Your Insecurities Aren’t What You Think They Are: Transcript

Adam Grant:
A decade ago, I wanted to bring more curiosity to campus outside the classroom. I decided to start an author series-- where I’d invite writers to give a talk and answer student questions.

My students told me it would be much more engaging to see a fireside chat-- that I should interview the authors on stage.
I balked. Here’s how a former student Pam Klein remembers that day.

Pam Klein:
I remember you saying to me that there's no way I'm going to sit on stage awkwardly. and that it made you generally uncomfortable to have everyone watching you do the interview.

Adam Grant:
I was too insecure. What if I ask dumb questions? Or accidentally offend the author? What if in trying to be respectful to the author, I bore the audience? What should my hands be doing? How do I not look like I have resting jerkface? What if the student newspaper makes fun of me?
Our students pushed back. I finally said, “You host it then!”

Pam Klein:
So I ended up volunteering because you were so uncomfortable and it made me uncomfortable and I wanted to help you. I was nervous about being on stage too, but I figured, you know, the stakes were relatively low and it would be a great chance to practice public speaking. And in the end, it really wasn't a big deal at all.

Adam Grant:
Pam covered for me in my own author series-- and for my insecurities. As I watched her do an amazing job, I realized I had a choice. I could only take on tasks where I knew I’d succeed… or I could take risks that would challenge me to grow.

I’m Adam Grant, and this is WorkLife, my podcast with the TED Audio Collective. I’m an organizational psychologist. I study how to make work not suck. In this show, I take you inside the minds of fascinating people to rethink how we work, lead, and live.
Today: How to overcome the costs of insecurity-- and make it work to your benefit.

Everyone has insecurities. They’re those moments of self-doubt where you question yourself or your abilities.

JoAnn:
Am I creative enough to solve this problem?

Dan:
I don’t know how I got this promotion. I’m not as competent as they think I am.

Coco:
Am I smart enough to impress this client?

Adam Grant:
When you think of insecurity, you probably think of self-esteem. But they’re not the same. Self-esteem is how highly you think of yourself-- how much confidence you have.

Security is how stable your confidence is. Insecurity is the opposite: your confidence is unstable.

Take bullies. Growing up, your mom probably told you they picked on people because they had low self-esteem. That’s not the case. Sorry, Mom. Psychologists find that bullies usually have high self-esteem, but it’s fragile. They think they’re awesome, but if you insult their intelligence, they’re easily threatened-- so they want to beat you up to make themselves feel better. At work, if you’re insecure, making one mistake can bring your entire sense of competence and worth crashing down.

Being secure means your confidence isn’t easily shattered. You can fail without feeling like a complete failure. Which is important, because failure is a stepping stone to success in so many jobs.

Taylor Tomlinson:
When I first started doing stand-up I was 16, so I was very insecure just in general.

Adam Grant:
Taylor Tomlinson got into comedy after her dad signed them both up for a comedy class. And she kept at it, long after the class was done. But her insecurities didn’t go away.

Taylor Tomlinson:
When I first started going to LA to do spots, it was so hit or miss. This job is really anxiety inducing, so there was a long time where I was like, should I just be a teacher? I've had panic attacks where, you have to be at a show in like 10 minutes. And you're like, I don't know how I'm going to get through this. And there were certainly times that I was like, why am I doing this to myself?

Adam Grant:
Why in the world did you want to do this whole standup comedy thing? You could have easily quit?

Taylor Tomlinson:
I didn't feel comfortable in my own skin until I started doing stand up. I felt like wow I get to be the person I dream about being for 10, 15, 20 minutes. And the gap started closing as I got older and better to where, who I was off stage matched, who I was onstage.

So much of my stand-up is made up of thoughts and experiences that I'm embarrassed of when I started doing stand-up, I got to sort of take the power back from those experiences. And so every time something bad happened to me. I could turn it into a joke and it didn't feel like I made a stupid mistake it just reframed everything and, and helped me look at my life in a much gentler way, because it was like, okay, now everything can be material.

