There is one big misconception that is at the core of why so many new (and some not so new) designers express that they experience or have experienced imposter syndrome:
Misconception: "Imposter syndrome is something I will no longer feel once I'm... a professional designer, hired by a company, get 100 likes on Dribble...
But there is one simple truth:
Truth: Imposter syndrome doesn't just vanish because you've achieved your goals and it can crop up at any time in your career.
The trick to alleviating these feelings and shifting your perception is to remember the following:
#1: Everything is learnable (if you can figure out what you don't know and how to search for the answer).
#2: Everyone is learning (and no one knows it all).
#3: Everything is negotiable (if you know how to authentically defend your design decisions and communicate them with others).
My biggest advice to our design students at DesignerUp is to embrace and befriend this imposter within, and rather than focus on the 'imposter' label, mindfully bring awareness to the 'student' within. We are all students of design (an industry and an art form that is evolving by the minute) and we've all had this feeling or collection of feelings at one time or another.
Our Editor Jeremy Navarro talks about this in his articles about becoming a designer and how he transformed his doubt into strength.
We feel this sense of fraudulence, when we doubt that we've earned our accomplishments, when we don't believe that we are worthy of them or feel as if we never know the right answer.
We feel this sense of fraudulence, when we doubt that we've earned our accomplishments, when we don't believe that we are worthy of them or feel as if we never know the right answer.
But the truth is, that without comparing ourselves to anyone else or even to an ideal version of ourselves, we give ourselves the freedom to see things as they really are. We realize that instead of feeding this imposter energy or focusing our attention on it, we can acknowledge it, make friends with it and then choose instead to recognize our accomplishments and those that have helped us, believe in our worth and trust in our ability to find the correct answer even when we don't know it yet. We can dare ourselves to find inspiration in the uncertainty and doubt.
After 11 years in the industry, I still Google ALL THE THINGS, I still post questions in stack overflow, I still ask colleagues for advice on a bi-daily basis. The only difference between me as a designer now and me as a designer 10 years ago is well, not that much. The questions, the context and my perception have changed, but the things I needed to know to accomplish my job as a junior designer then, are not enough to accomplish my job as a lead product designer now and by that measure, I still don't know enough to do my job perfectly or to feel fully formed.
But what over a decade in this industry teaches you is how to accept and embrace this reality and realize that this is the nature of what we do. Once you let go of the resistance and the identification with the label of 'imposter', you start to liberate your own confidence, aptitude and inner creative freedom.
Once you let go of the resistance and the identification with the label of 'imposter', you start to liberate your own confidence, aptitude and inner creative freedom.
This is the true meaning of being a professional and as long as you remember this you will never be an imposter.
You have talent, you are capable, you are valuable and you belong here.