Our Imposter Monster Soul Suckers tell us we’re secretly not good enough and any day now, someone’s going to find out. Most of us have heard those thoughts in our head at one time or another. But what’s really happening is both more complicated and more simple. 

We’re clinging to someone else’s playbook and calling it our own: the website structure, the launch sequence, the five-step framework, even the way other people show up on camera.

It’s understandable. It’s an utterly human response to seeing someone else shine … especially if we’re struggling at the same time.  

But what if envy isn’t a signal to copy. What if it’s a signal to get curious? 

“Why her and not me?” is a question that keeps us stuck: frustrated, comparing, or small. “How did she do that?” is a completely different question. It’s a question that has us leaning in. It can propel us forward into a sense of possibility that we might not have found on our own. 

Watch what happens the next time you feel dread, the kind that whispers, “I don’t actually know what I’m doing.” Trace it back. Often you’ll find a moment where you looked at someone who was “flying high,” felt a flash of envy, and quietly started copying.

The Corridor Between Impossible and Done

My friend and colleague Linda Bucher shared an innovative way to think about this with me: picture a long corridor. At one end, a dead wall: impossible, not a chance, when pigs fly. At the other end, wide open space: already done. The distance between them is belief, inching forward one flicker of light at a time. You don’t need to believe something is possible for you yet. You just need to believe it’s possible, period. That’s one way your corridor of possibility starts to open. 

The problem is that all too often we walk that corridor and arrive at someone else’s door instead of our own.

Copying isn’t the same as believing. It feels productive. We’re doing something, following steps, and staying busy. But that kind of productivity can quietly manufacture the exact feelings we were trying to escape. We show up as an impersonation, and some part of us knows it. That’s the Imposter Monster cycle. It doesn’t mean we’re not worthy. It means that the carbon copy path doesn’t fit. 

What Works for YOU

The way out isn’t more effort inside someone else’s model. It’s asking a better question: What’s working for me? Not what’s working for her. What’s already true, already natural, already so effortless for you that you’ve been talking yourself out of trusting because it doesn’t look like anyone else’s version of success?

Here’s the tricky truth: 

Imposter Syndrome doesn’t show up when you’re being yourself. It shows up when you’re not.

You cannot be an imposter while you’re being yourself. It’s not possible. The moment you feel like a fraud is almost something you can trace back to one where you grabbed onto that borrowed playbook.

So the next time envy shows up, notice the impulse to copy, and instead let it do a different job. Let it point you at what you’re being called toward, in your own shape, on your own terms.

🎧 This was inspired by my conversation with Linda Bucher on the Untamed Leader Podcast. Listen to the full episode now.