15. Embrace Impostor Syndrome
Show Notes
Big 3 Ideas from this episode:
What IS Impostor Syndrome?
Where did it come from, and how does it manifest in the artist’s life?
How you think about Impostor Syndrome can create a powerful result.
EPISODE No. 15
Embrace Impostor Syndrome
Here’s my full
Embrace Impostor Syndrome presentation,
which includes some fun and weird
charts & graphs
breaking down Impostor Syndrome.
Enjoy!
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Episode 15: Embrace Impostor Syndrome FINAL
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[00:00:00] Think like an artist work like a boss.
[00:00:02] And this is episode 15, embrace imposter syndrome. What is imposter syndrome? Where does it come from and how can we get past it?
[00:00:28] Emily Dickinson. Said it I am nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody too? Imposter syndrome is an internal experience of believing that you are not as competent. As you think others perceive you to be. I want you to notice how half the words in this description are about thoughts and belief. Internal experience of believing that you are not as competent as you think others perceive you to be. That's some mental gymnastics right there.
[00:01:02] The results are so interesting because our thoughts are so powerful. It really doesn't have a lot to do with reality. Today, I wanna break down the history of the idea of the imposter. And see how we can understand it and use it in our art.
[00:01:17] So an imposter is a person who pretends to be somebody else in order to deceive. Especially for fraudulent gain. When you look a word up on Google. At the bottom, there's a little graph. That graph shows the word usage over time. And when I looked up imposter, I wondered why the use of this word went down so much since the 18th and 19th century, especially with our use of the internet, When anyone can pretend to be anything. you'd think that people would be throwing that word around a lot. But we have different words now. Haters and trolls are people who aren't actually in the arena, as Brene brown says, they're kind of on the outskirts, just telling everybody else how much they suck. Or how they're doing the wrong thing.
[00:02:04] The truth is people feel much more freedom to be whoever they want to be. Than they did in the 18th century.
[00:02:10] So that may be one reason. The word usage went down. And the idea of the imposter in the 18th century meant someone that was trying to go between classes and deceive people as to who they actually were in the social order.
[00:02:24] Kurt Reisler said the Monarch was a creation of each person's brain.
[00:02:29] Every man liked to think what he would do if he was king. This period saw the continued rise of prosperity for Britain and British artists. By the 1780s, English painters were among the wealthiest men in the country. Their names familiar to newspaper readers and their quarrels and dramas the talk of the town.
[00:02:48] So the artist rose as the middle class and the merchant class rose.
[00:02:53] And remember the idea of the social coin.
[00:02:56] that I've talked about in previous episodes. The [00:03:00] social coin has awe a w E on one side and shame on the other.
[00:03:05] Awe is looking up to the gods. And shame is feeling lesser than someone else, but these two sides go together.
[00:03:12] Along with this coin. I want to share with you the idea of the performance pyramid. It's a triangle or a pyramid. The bottom flat side is the audience. On the left side. Is backstage or offstage
[00:03:24] on the right side is the stage itself.
[00:03:27] on stage. We have appearances, manners, masks, societal norms, acceptable roles, performing for those in other roles who are also performing status, wealth, power, idealization of who we should be and. Offstage we have being ourselves, our true nature, taking off our masks, relaxing with our friends and peers.
[00:03:57] The secret dreams we don't tell other people, and no pretense supposedly will now see how these performances shift around as well.
[00:04:06] The audience are those who observe us, the parents, teachers, the boss, others in leadership. Society as a whole social media, others who are on stage with us, and those we see as above us, that idea of awe or better than us.
[00:04:24] The outsider or the artist comes in, pulls the curtain back, moves freely between classes and between all of these areas, they are not in the performance.
[00:04:37] They rewrite the rules. They show that there is a performance going on. They, in a sense, reveal the matrix and the system. They are unacceptable to everybody else because they're throwing everything into chaos, but they gain power from this process. So traditionally, someone who is in this role would be seen as an imposter trying to make trouble,
[00:05:00] so this idea of the artist or the special person maintaining the mask for a certain period of time, and then having this awareness, this revelation, this transformation where they can see. Reality as it is, as the absurdity and as the truth, order is disrupted, and that we are all imposters, that we are creating and making it up as we go. But this brings this idea of fear to the person who has been enlightened of exile of insanity.
[00:05:34] And of course no one wants that. painting and art was a status symbol. and painting reinforced social norms.
[00:05:42] The artist moved between classes, but they still had their role as creating. What the benefactor wanted. And if they weren't, if they were going outside those lines, they still had to answer to the social norms. The artist as [00:06:00] romantic seeker changed from the artist basically producing for benefactors to the idea of the individual artist a member and the. Prophet of this new intellectual class.
[00:06:11] Seeking truth behind the status quo. the artist embraces this imposter role Not for deception or for fraudulent gain, but to be the ones that can question things and make people look at reality and look at the rules that they follow.
[00:06:26] After centuries, we are still living this, we are still in living in these different roles and expectations, and that creates anxiety classism, racism, and sexism are all still foundational in our societies. being an artist is a chance to change that narrative and your place in it.
[00:06:45] the Wizard of Oz was a great example of the Quest story, where pretty much everyone felt like a fraud until they realized that there was no great secret to all of this.
[00:06:55] That the Scarecrow really was smart. And the Tin Man really did have a heart and he was, so sensitive and that the lion really did have courage that The Great Oz was not some mysterious figure, but was really just like all of us, a man behind a curtain. Someone who broke all of these perceptions down was Andy Warhol.
[00:07:24] he started out as a sincere artist He painted what looked like real art, right? He did master copies. He learned how to paint. He painted reality. He created a style for himself. He, he was just this kid from Pittsburgh, y'know?. He moved to New York and moved into someone who broke all the rules and people perceived him as a fake and a fraud, a deceiver.
[00:07:48] But what he was trying to do was changing art forever because he took common icons and reproduce them and made us see art differently and see images differently. It was, this part of the fifties and sixties after World War II when things were changing so much in the hippie culture, the beat culture really made everyone question what social morays were.
[00:08:13] So he had the courage to fail and he got very uncomfortable with this reading some of his writings, the discomfort that comes from putting yourself out. He responded to his times by asking different questions. he asked questions rather than give answers.
[00:08:28] What is art? What is an artist who gets to decide and who gets to decide what good or bad art is? art.
[00:08:35] Is artifice. We are all imposters. We are all wearing masks in our social niceties. Every day. We are all experimenting and we use our imaginations. We play different roles in characters. I'm asking you to embrace the imposter in yourself.
[00:08:51] Keep asking these questions. What is art? What is an artist who gets to make art? Who gets to decide what kind of art you make? So when you are [00:09:00] the imposter, you resist social classification. You choose your own masks. You continue to grow and change and think outside that imposter box.
[00:09:09] You take back your own truth and power.
[00:09:12] When you change your thoughts, you change your results. the three rules of breaking the rules.
[00:09:18] One, you deserve to be here. Two, make whatever crazy shit you want. And three, the world needs you.
[00:09:26] Thanks everyone and have a courageously creative week If you're an artist who wants to sell and market your work more effectively join us in the metaphor mindset studio an online program for artists who want to love their business as much as they love their art
[00:09:51] metaphor mindset studio think like an artist work like a boss
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