Quotes from 9 Successful and Powerful Women with Imposter Syndrome

Quotes about Imposter Syndrome from 9 powerful women who are successful in their own careers yet still have doubts about their skills.

Imposter Syndrome is a pattern of thinking that makes us doubt our accomplishments and makes us fear of being exposed as a “fraud”.

That is exactly how I felt as a marketer in the corporate world. I had a successful career. I was given promotions. I was praised for my work. I helped grow a startup company to an international publicly-traded corporation. 

And yet I feared being found out to be a fraud.

I felt like I was making everything up as I went and therefore was undeserving of any praise. When I found a project to be easy, I didn’t attribute that to my skills, but rather it made me believe a monkey could do my job.

Every time my boss scheduled a one on one meeting, I just “knew” he was going to admonish my performance and fire me. 

I could never appreciate my accomplishments and praise myself because I had tunnel vision focused on all the areas I fell short of my expectations. And every time I fell short, it was further “proof” that I didn’t belong, that I wasn’t good enough.

What an exhausting way to live!! Not to say that from time to time I don’t slip into the “who am I to be talking about this or helping people with that” mindset (I am only human!!). The difference now, however, is that I’m able to catch myself and course-correct.

When we feel this Imposter Syndrome and hear the inner bully talk,  we don’t tend to share it with other people because it feels shameful. So we bottle it up.

The problem is, SOOO many people feel this way, by talking about it and connecting on this common unpleasant trait, we start to realize that we aren’t alone.

Isolation breeds negativity. Connection breeds harmony.

So here are 9 women – all successful in their own careers – who have had this same self doubt as you and I.

I hope this helps you realize that these negative thoughts are not reality. They are just ideas your brain is serving up to you in an ill-attempt to help fill the gap between your expectations.

As you can see below, success, skills and accomplishments are not the answer to making these thoughts going away. So beating yourself up for “falling short” is serving no real valuable purpose, and just makes you feel like crap.

1. Maya Angelou

Civil rights activist, author, poet and Nobel Laureate

Maya Angelou admitted that at times, she often felt like a fraud, once saying:

“I have written 11 books, but each time I think, ‘uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.”

2. Arianna Huffington 

Author, syndicated columnist, co-founder of The Huffington Post, the founder and CEO of Thrive Global, and the author of fifteen books

Arianna Huffington has also admitted to feelings of self-doubt. In an interview, Huffington shared:

“The greatest obstacle for me has been the voice in my head that I call my obnoxious roommate. I wish someone would invent a tape recorder that we could attach to our brains to record everything we tell ourselves. We would realize how important it is to stop this negative self-talk. It means pushing back against our obnoxious roommate with a dose of wisdom.”

3. Lady Gaga 

Grammy and Academy Award winning friggin super star

While you might think fame would reassure someone of their talents and successes, sometimes self-doubt can still creep up. In her documentary, Lady Gaga revealed:

“I still sometimes feel like a loser kid in high school and I just have to pick myself up and tell myself that I’m a superstar every morning so that I can get through this day and be for my fans what they need for me to be.”

4. Sonia Sotomayor

First Hispanic Supreme Court justice

Sonia Sotomayer had admitted to feeling like a fraud and not fitting in throughout her life. Growing up in the Bronx in a modest home with her single mother and brother, Sotomayor never thought of herself as a likely candidate for Princeton University. As she once said in a speech:

“I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of the worlds I inhabit. I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up.”

5. Emma Watson

Award winning actress, model, and activist

The Harry Potter actress and activist Emma Watson has also publicly admitted to falling into the trap of imposter syndrome. In an interview with Vogue and another with Rookie magazine in 2013, she shared how she feels when people offer her praise for her acting:

“Now when I receive recognition for my acting, I feel incredibly uncomfortable. I tend to turn in on myself. I feel like an imposter.”
“Any moment, someone’s going to find out I’m a total fraud, and that I don’t deserve any of what I’ve achieved.”

6. Jodi Foster

Academy Award winning actress

In an interview with 60 Minutes, Foster said she thought winning an Oscar was “a fluke” similar to her first day of college.

“[It was] the same way when I walked on the campus at Yale. I thought everybody would find out, and they’d take the Oscar back. They’d come to my house, knocking on the door, ‘Excuse me, we meant to give that to someone else. That was going to Meryl Streep.’ “

7. Meryl Streep

Academy Award winning actress

Speaking of Meryl Streep, she told Ken Burns in a 2002 interview for USA Weekend:

“You think, ‘Why would anyone want to see me again in a movie? And I don’t know how to act anyway, so why am I doing this?’ ”

8. Dr. Margaret Chan

Forbes ranked Dr. Chan as 2013’s thirtieth most powerful woman in the world

It’s easy to see why she was raked by Forbes – Queen Elizabeth II named her an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, and she finished two terms as the head of the World Health Organization. You would think that her educational background and decades of medical experience would make her feel like an expert in her field. However, in Susan Pinker’s book, The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap, she admits:

“There are an awful lot of people out there who think I’m an expert. How do these people believe all this about me? I’m so much aware of all the things I don’t know.”

9. Michelle Obama

Um, she’s Michelle friggin Obama!

On her book tour for her best-selling Becoming, Michelle Obama spoke about her experience facing impostor syndrome — and made an eye-opening revelation about what helped her ease her insecurities.

“I still have a little impostor syndrome… It doesn’t go away, that feeling that you shouldn’t take me that seriously. What do I know? I share that with you because we all have doubts in our abilities, about our power and what that power is.”

The former first lady is not the only powerful person who has opened up about feeling unworthy of her success. Here’s what she and five other successful people have revealed about how they overcame their insecurities at work, so you can do the same.

Michelle Obama realized that the people at the “powerful tables” aren’t always smart

During a book tour stop in London, Obama said young women have to push the “demons out of your head,” revealing that she too asks herself if she’s “good enough,” Newsweek reported. Obama noted that women internalize this doubt from an early age, adding that this feeling is especially pertinent among women of color.  

So she offered this “secret” for women across the board:

“I have been at probably every powerful table that you can think of, I have worked at nonprofits, I have been at foundations, I have worked in corporations, served on corporate boards, I have been at G-summits, I have sat in at the U.N.: They are not that smart.”

The bottom line

I’m sharing this with you because it’s empowering to not feel so alone in our thinking. It starts to make you realize that these are just thoughts stemming from our subconscious in an effort to help us succeed. It’s just going about it in a not-so-nice way. 

Comment down below what that Imposter voice keeps telling you and how you would change what she has to say! Help others feel not so alone in their thinking!!

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