The Troll in Your Head
I want to tell you about the voice in my head. It shows up the second I try anything that matters. New job, new lift, a podcast episode where I get honest about my own life. It leans in and says the same thing every time: they are going to figure out you don't belong here.
That voice has a name. Imposter syndrome. And for most of my life I thought it was telling me the truth.
Here is the working definition. Imposter syndrome is the feeling that you are not as competent as people think you are, that you don't belong, and that it is only a matter of time until you get found out. You feel like a fraud. It hits hardest when you step into something new or scary, which is why I have wrestled with it forever; I moved about a dozen times as a kid and I was always the new kid, always the one who didn't fit yet.
It is not a sign that something is wrong with you. Maya Angelou published eleven books and said that every single time one came out she thought, this is the one where they finally figure out I have been running a game on everybody. Eleven books. The most accomplished people you can name carry this thing around. So if you have it, you are in good company, and you can stop treating it like proof of your own inadequacy.
It is the internet troll in your head
The way I picture mine is simple. You know the internet troll. The one who shows up in your comments only to point out the negative, only to invalidate what you said, only to get a rise out of you. That is what imposter syndrome is. It is the troll who lives in my head, and it is always loaded with every attack that might come my way.
But here is the part that changed how I deal with it. The troll is not a glitch. It is your brain doing exactly what it evolved to do, which is keep you alive. Your brain's primary job is to keep you safe, and one of its oldest tricks for that is to talk you out of risk. That was useful when a risk could actually get you eaten. The problem is your brain never updated the threat list. So now it runs the same protection program to stop you from taking the new job, signing up for your first competition, posting the picture, doing the 5k. It synthesizes every bad reaction you might get and serves it to you in advance, and it calls that keeping you safe.
There is a trade-off for that safety, and it is brutal. The price of staying comfortable is staying exactly where you are. In the comfort zone you do not grow. You do not develop. You do not get better by listening to the troll. It is not built to help you get what you want; it is built to keep you feeling inadequate and small. The most fulfilling things in my life, the big scary changes, every one of them was on the other side of a voice telling me not to.
You cannot think your way out
This is the whole thing, so I will say it plainly. You do NOT think your way out of imposter syndrome. You act your way out.
You can sit and reason with the troll all day and it will out-argue you, because it gets to make up the rules and it never runs out of material. What it cannot survive is you doing the thing anyway. Almost every time I have looked the troll in the eye and done the thing, I found out it was wrong, and I felt better for having done it. That is the pattern. Action first, proof second.
When I walked into Lifetime to become a personal trainer, I was around 300 pounds in the interview, less than a year out from being close to 370. You want to talk about imposter syndrome; try telling people how to get healthy when you are still climbing out of the hole yourself. I battled that voice every single day. The reason it did not stop me is that I had people around me telling me my perspective was valid, and I kept showing up regardless of how I felt. I did not feel like I belonged. I went anyway. Belonging came later, on the back of the reps.
A few things that actually help:
- Take a small action, not a heroic one. You do not have to quit your job and chase some wild dream tomorrow. Baby steps count. The point is to do something the troll is trying to prevent, because it is usually guarding the thing you most want.
- Say it out loud. Do not let the feeling live only inside your skull. Tell your partner, a friend, your therapist, even a journal. Externalize it. Naming "I feel like a fraud right now" robs it of a lot of its power.
- Treat feedback as data. When you tell someone you feel like a fraud and they look at you like you are crazy and say you are good at this, their read is probably more accurate than yours. We are our own worst critics. You do not have to swallow their praise whole; just log it as one more data point against the troll.
Sometimes the feeling is telling the truth
Now the unpopular part, and I think it is the most important. Sometimes you feel like an imposter because there is a real gap.
If you got the promotion and the new role genuinely needs skills you do not have yet, that feeling is not a distortion. It is information. And then you have two choices. You can decide the gap is real and hide from it and hope nobody notices, or you can get to work and close it. One of those keeps you a fraud. The other one makes you legit.
So before you wave the feeling away, run it through one honest question: is this a cognitive distortion, or is this valid? Sit with the feeling, observe it, then step outside yourself and assess it like a third party. Am I actually a bad parent, or do I just feel like one tonight? Most of the time the answer is no, that is your brain amplifying the negative, and you let it go. But sometimes the answer is yes, there is something here, and then you have a gift, because now you know exactly what to build. I have had to take my own medicine on this; some of my clients have gotten better results than I have, and that is not the troll talking, that is a real thing for me to go work on.
That is the formula. Hear the troll. Decide if it is lying or pointing at a gap. If it is lying, do the thing anyway. If it is pointing at a gap, close the gap. Either way, you move.
This is general mindset stuff from my own experience, not a treatment plan; disordered eating, anxiety, and the like deserve a real professional, and I have leaned on therapy for mine. Get that support if you need it.
Don't let the troll win. Not the one on the internet, and definitely not the one in your head.
Listen to the full episode here.
If the troll has been telling you that you don't belong in a gym, or in this sport, or in a coaching relationship, I would love to prove it wrong with you. Come apply to train with us; cost has never been the thing that keeps someone out, so reach out and we will figure it out together.
Vokse eller dø. — Coach Jordan