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My Thoughts

You're Not a Fraud: Why 87% of Professionals Feel Like Imposters (And How I Finally Stopped)

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I was sitting in the boardroom at Collins Street, pretending to understand what the hell our CFO was talking about when he mentioned "optimising our EBITDA margin synergies." Everyone around the table nodded knowingly. I nodded too.

Complete bloody fraud, I thought.

That was 2019. I'd been in management consulting for twelve years at that point, had a team of eight under me, and was supposedly an expert in organisational restructuring. Yet there I was, convinced any moment someone would stand up and shout, "This woman has no idea what she's doing!"

Sound familiar? Welcome to the club nobody wants to join but 87% of us have membership cards for anyway.

The Melbourne Coffee Shop Revelation

Here's the thing about imposter syndrome - it's not actually about competence. It's about perception. And mate, our perceptions are more twisted than a Tim Tam after you've left it in the sun.

I figured this out during a particularly brutal coffee catch-up with my mentor Sarah (shoutout to Proud Mary on Oxford Street for the best flat whites in Melbourne). She'd been watching me spiral for months, turning down speaking opportunities, declining promotions, basically sabotaging myself at every turn.

"You know what your problem is?" she said, stirring her cortado with unnecessary aggression. "You think everyone else knows something you don't."

"Don't they?" I replied.

"Mate, half the people in senior leadership positions I know are winging it just as much as you are. The difference is they've stopped apologising for it."

That hit different.

The Real Problem With Feeling Like a Fake

Imposter syndrome isn't just about feeling inadequate - though that's certainly part of it. It's about the stories we tell ourselves about what success "should" look like. We've got this mental image of the perfect professional: always confident, never makes mistakes, knows everything about everything.

Newsflash: that person doesn't exist. And if they do, they're probably insufferable at dinner parties.

I spent years comparing my behind-the-scenes struggles with everyone else's highlight reel. Classic mistake. It's like comparing your rough draft to someone else's published book.

The worst part? Imposter syndrome creates its own evidence. When you're constantly second-guessing yourself, you do make more mistakes. When you're terrified of being "found out," you avoid challenging situations that would actually build your confidence. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy wrapped in anxiety with a side of self-doubt.

Why High Achievers Suffer Most

Here's something that'll blow your mind: the more successful you become, the worse imposter syndrome can get. I know, I know - seems backwards, right?

But think about it. The higher you climb, the more visible your mistakes become. Plus, there's this weird thing where achieving something you wanted makes you question whether you deserved it in the first place.

I remember getting promoted to Senior Consultant and my first thought wasn't "Finally!" It was "They must have made an error." For three weeks, I kept expecting HR to call and tell me there'd been a mix-up.

Companies like Atlassian have done brilliant work addressing this internally. They've created environments where vulnerability is actually seen as a strength, not a weakness. Revolutionary stuff, really.

The Comparison Trap (And Why LinkedIn is Evil)

Can we talk about LinkedIn for a hot minute? That platform is basically imposter syndrome on steroids. Everyone's celebrating promotions, sharing wisdom like they're the next Tony Robbins, posting photos from industry conferences where they look effortlessly professional.

Meanwhile, you're reading these posts in your pyjamas, eating cereal for dinner, wondering how everyone else has their life so figured out.

Here's a reality check: social media is everyone's personal marketing department. Nobody posts about the panic attack they had before the big presentation or the fact they googled "what is blockchain" five minutes before leading a discussion about cryptocurrency.

I've learned to use LinkedIn like I use Instagram - entertainment value only. Occasionally useful, but about as representative of real life as a Marvel movie.

Practical Strategies That Actually Work

Right, enough philosophy. Let's get practical. Here are the strategies that helped me go from questioning every decision to actually backing myself:

Keep a "Wins" Document This sounds cheesy but bear with me. I keep a running document of positive feedback, successful projects, and moments where I genuinely added value. When the imposter voices start chattering, I read it. Hard to argue with documented evidence.

Reframe Your Internal Dialogue Instead of "I don't know what I'm doing," try "I'm learning as I go." Instead of "I'm going to be exposed as a fraud," try "I'm developing expertise in real-time." Same situation, completely different energy.

Find Your People Surround yourself with colleagues who'll call you on your bullshit - both when you're being too hard on yourself and when you're actually making mistakes. Balance is key.

I've got a WhatsApp group with three other consultants called "Professional Disasters." We share our daily fails, imposter syndrome moments, and client horror stories. Turns out, we're all just figuring it out as we go.

The Perth Incident

About eighteen months ago, I was facilitating a workshop on stress reduction for a mining company in Perth. Fly-in, fly-out workers, tough crowd, and I'd been battling a particularly vicious bout of imposter syndrome all week.

Ten minutes into my presentation, someone asked a question I couldn't answer. Old me would have panicked, made something up, or deflected. New me? I said, "That's a brilliant question and I don't know the answer. Let me find out and get back to you before lunch."

The room relaxed immediately. Turns out, admitting you don't know everything makes you more credible, not less.

By the end of the session, three people had asked for my business card. One became a major client. Sometimes our biggest professional breakthroughs come from our most human moments.

Why "Fake It Till You Make It" is Terrible Advice

I'm going to be controversial here: "fake it till you make it" is possibly the worst advice ever given to someone struggling with imposter syndrome. Why would you tell someone who already feels like a fraud to... fake it more?

Better advice: "Learn it while you earn it." "Grow into it." "Be honest about what you don't know while being confident about what you do."

The goal isn't to eliminate uncertainty - uncertainty is part of growth. The goal is to get comfortable being uncomfortable, to stop interpreting not-knowing-everything as evidence you don't belong.

When Imposter Syndrome is Actually Useful

Plot twist: sometimes feeling like an imposter is actually helpful. It keeps you humble, pushes you to prepare thoroughly, and prevents complacency.

The problem isn't the feeling itself - it's when the feeling prevents action. When you turn down opportunities because you don't feel "ready enough." When you stay quiet in meetings even though you have valuable input. When you attribute your successes to luck and your failures to incompetence.

That's when imposter syndrome stops being a helpful check on your ego and starts being a handbrake on your career.

The Authenticity Paradox

Here's something I wish someone had told me earlier: the most successful professionals I know aren't the ones who never feel uncertain. They're the ones who've learned to act despite the uncertainty.

Confidence isn't the absence of doubt. It's the willingness to move forward while feeling doubtful.

I still have days where I question whether I know what I'm doing. The difference now is I don't let those days define my decisions. I acknowledge the feeling, check whether it's telling me something useful, and then get on with the work.

Moving Forward Without the Fraud Police

So where does this leave us? How do you actually combat imposter syndrome in a meaningful way?

Start small. Pick one area where you've been holding yourself back and take action despite the discomfort. Apply for that role you think you're not quite ready for. Share your opinion in the next team meeting. Volunteer for the project that scares you a little.

Remember: everyone is making it up as they go along to some degree. The difference between successful people and everyone else isn't that they have it all figured out - it's that they're willing to figure it out in public.

Your expertise doesn't come from knowing everything. It comes from being resourceful enough to find answers, honest enough to admit what you don't know, and resilient enough to learn from mistakes.

The fraud police aren't coming. They never were. You belong exactly where you are, learning exactly what you're learning, growing exactly how you're growing.

Now stop reading articles about imposter syndrome and go do something that scares you a little bit. That's where the real growth happens.