You’re Not an Imposter—You’re Just Doing Something New

By Amanda Kaufman

Have you ever stepped into a new room, taken on a new challenge, or reached for the next level in your life… and suddenly felt like a fraud?

If so, welcome to the very human experience of growth—not “imposter syndrome.”

In this solo episode of The Amanda Kaufman Show, I open up about my personal journey with what the world calls imposter syndrome. But spoiler alert: I don’t believe it’s real—not in the way we’ve been taught to think about it.

Let’s unpack why.

The Myth of “Imposter Syndrome”

The first time I ever heard the term “imposter syndrome,” I was already a few years into my corporate career in the U.S. Prior to that, growing up in a remote Arctic town and navigating life as a chemical engineering grad, this idea simply never came up.

But suddenly, in corporate boardrooms and leadership trainings, it was everywhere.

The definition sounded harmless enough: Imposter syndrome is the experience of feeling like a fraud despite being competent and capable.

Sounds relatable, right? But here’s where it gets problematic—labeling this normal human experience as a “syndrome” carries the weight of pathology. It makes it sound like there’s something wrong with you.

And that’s where the real danger lies.

It’s Not a Syndrome—It’s a Season

If you’ve ever felt unsure, unqualified, or anxious stepping into something new, that doesn’t make you an imposter. That makes you normal.

When I left my corporate job to become an entrepreneur and coach, I was constantly facing skills I hadn’t mastered yet—marketing, sales, social media, branding. I went from a world where everything was decided for me to one where I had to decide it all.

Was I an imposter? No. I was just new. I was in a season of learning.

But in the coaching and business world, “imposter syndrome” was being tossed around so freely that I started to believe I had it. And I see it happening everywhere, especially to women, minorities, and high-achieving professionals who are doing what they’ve never done before.

The Deeper Problem: Who Gets Labeled an “Imposter”?

Let’s talk about something real.

Why is it that the people most likely to be told they have imposter syndrome are the ones who look or sound different than the “norm” in the room?

Women. Minorities. People of faith. The young. The aging.

We’re told, directly or subtly, that our presence is unexpected—and then we internalize that doubt.

But listen closely: you are not an imposter because of your age, gender, background, or beliefs. Feeling uncomfortable is not the same thing as not belonging.

In fact, the people who assign you the “imposter” label? They often mean well. In my corporate days, once I became a mom, I noticed that fewer stretch opportunities came my way. Why? Because people assumed they were being considerate of my “limited capacity.”

I wasn’t asking for less. I was just being seen through a new lens.

The Bicycle Face Analogy

I once watched a commencement speech that changed the way I saw this conversation forever.

In it, the speaker talked about “bicycle face”—a fake medical diagnosis from the late 1800s that claimed women who rode bicycles would develop contorted, unsightly faces. The “cure”? Don’t ride bikes.

Ridiculous, right? But that’s the point. “Imposter syndrome” can feel just as made-up—created to stop people from stepping into spaces they fully deserve to be in.

It’s not a real diagnosis. You won’t find it in the DSM (the handbook used by mental health professionals). It’s not backed by hard science. It’s more like a cultural narrative—and it’s time we rewrote it.

So What Do You Do Instead?

Here’s the truth I want you to walk away with:

1. Recognize that feeling uncertain is normal.

Anytime you do something new, you’re going to feel unsure. That’s not imposter syndrome—it’s human nature.

2. Reframe the discomfort.

Discomfort is data. It tells you that you're growing. It doesn’t mean you don’t belong.

3. Choose the challenge over the label.

As I said in the episode: “You may legitimately have mental health concerns. You don’t need a fake one on top of it.” Instead of accepting a limiting label, acknowledge that you're in a growth season—and keep going.

4. Own your desire to learn.

Just because you’ve succeeded in one area doesn't mean you won’t feel like a beginner in another. That doesn’t make you a fraud. It makes you brave.

Final Thoughts: You Belong Here

If you’ve been telling yourself, “I can’t do it because I have imposter syndrome”—in the words of Bob Newhart: STOP IT.

You’re not an imposter. You’re not broken. You’re not pretending.

You’re doing what all great leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs do—you’re growing.

