Even if your job is going well and you're successful, you can still struggle with feeling that it might all get ripped away if someone points out you're maybe just winging it. How can you battle those negative feelings and keep the confidence riding high?
The other day a friend started a discussion on Facebook about whether imposter syndrome is an actual thing, or whether we really mean we're in a situation where we lack confidence or feel out of our depth.
I have journo friends who specialise in wellbeing who've written about imposter syndrome and say it is a real thing. Specifically it tends to refer to people who are actually very successful but consistently doubt their own accomplishments and have a persistent internalised fear of being exposed as a fraud. Women tend to experience it more than men.
I don't know how professional it is on a business website to suggest one might experience this themselves, but I will admit that I sent myself on a business writing skills course run by another professional body to check whether my own course cut the mustard and included all the right stuff. I'm happy to report it does - and some - and compared with the cost of the majority of day courses, participants of my online course are getting themselves a bit of a bargain.
But if you sometimes lack confidence in your skills, what can you do to reassure yourself that all is well, you're not faking it, you do know your stuff, and your bosses and collegues are happy with your work?
Work to the evidence at hand, not to the negative earworm on your shoulder. If your feedback is overwhelmingly positive, you know you're doing ok.
Spend some time listing out your recent wins and longer term achievements - it never hurts to remind yourself of when you got it right.
But also think about how you could have done better. Owning your issues and learning from them will improve your performance, and help take back that nagging sense that someone could be waiting in the wings to point out your failings.
Listen and learn from your appraisal process. It's an opportunity to reassess your performance over the past year - with the benefit of hindsight - from your own perspective as well as that of your line manager. What went well and what could be improved upon?
Your appraisal is also a time to look at your personal development plan and consider the gaps in your knowledge that need plugging. What is missing from your skillset? What could use a refresh?
Finally, if you're concerned that your peers in similar organisations seem more skilled than you, there are several online skills checkers that will help you understand the skills you should have under your belt for your age, role and level of seniority. These can help reassure you that you are on the right track, or help point you in the direction you should be heading to make good career progression.
We're not all blessed with high confidence levels, and I tend to think that I ride a confidence roller coaster most of the time, swinging from high to low and back again, sometimes in a relatively short period of time, but we can combat our negative thoughts with some good old fashioned rationalisation to help us realise we actually aren't the imposter our psyche likes to kid ourselves we might be.