Adam Grant:
Taylor spent the next decade performing—and sometimes failing—on countless stages.

Taylor Tomlinson:
It was only when I did it all the time, that I wasn’t afraid of it.

Adam Grant:
And her hard work eventually paid off. At 25, she was one of the youngest comedians ever to be invited to do an hour-long special on Netflix.

Taylor Tomlinson:
I actually cried because I felt so scared and so guilty that I got it. Cause I was like, wow, I'm not good enough. And I somehow tricked Netflix into giving me this opportunity that I can think of dozens of people who deserve it more than me, in my opinion. I was really petrified. I was really, really nervous that people were going to think it was trash. It could have totally been that I wasn't ready and it wasn't good.

Adam Grant:
She did it... and it was better than good.

NETFLIX CLIP:
“I'm an introvert. Is anyone else an introvert?
All right. That was a test, and you failed. Uh… No introvert's ever gone "woo!" at any decibel.
Real introverts are parked outside going, "Is it even worth it? I don't know who she is."

Adam Grant:
Insecurity itself is not a problem. Research shows the problem lies in how we try to cover up our deficits-- rather than facing and dealing with them effectively. The first mistake is becoming paralyzed by doubt.

Taylor Tomlinson:
If you go to see a headliner or someone who's been doing it for 10, 15, 20 years, you'll be so intimidated and paralyzed that you won't even try.
I was terrified going on stage for years. There were definitely times that I thought, I don't know that I'm cut out for this. I don't have the personality that is suited for this job and this business and this industry. And I felt that way for a long time. I wanted to be good at it so badly that I just had to push through it, but it was really hard.

Adam Grant:
If you find a reason to push past the paralysis, the second mistake is that insecurity stops you from trying hard enough. You don’t give it your best shot because you’re afraid to find out that you don’t have what it takes.

Taylor Tomlinson:
The first few years that I was doing standup, I didn't think I could do it as a job. Until I met somebody who was like, you're actually being kind of dumb. You're sort of like squandering your abilities because you're not working hard enough. And it's because you're scared and you're not performing as much as you could be because you're afraid of failing and you're afraid you don't deserve to be here. And you're really only hurting yourself. And if you don't make it as a, as a performer, you have no one to blame, but yourself.

Adam Grant:
There's this whole body of research on self-handicapping about how, when people aren't sure if they're good enough at something they deliberately under-prepared because then they don't have to find out if there are any good.

Taylor Tomlinson:
Oh 100%. I still do that with acting stuff because I'm not an actor, I'm a comedian I sometimes tell myself well, I'm just focused on other things and I don't really even care about this. And so you don't prepare for it. Like you would prepare for something else that you believe you could actually do.

Adam Grant:
Self-handicapping shields you from finding out that you’re not any good. The trouble is that it also prevents you from finding out if you have the potential to be great. You won’t know whether you have what it takes until you make a real investment.

Taylor Tomlinson:
So you just have to rise to the occasion and be worthy of the opportunities you've been given.
At a certain point you just have to go, this is the best I can do right now. I did everything I could.

Adam Grant:
Which often doesn’t feel like it’s enough.

Taylor Tomlinson:
You either imagine people are saying horrible things about you or judging you. And sometimes they tell you.

Adam Grant:
In male-dominated fields, research shows that women are more likely to be doubted by others. They have to work harder to prove their competence. And even the compliments are often backhanded.

Taylor Tomlinson:
There's a lot of like your, my favorite female comedian. You're one of the best female comedians working right now. Nobody says bill. Burr's my favorite male comedian. Nobody does that. They just say comedian.
You do feel like you're in this sort of other group where you're like, you're the best T-ball player. And you're like, I thought we were all playing baseball, but I guess not. So it does make you feel like you're being judged in a different way.

Adam Grant:
So you become obsessed with seeking external validation by proving yourself to others. Which is the third mistake.

Research reveals that pursuing validation backfires. It’s impossible to produce work that everyone loves all the time. If you base your self-esteem on other people’s approval, your confidence will always be unstable.

