Thoughts on the Impostor Syndrome

A while ago, I came a cross this enlightening blog post from @eviltester where he is talking about the impostor syndrom in relation to public speaking. Upon that I asked myself, isn't every human being to some degree affected by it?

All the people around me are anyway more intelligent, competent, knowledgable etc. than I am. I've no story, no opinion, no namable experiences and experiments, no outstanding knowhow and passions to share with others.

I think everyone has at a certain point in his life such self-doubts, some have them stronger, some have them less. Ever since we carry this with us, it belongs to us that we compete with and fight against each other to get satisfactory, credibility, Ruhm und Ehre. In the testing community we don't go onto that. We much more share, challenge, support, unite and collaborate. One of the best places to do so is going to conferences - I'll get back to that in a minute.
But still, the impostor syndrome is all present. (Watch this fabulous talk by Claire Reckless if you're a dojo pro-subscriber.) But how do we overcome this "fear"? Fear of not being listened to, fear of not being good enough, fear of failure. Well first of all, this is a personal thing, not everyone wants to get out of it. Second, there is also nothing bad about it - it's just sad when someone has a brilliant idea or has made some fantastic experiences and researches which she could share with others, but because of the imposter syndrome got stuck to do so.

This is another great post about the topic fear to speak in public.

That's it for today, have fun out there!