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Tuesday, June 24, 2008

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Do You Suffer from Blogger Imposter Syndrome?

Posted: 23 Jun 2008 09:17 PM CDT

This post on Imposter Syndrome and Bloggers was written by Clarke Scott from Positive Blogger a blog about leveraging Positive Psychology to improve your blog. Image by Steffe

Do you suffer from Impostor Syndrome (or IS)?

Those who suffer Impostor Syndrome are convinced that friends or colleagues grossly overestimate their abilities. The ‘impostor’ feels they don’t deserve the accomplishments they have achieved, and fear that eventually they will be unmasked as a fraud.

Age is not a factor, but Joseph Ferrari, a psychologist at DePaul University, reports that most ‘impostors’ are women. According to Young, women internalize negative feedback much more readily than men.

So how does that effect you? Well, there are many good and even great writers blogging. But, blogging is not just about being able to craft a well structured sentence. It is also about building a community, providing value for readers, and humanistic things like communication. So, even if you are the kind of person that doesn’t suffer from Impostor Syndrome it is useful to know that there are people out there that do.

For those who do, it is equally reassuring to know that others experience the same fear as you. But how do those that experience IS overcome it? Below is it list that you can check to see if you suffer from IS, with another list below that on methods to overcome Impostor Syndrome

Taking the Impostor Syndrome Test

Answer Yes or No to the following questions:

Do you worry about other bloggers finding out that you are not as smart as they seem to think you are?
Does self-doubt stop you from challenges, writing longer posts or using social media like Tweeter?
Are your accomplishments written off as a fluke, sheer luck, or that people just like you?
Are you obsessive about doing things absolutely perfectly, so much so a normal post can take days to finish?
Do you feel it was your lack of ability to do something right the first time round?
Even your achievements are meant with the feeling that you may not be so lucky next time.
Do you feel less capable than other bloggers?
Does the fear of bad comments stop you from blogging?
Do you ever think. I would love to be a blogger but, who would want to listen to me?
Do you ever think. Maybe when I have something to say, then I will start that blog!

If you answered Yes to any of these questions than you probably suffer from IS.

Methods for overcoming Impostor Syndrome

Stop living in denial. Acknowledgment will go along way to fixing the underlining issues, therefore if you suffer from IS tell yourself, that it is IS and not reality.
Next time you feel IS kicking in stop and assess the situation. Try and separate overly critical thoughts and feelings from factual ones. This step is critical because you want to make sure that you can evaluate your performance without bias. Simply changing your habits to the other extreme, that is, thinking that you are the best at everything you do is simply the flip side of the same egocentric coin.
At the beginning, place more emphasis on overcoming the tendency to be overly critical by assuming that you are being overly critical. By assuming that this will far more likely to investigate what is going on under the covers.
Be sure to point out the times that you achieve something worthwhile. Learn to hear positive feedback. When you achieve something, perhaps a goal you’d previously set for yourself. Pat yourself on the back.
Allow yourself to hear praise from others without letting ego takeover. Something IS suffers can completely disregard positive feedback. But know that this self-deprecating attitude can actually be pride, albeit a reverse pride. Nonetheless it is ego getting in the way. Truly humble people can hear positive feedback without ego taking over.
Setup rules for how you will engage that inner voice when IS becomes manifest. You are trying to break old habits. Habits can sometimes be difficult to change, so rules on how you react when an IS problem occurs can be very useful.
As part of the rules you follow, and by way of helping yourself break habitual tendencies, build standard phrases or affirmations that help implement these changes. For example, when an IS thought or feeling arises tell yourself it is just SI. That these feelings and thoughts are not inherently real, and that you have the capacity of change. Moreover, you WILL change!
Imagine yourself overcoming IS. Feel that you have already over IS. Once you can do this with success, you have probably overcome IS.
Given yourself a reward when you succeed in changing habits. Shout yourself a latte.
Fake it till you make it: An old cliche but it is worth repeating. The process of overcoming any personal problems is about training yourself to react in an entirely different way. It is therefore a process, and the better you can fake it, the more quickly it will become part of who you are i.e. Not faking it. Try not to let IS overwhelm you by telling yourself you can do these challenging things, even if at first you don’t really believe it.

