impostor syndrome is a sign you’re better than you think.
Have you heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? It is a form of cognitive bias whereby people with a low level of ability tend to overestimate their ability.
Research also indicates the opposite effect—that those with higher levels of ability tend to underestimate their ability.
That’s because with experience, you’ve learned enough to know what real competence looks like. Inexperienced people don’t know what they don’t know.
In other words, knowing how much you still need to learn means you’ve already learned a lot.
Don’t compare yourself to others.
Doing this is a terrible idea if you experience impostor syndrome. You will always find people who are better at certain things than you are, and dwelling on it isn’t helpful at all.
I, for instance, am not the best painter in the world. It’s not a skill I’ve concentrated on throughout my career. But it doesn’t mean I’m a lousy artist, or that I’ll never be good at painting because there are artists out there who paint much better than I do. It just means I’ve got more work to do in order to improve in that area.
Instead of comparing your work to others, look at your work from 5 years ago. Has it grown and improved since then? It probably has by a lot. Focus on your own journey toward mastery and forget about what the others are doing.
The people who like your work aren’t idiots.
Have you ever won an art award or been given a promotion at your studio or gotten an A in an art class? People experiencing impostor syndrome will dismiss these accomplishments by telling themselves that they are coming from people who just don’t know any better.
Really?
You think all these people you look up to—your teachers and mentors and colleagues have all been somehow fooled into believing you have talent? Not likely. When competent people praise your work, believe them. They know what they’re talking about.
You’re in good company.
As I mentioned earlier, higher skilled people tend to be the ones who underestimate their level of ability.
Many of these people are your close friends and mentors.
Share your feelings of being an impostor with them. Guaranteed, they will tell you they’ve felt the same way in the past. Knowing you’re not alone goes a long way to helping keep things in perspective.
You’re exactly where you need to be right now.
Sometimes impostor syndrome comes from a perception that we didn’t have the “right” training needed to achieve our success and therefore didn’t earn it.
We may also believe we should achieve a certain level of success by the time we reach our 20s, 30s, etc.
In art school, I thought I wasn’t a good enough artist to compete as a commercial illustrator with my more talented classmates. So I didn’t take the kind of hardcore illustration and fine art classes they did, but majored instead in advertising/graphic design.
Working for several years in advertising, I didn’t get into animation till I was 27.
Now I realize the time I spent in the ad biz taught me useful things I use in my animation career—like how to boil an idea down to it’s simplest form, how to use typography in a design, how to meet a tight deadline, etc.
Embrace whatever path got you to where you’re at right now. Doesn’t matter that you didn’t get the “right” degree or if it took you a bit longer than you’d have liked.
It’s what made you the unique person and artist you are today and I would argue it’s even more reason to acknowledge you deserve your success.
If you’ve ever experienced impostor syndrome, I hope what I’ve learned helps.
Then, the next time that person in the mirror yells “Fraud!” at you, you’ll just laugh because you know better.
Till next time,
Chris
Love the part that says talent under inflates and underqualified inflates.