From 'Imposter' to Doing the 'Impossible': Reframing Imposter Syndrome

I was recently at a dinner for aspiring corporate board directors, hosted by e.l.f. Beauty's Change the Board Game accelerator program. While there, a woman at my table asked how we all handle imposter syndrome.

Hoo boy.

As someone who's struggled with imposter syndrome off and on my whole life, I had a lot of thoughts, but settled on telling a story about the last time I had it and how I handled it.

It was a few years ago, and I was at a party at a very wealthy and accomplished woman's home. At the time, I was Editor-in-Chief of HuffPost, and knew many of the women from my career in media. Everything about the party was immaculate, and almost all the attendees were women who were affluent, owned homes, went to Ivy League schools, were in all the same sororities, and were married to even wealthier men. And many of them had always been affluent, coming from families that had generational wealth.

I started to wonder why I, "Lil' Miss Broke Midwestern State School," was even in the room. I didn't go to an Ivy, I didn't have a husband, I didn't have a second home — let alone a first home — and I'm not affluent. And while my parents, two proud HBCU grads, did well in life, they both came from impoverished beginnings and fought their way to the upper middle class. They had no pull in my world of New York media, as a retired middle manager from the aerospace industry and a former middle school teacher. I was always going to have to make my own way — the hard way.

Initially, all I could think about was how I didn't belong. But then I stopped and flipped it. I didn't have any of those things they had, and yet, I was in the exact same room, at the exact same party as all of them. And I got to that room without access or favor from money or status. I was there solely on my talents, skills, intellect, resilience, and pure ambition.

I chuckled to myself: "Why was I intimidated? These women should be intimidated by me!"

And let's be real. Some of them were! But most just saw me as one of them, even if I initially didn't. But no matter how anyone felt, no one could say I got here because of my family ties or what my husband or father did for a living. No one could say it was because someone else "put me on." Because I put myself on by believing in myself and pushing myself to be the best. I relaxed my shoulders and enjoyed the rest of my night with the women, talking, drinking, and laughing.

Today, I'm still friends with some of those women, and still think upon this party fondly as the moment I realized my imposter syndrome was silly.

Like my Mama used to say, "If you don't think you're cute, who will?"

It sounded like shade, but it's not. If you don't have a solid foundation, if you don't believe in yourself, you can't expect that anyone else will either. You are the first person you have to sell yourself to. And if you have that foundational belief that you can do this, that you can make the impossible possible. Now, will it happen at the same time as it did for others? Probably not. Should you still do it anyway? YES!

Don't focus on what you "don't" have. Focus on what you do. Because you're not the imposter — you're the impossible realized.