To sum up then, Impostor Syndrome is the habitual tendency to underestimate yourself. To believe that even the success you have you did not deserve. It can be generated from low self-esteem or other related issues. It can stop bloggers from finding their ‘voice’. It can stop you from becoming the blogger you want to become and therefore it is worth some investigation.

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Excuse Posts - How to Let Your Blog Go #6

Posted: 23 Jun 2008 09:01 AM CDT

Have you ever come across a blog that posts more about why they don’t post than anything else?

I hesitate to write about this method of ‘letting your blog go’ because I know that most bloggers do go through stages when they struggle to post to their blog due to legitimate reasons (sickness, death in family or some other life crisis).

I’ve gone through periods myself when I’ve been unable to keep my blogs posted to regularly (sometimes without any reason other than I struggled to find something to say). In my early days of blogging it seemed that there were weeks in which all I could muster to say was ‘I’ve got nothing to say’ or ‘I’m sick again… posting will return to normal next week’ etc.

The problem is that when you post a few posts like in a row it has an impact upon your readers and any sort of momentum that you might have created on your blog.

Solution: Here’s the conclusion that I’ve come to (and it’s a work in progress). I attempt to build blogs that build momentum on my topics and that stay largely ‘on topic’. While I occasionally include a little personal information in my posts this information is generally shared in a ‘by the way’ type form or as an illustration to an ‘on topic’ post. As a result if something happens in my life that prevents me from blogging then I generally don’t post a post about it (unless it’s a very major thing - something that hasn’t happened yet thankfully).

However: Of course this will vary from blog to blog and situation to situation and I do (and would) break this ‘rule’ on occasion. For example if something happened that would mean that I would not be able to update my blog for an extended period of time I would probably post a short note to explain my absence and to let people know what would happen to the blog while I was gone (see some strategies below). This would likely be a one off post and a short one and it would also attempt to provide readers some sort of alternative for them to do/read in my absence (linking to key posts in my archives, asking a question, suggestion a few other blogs to read).

Tips for When You Can’t Blog:

If faced with a situation which takes you away from your blog for an extended period there are a variety of strategies that you might like to employ:

1. Guest Posts - this is easier if you have a blog with a larger readership and profile but having others (either one person or a group of them) to come in an d post to your blog in your absence can be a good way to keep it ticking over.

2. Decrease Your Post Frequency - not able to keep up your normal frequency of posting? How about decreasing it for a period of time? Even just a post a week gives readers a sense that you’ve not abandoned them. One short on topic post a week is much better in mind than a few ‘I can’t blog because….’ posts.

3. Revisit Archives - how about repost an old post or at least point back to some of your best posts? Many of your newer readers won’t have read your ‘old stuff’ so give them a taste.

4. Polls and Reader Questions - you can’t do this every day but one of the quickest types of posts to write is a question or poll. Ask your readers something about their experience of your topic and throw things open to them for some discussion.

5. Rainy Day Posts - it’s wise to have a post or three in reserve at any given point in time. I try to keep at lest one in my drafts section at any time so that I can throw it up if in a spot of bother. In addition to this I have an ‘ideas’ document on my desktop that has titles of posts, questions to ask readers, half written posts etc - these are half baked ideas that I can quickly turn into posts on days that I’m struggling.

6. Prepare for Known Events that Might Disrupt Your Blogging - while some things to happen to us out of the blue that stop our blogging in it’s tracks - there are many other things in life that we have some control over or advanced warning of. In these instances plan ahead and either get a guest blogger in and/or pre-prepare some posts. For example, as you read this I’m taking two weeks paternity leave on this blog. I started planning this ‘letting your blog go’ series a month ago and wrote all of the posts over the weeks before our baby arrived. I also arranged for a handful of guest posts over these two weeks. This meant a little extra work in preparation for my break but it’s worth it!

I guess in summing up - my strategy is to attempt to keep a balance between: