Don’t give imposter syndrome credit for what your courage created
You’re not an imposter. You’re just doing something you’ve never done before.
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This is my petition to retire the phrase imposter syndrome.
And not because I don’t believe people feel doubt. Of course we do. Especially when we’re doing something new.
But I’ve always had a little beef with the phrase and I never really knew why.
It’s a phrase that landed for so many people because it gave a title to something real. The nervousness before the big meeting. The doubt before making the decision. The moment where you wonder.. do I actually know what I’m doing?
But lately I’ve started wondering if we’ve been using the wrong word for a very normal part of growth. What if those feelings are evidence something is happening?
Especially for people who are actively participating in their own lives. The people willing to try something they’ve never tried. Build something that doesn’t exist yet. Walk into rooms where they don’t already know the rules.
Those people are supposed to feel uncertain. They’re supposed to feel stretched. They’re supposed to have moments where they wonder if they’re ready. Because they’re doing something they’ve never done before.
She wasn’t an imposter. She was new.
I was recently talking with someone who said the phrase four or five times in a twenty-minute conversation.
“I have imposter syndrome.” “I think it’s just my imposter syndrome.”
And the entire time I was thinking… Does she?
Because from where I was sitting, I was watching someone who was anything but an imposter.
In a year and a half, she built a successful marketing agency. She had multiple clients. She knew her craft. She was balancing entrepreneurship with being a devoted wife and mom.
She was, for lack of a better phrase, doing the thing. So why did she keep describing herself this way? Then I noticed something: every example she gave me had the same underlying theme.
She wasn’t an imposter. She was new.
She was making decisions she had never had to make before. Having conversations she had never had before. Carrying responsibility she had never carried before. Of course she felt uncertain.
That’s what happens when you’re standing somewhere you’ve never stood before. But somewhere along the way, we started interpreting that feeling differently. We started treating uncertainty as a warning sign instead of information. We started assuming discomfort meant we didn’t belong. And I think that’s where the label starts to become limiting.
Because when we call it imposter syndrome, we accidentally make the feeling the problem.
like they’re something to fix. Something to overcome before we’re allowed to move forward.
The feeling is the proof you're actually in motion.
The woman in the arena
Teddy Roosevelt gave a speech everyone remembers now as “The Man in the Arena.”
TLDR; he’s basically saying the credit belongs to the person who steps into the arena and tries, not the person standing safely outside criticizing. He argues that the person who takes risks, puts themselves out there, makes mistakes, fails and keeps going is the one who wins. The person who never tries may avoid failure, but they also never experience the courage and growth that come from doing something difficult.
The quote has lived for over 100 years because it captures something timeless: the people doing meaningful things are rarely the ones who feel completely comfortable doing them. They’re just the ones who keep moving anyway.
The irony here is that we love the idea of the person in the arena. We celebrate risk. Admire entrepreneurship. Applaud reinvention.
Until the person actually steps into the arena. Especially when that person is a woman.
Because the woman in the arena is not only navigating her own uncertainty. She’s usually also navigating everyone else’s assumptions about what she’s capable of.
I was recently talking with a 75-year-old man who is very important to me. He spent more than 50 years building a business from the ground up. He knows what it means to create something from nothing. To make decisions without guarantees. To navigate uncertainty.
Which is exactly why I was surprised by what happened next.
I thought we’d have plenty to talk about. I’m building something right now too. I would have loved to pick his brain. To hear what he learned. What he wished he knew earlier.
But he didn’t see me that way. Instead, he asked: “So how’s your little business?”
My insides immediately reacted.. tightened, shrunk, wanting to defend. There was a part of me that wanted to explain. To say “actually! it’s not little!” To prove that what I was building mattered. But then I realized his comment said far more about the lens he sees the world through than it did about the business I was building.
That moment was an experience from being in the arena. The experience of doing something people don’t fully understand yet. The experience of building something before everyone else can see what you see.
And that is something many women know intimately.
Because sometimes the hardest part of stepping into a bigger arena isn’t convincing yourself you belong there. It’s accepting that some people may never understand why you’re there.
So why did we decide that feeling uncertain means something’s wrong?
The nervousness, the second guessing, the do I actually know what I’m doing. It's evidence you're exactly where youre supposed to be.
If you’re doing something new, you’re supposed to feel new.
If you’re stretching, you’re supposed to feel stretched.
And if you’re standing in a bigger arena than the one you’re used to, of course the stakes will feel higher. You’re supposed to notice that too.
That’s not failure. And that’s definitely not a sign to step back. Or that you’re inadequate. That’s just what moving forward actually feels like from the inside. And that’s a good thing.
Don’t give imposter syndrome credit for what your courage created
So I encouraged her to stop handing imposter syndrome the credit for something she had actually earned.
Every time she steps into a new arena, she will probably feel it.
The uncertainty, the nerves, the questions. Those feelings belong to her. She earned them by choosing something difficult. By creating something. By trying. By putting herself in situations where she doesn’t already have every answer.
Those feelings don’t belong to imposter syndrome.
They belong to the woman brave enough to begin.