So take a breath. Take the step. And don’t let a made-up label keep you from your calling.

If this message resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it today. And if you haven’t already, subscribe to The Amanda Kaufman Show and leave a review—we’d love to hear from you. 💛

Chapter List:

00:00 Understanding Imposter Syndrome

03:02 The Impact of Personal Growth on Professional Identity

06:00 Challenging the Concept of Imposter Syndrome

08:34 Redefining Success and Overcoming Doubts

11:19 Embracing the Learning Journey

14:20 Choosing Challenge Over Diagnosis

Full Transcript:

Amanda Kaufman (00:00)

if we don't talk about real strategies you're just gonna stay stuck, right? You're gonna stay stuck, you're gonna stay doubtful, you're gonna stay discouraged, and I don't want that for you.

Well, hey, hey, welcome back to the Amanda Kaufman show for this solo episode where I wanna talk to you about imposter syndrome. You when I first started my coaching business, I felt so intimidated by it. know, there are all the things I didn't know, all the things I had opted out of in my prior version of my life that I now needed to become really important. for example,

When I was working in a corporate job, I kind of opted out of the networking as much as I could. I just wanted to stay really, really focused to my goals in my corporate career. For example, social media. In my prior career, it was really frowned upon, especially at the time, to use social media because the company was scared of vulnerabilities in social engineering and so on, as well they should be. mean, it's a great big crazy world out there, but they're training in education at the time because social

social media was so new was don't do it. So I didn't do it. You know, the list goes on and on, but the point is, is that when I wanted something new for my career and how I earned money, I had to activate things that I didn't think were important until I realized how important they were. You know, one of those really big things was around the social journey. Like I said, I was like.

really, really, really focused in my prior corporate career that when it came time to be someone else's coach, I was like, I don't know anybody. My prior career involved traveling to different corporate sites in person. And so I was getting into a town car at 4.30 in the morning on Mondays. And it would sometimes be midnight or close to it when I got home on Thursday nights.

and it was just like 20 hours a week of just commuting between where I live and where my client's project site was. So I spent a ridiculous amount of time either on the road or if I was socializing with people, they were like in another state, you know? And it was all professional. It wasn't a personal relationship whatsoever. So when I decided that I wanted to...

do this instead of that, become an entrepreneur and become a coach and be somebody that people could look to for coaching support. I had no idea how much growth I would have to go through to get to a place where I was going to be successful at that. And that's what I want to talk to you about today, you know, on this little solo episode is the idea around imposter syndrome. Let's cover that. I also want to talk about like what to do about it, right? Because we can talk about

how it freezes us and it stops us all day long, but if we don't talk about real strategies to do something about it, you're just gonna stay stuck, right? You're gonna stay stuck, you're gonna stay doubtful, you're gonna stay discouraged, and I don't want that for you.

And then from there, I wanna talk to you about so what, now what, you know? And so let's get into it. What is imposter syndrome?

And it turns out like one of the solutions to imposter syndrome is actually baked right in to this very question. What is imposter syndrome anyway? So I had not heard of imposter syndrome until I became a corporate employee primarily based in the United States that I started to really hear the term and it was used a lot. And a lot of people will tell you that imposter syndrome is

when you are very, very qualified and you feel out of place when you go to perform. And that's imposter syndrome. And so I literally never heard of it before I had moved to the United States with my career. It was a few years into my career. And I'll be honest with you, in my early, early days of my career, I really was straight up ignorant about diversity and equity and inclusion.

I was really optimistic. I have a degree in chemical engineering and that particular discipline of engineering does attract more of the female persuasion than other disciplines, just kind of a fun fact. So I hadn't really thought about what the ramifications of imposter syndrome could be.

