Happy Tuesday!

Here’s a guest post from my good friend K.C. Eames.

This is something I think 99% of accountants feel and it doesn’t seem to go away as we climb that ladder. You graduate college, pass exams, make partner, start a business, etc and it’s still there! For me, it’s a voice in my head that says “they’re going to find out you’re just winging it” or “why would they want to work with you”.

K.C. talks about it, then flips the whole thing on its head. Definitely worth your time.

👇

Imposter syndrome is a modern disease, that’s only been amplified by social media.

I used to identify very strongly with the term “imposter syndrome.”

The first time I heard it, I felt diagnosed! Validated in a weird way. It gave a name to something I had been feeling for awhile, and it made me feel less alone in it. There was comfort in having a term for this “sickness,” and realizing that other people felt it too. It felt even more validating when I mentioned the phrase to my shareholder and she said she felt it too, a shareholder at a top 100 firm with 30 years of experience in the industry. Ok, so it’s normal. 

But naming it and normalizing it didn’t make it go away. I actually think it only reinforced it. And finding others who felt it too, while comforting in a way, bonded the idea in my brain even harder.

Whenever I entered a room, physical or virtual, I’d scan the participants and mentally tag myself as the least intelligent person there. In each new promotion or role I took, I felt like eventually I was going to be “found out.” It felt like somehow I kept slipping through the cracks, moving on up without proper assessment, and that eventually this would compound enough that I’d be so high up, completely and utterly unqualified, and it would all come crashing down.

But that feeling is fading for me. Not all at once, and also not accidentally. 

I’ve spent the past couple years thinking about “reality,” consciousness, and perception. Not to get all woo woo or meta, but this is a fact: you are not your thoughts. You are the observer of your thoughts. The feeling of being incompetent does not mean you are incompetent. 

I’ve managed to dissolve this imposter feeling through intentional, logical thinking by challenging my own thoughts. The words I use in my own mind matter. They can shape my identity, my “reality.” If I keep labeling myself as someone with imposter syndrome, that idea is much more likely to keep living, festering in me. By attaching to this term, it starts to feel like a truth, even when it isn’t. It becomes a fixed feature, a continually reinforcing idea. 

So, I stopped attaching myself to that phrase. I stopped using it in my mind and stopped telling other people I have it. 

That doesn’t mean I have everything figured out or that I always know what I’m doing. It just means I don’t allow that to define me. There is a difference between occasionally feeling inadequate and deciding that inadequacy is who you are. 

When I first started at Dark Horse CPAs, I was so nervous! I remember the elated feeling when I got my first piece of informal feedback that I did a good job. I took a screenshot and added it to a blank OneNote page. Over the past 4 years, I have continued to collect snippets of praise, kind comments, encouragement, and compliments people have given me. I titled the page “Praise & Positivity.” I never go back to read them. I just save them. It is a very, very long page now. 

At first, I did that because I thought I needed external validation. Maybe if I collected enough proof from other people, it would combat and quiet the voice in my own head.

Well, it worked, but not for the reason I originally planned.

Ultimately, really seeing and hearing what other people see in me, that I don’t see, exposed such a contrast - it helped me recognize my “reality” is shaped by my own perception. And if others seem to experience me differently than I see myself, perhaps I should be skeptical about my own self-perception. It must be flawed. That thought changed something for me. It made me realize that my internal narrative is not the most accurate narrative. 

I started noticing that I would scan the room, same as before, but the assumption that everyone else is smarter than me felt empty. Instead, I acknowledge other people have strengths in areas I don’t have. And I have strengths in areas they don’t have. My life experiences give me a different vantage point. And that alone has value because it allows us as a group to look at a problem and generate solutions from multiple angles, resulting in an outcome far better than any one of us could have come up with on our own.

I am part of something bigger here. I am a piece of a puzzle. I am needed here for the whole picture. 

My goal is not to be the smartest in the room. It’s to contribute something useful to the conversation. When I stop treating every room like a test of intelligence, I become much more capable of actually contributing in a meaningful way.

I don’t need to be an expert in every area to belong in the room. I just need to bring what I bring.

For me, this has been deeply freeing. My value does not come from knowing everything. It comes from bringing my perspective, my judgment, my experience, my questions, my emotions, and my passion - with honesty and humility.

That’s how I see myself now when I enter a room: 

I bring something different, and that is enough.

Did this resonate?

If so, you should follow K.C. on Linkedin or following along with her writing on Substack.

Have a great short week!

P.S. if you read her Substack, I recommend starting here. Really good piece.

Tailor