Taylor Tomlinson:
It's exhausting emotionally, it's why looking for external validation doesn't work. And it's hard because our entire job is external validation and instant gratification,

You don't think you're good enough. if I get this thing, that'll prove to me that I am good enough, but then even when you get the thing that you expected to fix, you only see all the reasons why you're still right. That you're not good enough. It's confirmation bias, right?

Adam Grant:
A healthier approach to managing insecurity is to stabilize your self-esteem by making it less dependent on external validation.

A good starting point: decide whose approval actually matters to you.

Taylor Tomlinson:
Now with the internet, it is so much easier to find the people who like you, it's very similar to finding someone to partner up with for life. Not everybody is going to want to marry you. You just have to find the people who do want to marry you. And that's how stand-up comedy is. Not everyone's going to think you're funny, but you have to find someone who thinks you're funny and just make a lot of those people aware of you until you have your fan base.
Those four words, “just not for me,” that has made a huge difference for me and my insecurity and my imposter syndrome in this business where I just have to say, I'm just not for them. There are plenty of people that I am for. And that's who you have to focus on.

Adam Grant:
Choosing your audience can help to stabilize your confidence. Of course, you might not be able to ignore everyone else’s opinions altogether... but you can change how you want to be seen. Taylor decided that even if people didn’t love her performance yet, they could still respect her resolve.

Taylor Tomlinson:
I think it just comes down to work ethic. Because you can't change how talented other people think you are, or how much people like what you do, but you can make people respect how hard you work. So while I'm maybe insecure about who I am, and I have reasons to be, I know that I work really hard. And I feel good and confident about that.

Adam Grant:
What Taylor’s describing is a shift from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation. Pursuing excellence at a task because you enjoy it. Focusing on the activity for its own sake, instead of just the results or rewards that might follow from it.

Taylor Tomlinson:
People used to ask me what my goals were and I used to say, I just want to perform in theaters. That's my goal. And this is still my goal and it's happening now.
If you focus on how you want your life to be instead of how you want people to perceive you, I would like to have standup specials that are successful so that people come out to see me do what I love, which is perform stand up live. That's what I want my life to look like.

Adam Grant:
Evidence shows that we’re less likely to become discouraged by setbacks when we shift our goals from extrinsic image to intrinsic mastery-- from proving our competence to improving our competence. If you’re a student, you worry less about acing the test and more about gaining a strong command of the material. If you’re a new manager, you shift your attention away from impressing your team with your knowledge and toward building your knowledge.

In other words: you focus less on looking good and more on getting better. Taylor does this with new jokes. She tests them out on her audience.

Taylor Tomlinson:
I guess I don't feel horrible when people don't laugh now on stage sometimes I just say like, guys that work everywhere that was on you. I don't know what happened if everyone could just get it together. Um, cause we have another 20 minutes, but if I'm trying something new and it doesn't work, I just go, alright, that doesn't work.

Adam Grant:
But succeeding so young hasn’t magically melted away her insecurities. In some ways, it’s magnified them.

Taylor Tomlinson:
It just made me feel like I was tricking people even more so where I'm like, well, it's not that I'm really good at stand-up. It's just that I'm young. I'm just young and lucky. I have an angle. It's that? I'm a child.

Adam Grant:
There is a complete contradiction in saying on the one hand, I do not believe in my own skills, but on the other hand, I believe in my own judgment of my lack of skill, more than the judgment of all the other people who know better than I do.

Taylor Tomlinson:
Oh, wow. This is blowing my mind a little bit.I have imposter syndrome in a lot of areas of my life where I feel like I'm tricking people, but that is me going. I'm so smart. I figured it out. If see through me, no one else does, but I get it.

Adam Grant:
Yes. And if you're going to trust your own judgment, you can't only trust it when you judge yourself negatively.

Taylor Tomlinson:
Yes, that's true. So I just have to find a way to think well, I do trust you. I trusted you, said I was garbage, so you must be right now.