Until I started to get to an age and a life stage where my life started to come into conflict with my work life You know, I was such a good Analyst, know kind of the beginner level In consulting because I was so excellent to just say yes. Yes. I'll do that. Yes. I'll do that. Yes sign me up Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes And and I'm not sure that I would recommend any young person do different than that I think that that's a great way to put yourself in the way of like learning things and especially if you're still

not totally sure about what you want to create. So I said, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But then, you know, when I was about 25, I met my now husband and I started to, you know, make moves towards familyhood. You know, he was married previously, so I got a couple of bonus kids. And it was kind of interesting how things shifted at work really quickly, not because I was initiating the shift, but because so many people were responding to me differently.

knowing a little bit about my personal background. So I learned like really quickly not to bring up the kids, not to talk about that in the workplace, not because I didn't want to talk about my kids, not because I wasn't proud of my kids, but because I noticed that I stopped getting as many opportunities handed my way because people were making assumptions about what my priorities were on the basis of my gender. Like for the first time ever.

And it wasn't just the gender. They thought they were being polite by not overloading the mom. Right? They thought they were being polite by not overwhelming me or putting me into a position. So it's so interesting because it was so opposite to what I wanted. You know? In my career, it was a big deal for me to be able to go to university. And it was a big deal for me to get the job and the opportunity at

at that company and I wanted more. I wanted to grow. I wanted to have this impressive track record and I wanted all of that. So rather than put me in the position of having to explain, it's okay, I have people that help me with my children or it's okay, this is a known desire, it was just easier for me to just not discuss it. So.

I didn't feel like an imposter because I got married and I had kids built in. And I didn't feel like an imposter later when I had more kids. The imposter feeling really started to come up for me when I started really pushing my growth in new areas and stepping into new rooms that I wasn't necessarily being asked or invited into, just like showing up, doing the work, then getting picked, and then getting invited.

When I did that, I started to hear and read a lot more about this imposter syndrome thing and it got in my head. It got in my head in a big way that women in corporate America are supposed to have imposter syndrome. And I didn't question it. Not until years later. Fast forward a few years, I've now...

become an entrepreneur, I've now decided that I am gonna go all in on this thing. And I was confronted by all of these skills, these capabilities, these things that established entrepreneurs just seemed to magically know how to do. I was confronted by the fact that I didn't know how to do anything. Right? I don't mean like anything, anything, obviously I'd been successful in the prior career, but it felt like I was such a fish out of water with selling.

with knowing what to market, with knowing how to find out information, with knowing how to actually do this thing. you know, what's really interesting about entrepreneurship is a lot of people get into it because they want the freedom, but the other side of the freedom coin is you have so many options. You have so many decisions. And I didn't realize that there was a version of freedom in my employee world.

where I was free of a lot of decisions. I didn't have to make a lot of decisions. I knew how much I was gonna get paid. I didn't get to decide that. I didn't have to decide that. Didn't have to decide how to dress. Didn't have to decide where to go. Didn't have to decide what my work hours were. Didn't have to decide what the standards were for my work deliverables. It was all decided for me. And there's kind of a freedom in that, right? But being the rebellious and creative type that I actually am, I...

appreciated and strongly desired the ability to make new rules and to lead myself and others through different rules. So that's why entrepreneurship was ultimately perfect for me, but there was this season, this period where I didn't know anything, you know, or I just felt stuck, you know, because I didn't have the experience in that area. So I kept hearing, especially in the coaching world, know, imposter syndrome, imposter syndrome, the reason why you're not succeeding is imposter syndrome.

And I was bought into that, like just hook, line, sinker. I was absolutely convinced, yep, I've got imposter syndrome, because that's what everybody says that they have. And here's the part where I tell you what to do about it. What actually is imposter syndrome? You know, kind of coming right back to that. It's a very, I think, dangerous idea, because first of all, if you're assigning yourself a syndrome,

And you're assigning yourself a syndrome, like that is a big deal because if you have a syndrome, that means that there's nothing you can do about it. And because it's just pervasive, it's just like, it's just who you are, right? It's a syndrome. And if you're an imposter, it means you don't belong. That's what it means. You don't belong here. So for you to have imposter syndrome, that means that there's nothing you can do about it, you don't belong here.

