The Five Fears That I Have

Everyone will think I’m a fraud

Impostor syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved.

A month before his death, he reportedly confided in a friend, saying “the exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler.”

Solution: Realize that Everyone else feels like that. Become okay with it.

Psychological research done in the early 1980s estimated that two out of five successful people consider themselves frauds and other studies have found that 70 percent of all people feel like impostors at one time or another. So get over it.

I am a fraud, and everyone will find out soon

This week I published a video in which I invited another developer to do a code review of my JS. So far 3K people have seen it. So now they know.

Solution: Okay, now they know. So now I don’t have to worry that they will find out, because that already happened. What now? Keep moving.

I will run out of ideas

This is kind of a new one for me. Now that I’ve been sharing ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for a while and sometimes I sit down to spit out a new piece of content and I feel like the well is dry.

Solution: Sean McCabe of Seanwes suggests to “Don’t worry about repeating yourself. People need to hear things multiple times and there are always new people finding your show or blog.”

People will loose interest in what I’m doing

I’ve always been afraid of getting old, But now I’m afraid of becoming irrelevant. My work relies on myself being able to have relevant ideas and being able to mold something meaningful from them.

Solution: My value is not the work I did yesterday. My entire body of work speaks for itself.

Solution: People only care about your work as long as it benefits themselves.

I googled “people will loose interest in my work” and every result was about people struggling with their own work ethic. No one cares about you, relax. Then make something that helps someone.

It will never be this good again

In economics and decision theory, loss aversion refers to people's tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Most studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains.

Living like this is like driving while looking solely in the rear view mirror. It’s impossible to make good decisions.

Solution: Maybe you are right. YOLO!