Adam Grant:
Although I'm afraid because the alternative, what you've been doing has clearly worked extraordinarily well for your career. So I don't want to do anything to sabotage it.

Taylor Tomlinson:
That's the real issue with all this is, I would really love to not be so anxious, but it does make me really good at my job. Cause I try harder because I'm afraid of failing. And if I didn't have that fire under my ass, maybe I wouldn't.be as good.

Adam Grant:
How do you turn insecurity into motivation? More on that, after the break.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
My first experience of imposter syndrome was probably when I was nine years old. When I came from Nigeria to the U.S. and it was the first time I ever felt different.

Adam Grant:
Meet Luvvie Ajayi Jones.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
And I walked into that classroom in Chicago, in October where it's cold. And I instantly knew that my name was different. My accent was different that everything about me was strange. Like nobody told me I was strange. I just knew and felt it. And I knew I had to adjust who I was to fit that room. And I think we learn very early on how to adapt and how to shift ourselves for the room as opposed to making the room shift for us.
I lost my accent by listening to how the kids were speaking. But I was still only gonna change myself to a certain point. I could have brought sandwiches to school, but I still brought jollof rice. One time I tried to bring a sandwich to school. I missed my actual spices.

Adam Grant:
I think that might be a metaphor for your life Luvvie Ajayi Jones that ever since that day, you have refused to leave the spice behind.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
That's a word Adam Grant that's it, I do not leave the spice behind, like the spice is coming with me. even when I try not to, to like stand out, I stand out.

Adam Grant:
Luvvie Ajayi Jones started her career as a marketing coordinator at a nonprofit. After getting laid off, she struggled to find a job. Eventually, she decided to focus on her blog, Awesomely Luvvie. People were drawn to her wisdom, her humor, and her conversational style.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
When I started blogging in 2003, I just was writing the truth out loud. Because blogging at that point was not considered a career. I was able to tell the truth out loud in public because I wasn't doing it for strategy.

Adam Grant:
As her audience grew, so did her prominence. Luvvie was invited to report at the Oscars. She wrote a book that hit the New York Times bestseller list. And she started giving A LOT of public speeches. But there was still one stage she hadn’t been on. The red circle. Then, in 2016, she was invited to give a TED talk.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
I instantly said, no, they will think it's trash and say, you're right, Luvvie. You should not be there.

Adam Grant:
That the idea that you-- the person that we've all looked at and said, I do not want to have to speak after Luvvie, I'm going before her-- You didn't think you were ready is insane.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
Right. I did not think I was ready.

Adam Grant:
A couple months passed, and TED asked again. Luvvie declined again.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
I was coming with all types of good excuses. Okay. There were good excuses. That was major imposter syndrome.

Adam Grant:
Impostor syndrome. You’ve definitely heard of it. You might even be feeling it right now. It’s when other people’s views of your competence exceed your confidence.
How could it be that even after so much proven success and praise, Luvvie could still feel like an impostor?

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
What happens with imposter syndrome? It doesn't go away. It shape shifts.

Adam Grant:
Tell me more about that.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
People think you get to a certain level of your career. And all of a sudden all is well, you're the confidence person who was just like, I got everything handled. There is a special skill for people who are successful, that it's also a vice in that we are constantly looking for ways to be better. The reason why it's a vice is because we never rest in what we do or where we are. we're always like, so what's the next mountain for me to climb. That is in itself a form of imposter syndrome, because you're constantly looking to prove something. So now you feel like you have to earn this spot that you now have.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
So sometimes imposter syndrome in the beginning, especially it might be, I can't do this, then it can be, I'm not ready for this. Then it can become, I need to continue to earn my greatness. So it is just, this continuous battle with ourselves and with what we think is enough, ambitious people have a hard time knowing when something is enough, we get something and we're already onto the next thing. You’re like wait a minute you just did this really cool thing

Adam Grant:
You're making me think that one of the reasons that achieving something doesn't make imposter syndrome go away is it raises the bar for how good you have to be. So before if I published a book, then I've accomplished something. And now, if it's not a New York Times bestseller, I failed.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
Correct. So as we hit the bar each time, which is a good thing, what we don't realize is we might be setting ourselves up for failure a little bit, because now we're just like, I've done it eight times before right, can I do it again?