And I'll never forget this. It just occurred to me one day. I was like, what is this anyway? Because I am into psychology. I am into high performance. I love reading books and studies and everything. And I noticed that imposter syndrome was appearing on websites and in literature and in blogs, but it wasn't showing up necessarily in more academic spots. I'm like, that's weird. And then I realized, I was like,

I've not heard this term until I was working in higher levels of corporate America. Like didn't even hear the term. I'm like, that's weird. Like I really, I don't recall ever hearing it when I was growing up in the remote Arctic town that I grew up in. I was like, this is so interesting. So I looked into it and I had assumed, and I think a lot of people do, that imposter syndrome is a diagnosis that you're gonna find in

the handbook for like therapists and psychologists that tell you like the all the things that could be wrong with you mentally. It turns out there is no such entry there is no such page dedicated to imposter syndrome because it's not a real syndrome. Fast forward a couple of years I was on Facebook and one of my clients tagged me in a video that just like rocked my world and

I'll have to ask the team to include the link to the video below this because I honestly cannot remember exactly who said it, but she was giving a commencement speech and she was talking about bicycle face. And bicycle face was a diagnosis that was given around the time that the bicycle came out. Now here's what's really interesting. Men never got bicycle face. Bicycle face was for women who had been riding their bikes. Now think about this.

If you're riding a bike, you're probably exerting yourself. You're probably like pushing against the wind, right? It's normal to be flushed when you exercise. And they had turned it into this like whole big diagnosis, which thank goodness is no longer around. But the point that they made in the speech, and we really must get the link below, that imposter syndrome is kind of the same thing.

Whenever you go to do something new, you're going to have uncertainty, you're gonna be unsure, and you're gonna have doubts about what you're doing because you've never done it before. And that doesn't make you an imposter. That makes you normal, you know? And the idea that only very educated people, particularly women or minorities, can get this syndrome.

I think is super harmful because you're not an imposter because of your age. You're not an imposter because of your gender or who you pray to or anything like that. What a preposterous idea. And you're certainly not an imposter if you've educated yourself. Now, you might actually still be facing some nerves, facing some worries.

maybe even triggered into anxiety. I'm not a mental health professional. I'm a high performance coach. I'm a business coach. It's possible you feel uncomfortable, but there is worlds of difference between feeling uncomfortable in a situation and not belonging there. You know? And when I realized it's not a real mental health condition. It's not...

It's not an actual syndrome and is only ascribed to people who look different than the people who are already sitting in the room. I gotta tell you, the thing I really did about that is I said, forget it. Forget it. Forget that you were ever told what imposter syndrome is. Just know thyself to know that when you go to do something new, you might have to take a nice, deep, enriching breath before you go do it.

you might need to prepare for that particular circumstance. As a high performance coach, I've worked with so many very high achievers who've achieved amazing things, but they struggle with accepting the idea, and this is an egoic issue, right? Their ego has a really hard time with the idea that they're doing something actually new. When you wanna go advertise on the internet and you've never...

done it before, there's a lot of things that you're going to get made aware of and presenced to when you go to do that activity. And the fact that don't automatically already know what to expect because you have some PhD or you have some master's degree or because you've got 20 years of experience in this other domain, that doesn't make you an imposter. It doesn't give you a syndrome. It makes you somebody who is on a learning journey. And you know, you're not

bad for wanting to learn more, you're not, there's nothing wrong with you because your heart rate is quickening because you're worried that people are gonna laugh at you. That's all very normal stuff. And I've worked with enough men to know that they feel that too. Right? Like I think a lot of times when we have these conversations about who's an imposter, who's not an imposter, I do think that there is a level of comfortability that you'll have when you're.

when you're in a group of people that look and sound and act like you, there's no getting away from that. But even then, even that said, it doesn't mean that you are incapable of learning a new capability, a new competency, something new. So, so what and what now? If you've been telling yourself, I can't do it because I have imposter syndrome, in the words of Bob Newhart, stop it.

Stop it, right? Like just choose the challenge over the diagnosis. Choose the challenge over the diagnosis because you may legitimately have real concerns with mental health. You don't need a fake one. You don't need a pretend one on top of it. And it's just very likely that your own personal growth and development

includes emotional regulation around not knowing everything. All right, well, thanks for joining me for the Amanda Kaufman show, and I'm looking forward to seeing you in another episode. In the meantime, if this is really helpful, go ahead and share it with three of your friends and leave an honest review. If you loved this, if you want more people to find out about it, the best way to let them know is to leave a five-star review.

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