What to Do When You Feel Like You Can’t Do It

We’re talking this month about your inner critic. That little voice in your head telling you everything that’s wrong—whether it actually is or not. Now, dealing with this is something I have a lot of experience with… But not necessarily a lot of success. Still, going through it over the years has, at the very least, given me some insight, which I hope can be of some help to others.

That little voice takes many forms, but one of the most prominent is Impostor Syndrome: the fear that whatever you’re doing, you’re not good enough. Wherever you are, you don’t belong, and whatever you get, you don’t deserve. Everyone else is better than you, and as soon as they find that out, you’re done for.

How do you silence that voice? Well… You don’t. Not entirely. At least, I’ve never been able to. But there are ways of tempering it, of mitigating the effects and allowing you to carry on in spite of it. So, if you’re faced with impostor syndrome, here are a few things you can do when you feel like you can’t do it. 

Make a List

At the end of last year, I made a suggestion. I talked about how it can be difficult to keep track of all the things you’ve done over the course of a year. Life events come at you fast and furious, and this one overshadows the one before. So then, when you look back, it can be easy to think you haven’t accomplished much, even when you have.

My suggestion was to keep a running tally—a written list, a folder of photos, a shelf of keepsakes—and add to it every time you do something that you’re proud of. Big, small, doesn’t matter; if you’re proud of it, remember it and make a note of it that you can come back to later.

So… How is that going for everybody? To be honest, I haven’t written anything down yet, but I’ve got four things that I’ve been meaning to write down, which will suffice for our current purposes.

The list isn’t just meant to be hidden away until the end of the year. You can refer to it anytime you want. And it’s a great defense against impostor syndrome. Feel like a failure? You have concrete proof of your success. Feel like you can’t do something? You’ve got a running list of things you HAVE done. The journey feels overwhelming? Here’s a reminder that what’s at the end is worth it.

Looking at what’s come before can be a tremendous benefit when you need energy for what’s ahead. When your inner critic tells you that you can’t do something… Just remind them of all the things you’ve already done.

Talk It Out

You can’t silence the voice of your inner critic. But you might be able to drown it out. If you’re worried that something you’re working on isn’t good enough, sometimes the best thing you can do is to ask someone what they think of it.

There is a caveat: You need to choose who you ask very carefully. The wrong feedback from the wrong people is one of the best ways to cause impostor syndrome, or to exacerbate it. And people can be pretty harsh with their feedback sometimes. They might not even mean to be. It’s just that not everyone is on the same wavelength when it comes to criticism, and what they think is helpful might end up doing more harm than good.

So find people who ARE on your wavelength. Know who the people are in your life who understand you and your work, whom you respect as artists and trust as people, and who can give you the feedback that you need.

That doesn’t mean finding people who will just heap nothing but praise on you. That can be an ego boost in the short term, but in the long run… You’re smart enough to know you’re not perfect. So hearing nothing but praise will quickly clue you in to the fact that something is missing. This can then make you doubt the validity and/or sincerity of the feedback you’re getting, and you’re right back to impostor syndrome. You’re still not good enough, but everyone is just too nice to tell you.

So seek out people who will give you real feedback—but that comes from a place of understanding. Find the people who “get you,” who have the best chance of understanding what you’re trying to do and can actually help you to do it better. Those friends, colleagues, and mentors are some of your best weapons in the war against impostor syndrome.

Accentuate the Positive

This one is more difficult than it seems. On the surface, it seems so obvious that I almost didn’t include it on the list. Really. In preparation for writing this article, I Googled “Ways to Beat Impostor Syndrome,” and “Focus on the Positive” was on almost every list. As far as advice goes, I thought it was simplistic and obvious. I wanted to go deeper than that.

But then I wrote in the previous section about how harsh or thoughtless feedback can be detrimental. And I thought of something. Say you put yourself and your work out there and get feedback from 10 people. Nine of them tell you that it was great and offer helpful, constructive criticism. One person is dismissive or makes a snide comment. What do you take away from the overall experience? What do you focus on?

Logic dictates that you should focus on the nine people who loved it. But that inner voice isn’t interested in logic. It will latch onto that one person and put their remarks on a pedestal. Their dismissiveness? It means they hated it. Their snide remark? It’s the epitome of what your work is actually worth.

And it doesn’t stop there. Those other nine people? Obviously, they secretly agreed with the one person who didn’t like it. They were just being polite. Or if they did like it, then they’re wrong. Their constructive feedback? Actually, a brutal takedown in disguise, and proof that your work is actually terrible. There’s so much wrong with what you’ve done, with what you’re doing, that there’s no point in trying to fix it. Either give up entirely or junk it and start over from scratch, because ten people absolutely loathed your work.

When things like that happen, you need to train yourself to look at the good things and focus on them instead of the bad. And much like in the first point, it helps to have evidence. Messages, e-mails, social media posts, good reviews… Keep them around and refer to them when you need to, as proof that, whatever negativity there might be around you or your work, these people thought that what you did was pretty cool. 

Remember, Everyone Else Is Faking It Too

There’s a meme I see circulating occasionally that goes something like this: “If you ever feel like an impostor, just remember, everyone else is an impostor too, and you deserve a piece of the scam they’re all running.”

Impostor syndrome makes us feel like the people around us are much better and more talented than we are—that we don’t deserve to be among their ranks. It’s hard to believe that those people may feel exactly the same way. But they do.

Don’t believe me? Talk to some of them. Find the people in your life whom you admire most. The people whose success you only dream about. The people who are doing what you wish you could do. Really talk to them about what’s going on in their lives: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Nine chances out of ten, they have exactly the same fears, anxieties, and insecurities that you do.

They’re worried they’re not good enough. They’re worried that they’ll never achieve success—even though in your eyes, they’ve already achieved it. Just as you’re comparing yourself to them and feeling like you’ll never measure up, there’s somebody in their life that they’re comparing themselves to and feeling inferior. In fact, there’s a chance the person they’re comparing themselves to might be you. 

Just today in my Facebook memories was an offhanded post I made some years ago: “All around me, I see people pursuing their passions. I feel like I should maybe do that too.” I remember the feeling that led to that post, which is one I’ve had many times before and since. I kept seeing posts from my friends about the plays they were directing, the films they were producing… This person wants me to come see their latest premiere, that person wants me to buy their new EP… And here I am, writing articles about air conditioning.

But the replies to that post... A number of my friends said things like, “Wait, I thought you were already doing that!” And one person even replied with, “Funny… I think the same when I see you posting about all the cool stuff you’re working on.”

These are the same people whose posts I would look at and think, “I wish I could do what they’re doing.” And it turns out, they were looking at me and thinking the exact same thing.

Everybody’s an impostor. The people you’re friends with, the people you work with, the people you admire… They don’t know what they’re doing any more than you do. That person who just won the highest honor in your field? They can’t believe they’re actually there and have no idea who would actually give them that award. They’re worried that whoever it is might change their mind at any moment and take the award back.

Everybody’s worried that they don’t fit in or won’t measure up. Everyone fears that they’ll be found out and exposed for the talentless hacks they are. So if you’re afraid someone might catch on to your ruse… They won’t. They’re too busy trying to keep up their own ruse to give any scrutiny to yours.