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Dealing with impostor syndrome

We built a product last summer, got our first big client pretty fast. Everything seems to be just the way it should be: happy client, smooth fundraising, nice pipeline, amazing team. Yet I have the constant fear that all of a sudden this thing will pop.

I’m good with uncertainty, that I can manage. Now I know exactly what I have to do to reach our targets, yet I’m shaking. Every night I go to bed and ask myself: what if all of a sudden, our clients/investors/etc. will realize that we’re just a bunch of idiots selling a bag of crap?

How do you deal with that?

  • You already know obviously there is no reason for this thing to pop suddenly. Impostor syndrome comes from the unconscious part of your mind. This is something you can’t change by yourself just with “positive thinking” or alike.

    For this kind of problem, Chinese medicine, hypnosis or acupuncture can provide very quick results. A few care sessions may find and fix the cause of your lack of self-confidence as a startup founder. If you can find a good therapist who practice short therapy, results can be really awesome. But avoid drugs and classical long therapies which take years for tiny results in this domain.

    Reply

    • Really? Acupuncture fixes crippling self-doubt? Who knew.

      Imposter syndrome is totally common and everyone struggles with it. The trick is to do it and do it and do it and do it until you forget that 6 mo.s ago you weren’t doing it. And you grow and improve and you put one step in front of the other day after day after day, and eventually after a year or two or ten you realize that even though you have moments of doubt, they’re just that- moments and you realize that the world wants to be what you want it to be and it bends itself to your vision and even though you’ll have failures, you keep putting one foot in front of the other.

      Everyone fights with self-doubt. You just keep going no matter what, and it’s in the doing that you realize that you know more and better than anyone else- and that conviction slowly chokes out all of that doubt.

      Fake it ’til you make it.

      Reply

      • Ha! “Fake it ’til you make it.” Thats pretty damn spot on. We all have holes and those are compounded when rolling the dice. I would only add that I tempered self-doubt and company doubt by minimizing risk at every turn.

        Reply
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