Powerful quote from Sonia Sotomayer (US Supreme Court Justice) who felt like a fraud throughout her life.
“I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of the worlds I inhabit. I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up.”
What is so powerful and insidious about the Imposter Syndrome is that you can achieve so much, but still feel like you have wasted so much – time, energy, purpose, skill and talent.
That self-doubt is like the quietness in your soul invaded by an annoying dripping tap you can’t shut off.
I work with successful leaders who can light up a room with charisma and energy but then live in paranoid fear of the shadows of doubt that follow them infecting their confidence and emotional life with feelings of panic of, at any minute, being exposed as a fraud.
This is not living a full life.