imposter syndrome shouldn’t matter

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onto today’s topic: imposter syndrome shouldn’t matter 🎭️ 

it was recently the finalist selection weekend for morehead-cain at unc, and many of the current scholars were tasked with being hosts for some of the finalists. when i was out for dinner with a few of them, the topic of imposter syndrome and highlighting others’ accomplishments was brought up pretty quickly.

a lot of what i heard was along the lines of “omg, this room is full of such impressive people, i don’t know if i belong here. this person has achieved x, and that person won x award …”

imposter syndrome can be the biggest downfall to riding the momentum of your own potential and overcoming even bigger waves. personally, i don’t really feel it intensely because i hold these two beliefs pretty strongly:

1) if even one person believes you deserve to be here, that’s the end of that. 🤷‍♀️ there’s no use dwelling on whether or not everyone agrees. your accolades and achievements are the result of someone believing you deserve it, so you should just take that for what it is.

2) the magnitude of impact isn’t solely measured in breadth, but also depth. sure, it’s impressive that someone fundraised millions of dollars, impacted 50,000 people with their non-profit, and racked up 4 different internships; however, impact isn’t just a numbers game. i wrote about this briefly in my post about utilitarianism, but leaving a deep, meaningful impact on a handful of people is just as powerful. if you could squash all of the impact someone left on 10,000 different people and instill that in 3 people, that’s equally impressive in my books.

you deserve everything you’ve achieved — it’s yours. 💓 

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