Adam Grant:
Impostor syndrome seems like a debilitating form of insecurity. If you make it into a syndrome, it is debilitating. Walk around with the chronic belief that you’re a fraud, that you don’t deserve any of your success--and it can hold you back.
But those moments of insecurity don’t have to be a disease or a disorder. They’re everyday doubts about whether you’re as good as other people think you are.

Basima Tewfik:
So most people, when they think of this phenomenon, they tend to think that it's something that women only experience. And what recent work is actually trying to show is that, Hey, this is actually prevalent across races, genders, and occupational categories. Almost 70% of people seem to have these thoughts.

Adam Grant:
Basima Tewfik is a management professor at MIT. When she started her career as a consultant, she felt like an impostor.

Basima Tewfik:
Really the whole point of consulting is to sort of go into other people's companies and tell them, Hey, I, I think I can help you do this better. Um, but I always had this thought of like, Well, but I haven't actually been there for that long.
You're sort of sitting there being like, Hey, I'm supposed to be an expert on this. Um, but I feel like, I know there's so much more that I want to learn.

Adam Grant:
Basima Tewfik has studied impostor thoughts among investment professionals, medical professionals, and military cadets. And she finds an outcome that's pretty much the opposite of what their impostor thoughts would have them believe.

Basima Tewfik:
People with workplace imposter thoughts actually appear to report higher levels of mastery a couple months down the line. It's not necessarily that they're working harder, but they're working longer.

Adam Grant:
Those impostor thoughts also motivate people to focus more on others. For example, when medical students have those insecurities, they make better eye contact with patients and listen more carefully to them. They don’t think they have all the answers. People with more frequent impostor thoughts get rated as better collaborators... especially if they’re men.

Basima Tewfik:
And that might have to do with sort of the stereotypes that we attached to women, we sort of expect them to be helpful and cooperative. And so when they do, uh, do these sorts of behaviors, they're not necessarily rewarded for it because people have different expectations coming in.

Adam Grant:
There’s also reason to believe that women are more likely to internalize their doubts and ruminate about them.

Basima Tewfik:
Anxiety is still a part of this process. What typically is studied is something around fear of being found out. Whether it might be useful to actually think about whether this correlation, this overlap is higher in women versus men, maybe for women when they have workplace imposter thoughts, they think other people think I'm smarter than I think I am. They have a lot more fear that other people are going to find out that they're not as smart.

Adam Grant:
So interesting. Whereas men just wander around thinking, of course I'm the smartest person in the room. I don't know why I questioned that for four seconds.

Basima Tewfik:
Or maybe, or maybe they're just like, I'm not going to tell anyone that happens. Maybe it's not worth talking about out loud. Maybe I'm just going to sort of leave That behind and forget that I had that moment.

Adam Grant:
It makes me wonder if we should just throw away the term imposter syndrome and talk about self-doubt and insecurity.

Basima Tewfik:
What differs from what I'm calling workplace imposter thoughts and self-doubt and insecurity is again, this other focus. Like, I really think the fact that there's these sort of discrepancy in expectations that you're sort of thinking other people are overestimating you is actually where the upsides come from.
We have to be a lot more careful about the narrative that we're essentially attaching to this phenomenon. Um, when we think about it as universally a bad thing, universally harmful, it sort of tells us, Hey, when you have these thoughts you kind of have a problem-- that you need to eliminate it. And what I'm trying to sort of suggest with my work is that maybe actually it's about how to channel these thoughts productively. Two, it really depends on what you're insecure about.

Adam Grant:
Insecurities are problematic if you just think you suck, but if, if you're insecure about not being as good as other people think you are, that's where you find motivation.

