My struggle with writing with imposter syndrome

Samuel Madu
2 min readSep 2, 2023

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Photo by Judit Peter via Pexels

The world tells us to believe in ourselves but the world didn’t tell us how difficult that would be and how hard it is to implement that belief

Everyone started as a beginner to something and like it or not those days are the most beautiful times.

The only problem is that a lot of people still feel like beginners no matter how long they have been in the journey of creating and writing.

I expected myself to feel like an imposter when starting but I never knew it would become a theme with every little progress I made in my career.

In the beginning, I thought this was strange and a problem of its own. Why should I feel like I don’t belong here or feel like a fraud when I get my win?

Why do I have to feel underserving while creating and why do I need to feel like an expert to talk about some issue?

These are challenging questions to me and ones that leave me lost every time I try to address them. On some days I write my best stuff while on some days I allow this narrative to dictate the flow of my creation.

Deep into this, I started realizing something that freed me from this feeling of imposter syndrome or at least helped me learn to recognize it without being too attached to it

I started realizing that imposter syndrome is the sickness of progress especially in a writing and creative career. Humans are people of habits and familiarities and when we find ourselves in a new position and environment doubt kicks in.

It is like our senses awake and we are aware of the dangers of failing and the expectations that surround us. This consciousness is what births the feeling of imposter syndrome in us.

In that new environment and position, we are scared of looking stupid and sometimes we see how things are being done and tell ourselves we can’t meet up to this even if it is what we have been doing all along in our career.

It is like walking on eggshells and we are being too careful even to our detriment. So I realized this and allowed myself to go through this without going through it.

I became aware of my fears but never adopted them. I publish more till the unfamiliar becomes familiar. I do more till the new level becomes something I am used to. I engage with the new habit till it becomes the old habit.

A compilation of 31 of my best blog posts on writing and publishing confidently for $4.99 here

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