You probably also have someone, like an author, businessman, or podcast maker, whom you think has everything perfectly sorted out and leads the ideal life. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although it may seem impressive from the outside, life isn't so streamlined. It's messy, it's falling down, getting up, making mistakes, feeling unmotivated, doing too much, doing too little, not knowing what to do.

And this is fine. Once you realize that everyone struggles with problems, it's also easy to just do your thing. Don't let the image you have of others hold you back. For example, when you're making a song or writing a piece of text, you always compare it to others. What you don't see, however, is how much work has been put into what you're comparing your own work to.

Imposter Syndrome

Sometimes you feel like you're just faking it and wonder when you'll be found out. That's called 'Imposter Syndrome'. In other words, the syndrome of pretending to be someone you're not.

• Are you really that experienced designer?
• Or the SEO specialist?
• Or that marketing guru who's supposed to know everything about YouTube?

If all goes well, and you're not too convinced of yourself and don't think you need to learn anymore, everyone has this feeling from time to time. Mike Monteiro has a reassuring message for you in his book 'Ruined by Design':

Let’s put imposter syndrome to bed once and for all. If you got hired after going through a lengthy interview process where you interviewed multiple times with multiple people, there’s really only two options. One—everyone who interviewed you is an idiot and you somehow managed to pull one over on them. That’s actually pretty unlikely. You might’ve been able to fool one or two, but not the whole lot. Or two—you’re actually as good as the people who interviewed you thought you were. That seems like the more reasonable option, so stop it with the imposter syndrome stuff.

It's highly unlikely that you're fooling everyone and pretending to know something. So, rely on your own abilities and do what you have to do.

Ryan Holiday also contributes to the discussion about Imposter Syndrome:

The thing that’s wrong about imposter syndrome is that for the most part no one is thinking about you at all. They’re too busy with their own doubts and their own work.

As harsh as it sounds: nobody is focused on you because everyone is too busy with their own work. Harsh but beautiful because it gives you the freedom not to be hindered by what you don't know.