Bear with me for just a moment while I try to write a bit of empathy copy. In fact, bear with me for just four personal and probing questions:
1. Do you often cover up what you really think and feel, and instead hde behind the ideas of people who are your superiors, or who have more authority than you do?
2. Do you regularly put in extra work on projects you care about, fiddling and futzing forever because you’re afraid to have a single mistake present when the work is delivered or made public?
3. Do you sometimes rely on charm and social sensitivity, listening with attention to important people… or feigning interest in their ideas and their lives… so you can win their approval?
(… and when that approval comes, do you find that it’s hollow? Either because you used charm and guile, rather than relying on your true self… or because people who are really worth a damn don’t have to seek others’ approval to begin with?)
And one final question:
4. Do you have some negative beliefs about the high cost of success? And do you find that that high cost of success is ultimately ok… because you yourself are NOT successful, not really, even in spite of what others might think of you?
If you answered yes to one of these questions… and in particular, if you answered yes to more than one of these questions… then I would like to offer you a diagnosis:
Imposter syndrome.
Because the four questions above describe coping behaviors I dug up in the original science paper that described imposter syndrome. Clance and Imes, 1978.
And here’s something else I got from that paper:
People who come down with a bad case of imposter syndrome tend to fall into two groups:
Group A, the sensitive group. These are people who had a sibling that the parents praised for being smart… while they themselves were praised for being sensitive or socially adept.
Group B, the smart group. People in this group heard from their parents that they can achieve anything they want in life… and that they can achieve it with ease and without effort.
“All right,” I hear you saying, “so what’s with the psychology lesson?””
For one, it’s because Google says there’s been explosion in interest in imposter syndrome. Almost exponential since 2000.
Which makes it possible that you suffer from imposter syndrome yourself. And maybe by reading what I’ve just written, you can understand what’s really going on in your head and in your life.
But this is also a newsletter abut cold-blooded persuasion and marketing. So let me tie it up:
It’s powerful to have your prospects believe that bad things in their life are not their fault. That’s why most every sales letter these days jams that phrase somewhere around the middle. “I’m here to tell you… it’s not your fault.”
But as marketer Rich Schefren says, that’s weak on its best day.
Because if the prospect is not to blame, then who is? Most marketers have no answer to that, or they have an unconvincing answer only.
But I just gave you one option, which is other people in your prospect’s environment or past. Parents, for example. But you probably knew that already.
So I gave you another option, too. I won’t spell it out, but you can find it in this post. And with almost no effort. Because I know you’re smart like that.
And whether you smart or merely very sensitive, I think the cure for imposter syndrome is simple. I reveal it in the pages of my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.