Basima Tewfik:
Hey, other people think you're really smart, uh, and maybe, maybe smarter than you think you are, but maybe that's something actually that can be a driver, a motivator.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
So a lot of people who are successful deal with a lot of imposter syndrome, which actually feeds their success. We use it as fuel, as opposed to fire that burns down, whatever it is that you're creating. That's where we can use it to our benefit.

Adam Grant:
Luvvie ended up deciding to go to the TED conference as an attendee. When she emailed the team about getting a ticket, they invited her to speak a third time. She was about to decline a third time. But first, she phoned a friend.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
I say it's so crazy. They want me to do this Ted talk in three weeks. Everybody else has already had all this practice and a coach. This is crazy, right. I'm not gonna be able to do it. And she says to me, everybody's not you. She's like you've been practicing. The fact that you're on a stage every other day, that that's your rehearsal.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
Okay. You've been speaking for seven years, you got this. And if they didn't believe that you got this, they wouldn't ask you. And she hangs up on me.

Adam Grant:
So with just a few weeks to prepare, Luvvie said yes. Now it was time to turn her impostor syndrome into fuel.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
I was petrified. I was spooked because I was just like, this is the biggest talk of my life. If I bomb it, I never get another talk again. If I bomb it the people in this room will be like, Oh God, no, I've seen lovey he's terrible.

Adam Grant:
You don’t have to wait for impostor thoughts to go away. You can take three steps to harness them. The first is not to ignore your insecurities-- it’s to embrace them well in advance. For a few decades, psychologists have distinguished between strategic optimism and defensive pessimism.
Think about the last time you were getting ready for a presentation. If you’re a strategic optimist, you start to imagine yourself giving the talk and crushing it. That positive image of the future builds up your confidence and energizes you to prepare.
If you’re a defensive pessimist, you have a very different emotional experience. A few weeks ahead, you start to panic. You’re going to forget all your lines and ruin your reputation forever.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
Yeah, I'm the pessimist. Yup. I had never thought about myself as a pessimist in that way, but that's exactly it.

Adam Grant:
What I think is funny about it is the crazy things you convince yourself might be true. We see this all the time in school, right? Wake up in the middle of the night, having just had a nightmare that not only did they fail a test, they did so badly that they lost points on all their previous exams. Do, you know, at some point that you're convincing yourself of like, okay, you must know now that you, you're not going to bomb on stage.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
Yeah. Like I do know I'm not going to bomb on stage because I can even go with the flow. I think what also made TED really tough that TED kind of asks of you to do is memorize almost verbatim. And I think that probably also added to my anxiety a bit because I don't memorize my talks.

Adam Grant:
But here’s the thing: defensive pessimists perform just as well as strategic optimists. They harness their anxiety as motivation. Their insecurities propel them to prepare.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
Yes. We can use fear and imposter syndrome as motivators, if what we are afraid of is that we are not ready, then usually we'll double down on the work, we will go out of our way to make sure we are prepared that we know what we're talking about. We might have rehearsed the talk 15 times. Cause that day I sure did. I was sitting there with the iPad in my hand for five hours, I sat there and made sure that that talk was even better the night before, So I think the function of fear and all of this self doubt is it should push us to practice our work more. Which will actually be a self-fulfilling prophecy to make us better at it.
I've already thought of scenarios, A, B and C. They not, we're not gonna let them happen. So we're going to try to mitigate risk.

Adam Grant:
For defensive pessimists, insecurity is helpful when there’s time to prepare. But when it’s time to perform, you want to feel secure. So what do you say to yourself to stabilize your confidence?

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
I actually do say like, yo, you got this. You know, your stuff, you been at this for a while.

Adam Grant:
I noticed something interesting there. Luvvie didn’t say “I got this.” She said “You got this.”
Psychologists find that the way you talk to yourself matters. In a series of experiments, people gave better speeches and made better first impressions when they were randomly assigned to talk to themselves in the second person instead of the first person.
Rather than saying “I got this” they said “Luvvie, you got this.”

This is the second step for managing insecurities: in the moment, overcome your doubts by talking to yourself in the second person.
It creates some distance from your insecurities. It feels like a boost of confidence from a friend or a coach. It leads you to feel less nervous and see stressful situations as a challenge rather than a threat.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
And this talk that I've memorized three hours before I got on that stage flows out of my body. Like I'd done it 15,000 times. I ran off the stage and the stage manager stops me and turns me back around and says, I need you to go see the standing ovation you're getting.
That talk transformed my life…. And I almost didn't do it because I didn't think I was ready for that stage.

Adam Grant:
In just a few years, Luvvie’s talk accumulated over 6 million views.

Adam Grant:
I think you've made it just maybe, maybe you've made it. That didn't even sound remotely convincing. You're like, Hmm.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
And I still sound unconvinced. That's interesting. Isn't it?

Adam Grant:
It is. Why?

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
See, I think there goes that ambition. You always feel like there's more. Yeah. Have I made it? Adam, do you think you've made it.

Adam Grant:
Oh, definitely not. just getting started.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
I am fascinated by this actually. I'm actually really fascinated by

Adam Grant:
And that's part of what keeps us going. Isn't it, it, isn't it, isn't it much more of a strange thing when you see it in someone else.

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
Part of the reason why I feel like I haven't “made it” is that I still have to work really hard for everything. Right? Like it's not coming with ease yet. Each time I get something, the reason why I don't go, I can't believe it, it happened. It's usually from like, Oh my God, the plan actually worked. Not, Oh, I can't believe I've earned it. So that's the difference. And I think that is where “making it” for a lot of us will look like something. Meanwhile, we all have these like ever moving goalposts.

How do I still celebrate the small things that happen, where like, you don't have to just celebrate the New York Times bestseller list, When you start taking for granted that you end up on a morning show is when you're like, Oh, okay. There's a level of success-- that law of diminishing returns starts to happen to what you are now proud of that you've accomplished.

Adam Grant:
That’s a third step for harnessing impostor thoughts. As you raise your expectations, don’t forget to take pride in your achievements.
My favorite approach is to reconnect with your younger self. Compare your current success to your past expectations. If you from five or ten years ago had known what you’d accomplish today, how proud would that version of you be?

Luvvie Ajayi Jones:
That's a really, really good strategy.
To think about that girl who at that point was working as a marketing coordinator at a nonprofit who was making $35,000 for the year
That girl would be wildly shocked. At this girl, at this woman, like, she'd be like “what you did, what you sold, how many copies of your book? You were on how many lists? You've been on whose show? Crazy! She would be shocked, but me I'm like, man, I did it. Okay.

Adam Grant:
WorkLife is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is produced by TED with Transmitter Media. Our team includes Colin Helms, Gretta Cohn, Dan O’Donnell, Constanza Gallardo, Grace Rubenstein, Michelle Quint, Banban Cheng and Anna Phelan. This episode was produced by JoAnn DeLuna. Our show is mixed by Rick Kwan. Our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Original music by Hansdale Hsu and Allison Leyton-Brown. Ad stories produced by Pineapple Street Studios.

Special thanks to our sponsors: LinkedIn, Logitech, Morgan Stanley, SAP and Verizon.

Appreciation to the following researchers and their colleagues: Michael Kernis on self-esteem stability, Roy Baumeister, Brad Bushman, and Keith Campbell on bullies, Andrew Elliot on self-handicapping, Alice Eagly on underestimating women in male-dominated fields, Jennifer Crocker on the pursuit of external validation, Carol Dweck on performance vs. mastery goals, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema on rumination, Julie Norem on defensive pessimism, and Ethan Kross on self-talk.

For more from Luvvie, check out her podcast, Professional Troublemaker. And Taylor’s standup scene is from her show Quarter-Life Crisis, courtesy of Netflix.

Taylor Tomlinson:
It used to be this thing where it was like, Ooh, don't be too pretty on stage. And I don't think that's a thing anymore. You have to be like, non-threatening attractive. Where we still want to look at you, but you're not, you're not going to take my boyfriend.