Why I’m embracing insecurity

How do you deal with your own insecurity at work?

I don’t really — at least, not well. It’s not easy to do and in fact, it’s not even easy to talk about. Which is unfortunate given that every (decent) person I know feels insecure about at least some aspect of their job. In creative industries, imposter syndrome just seems to be part of the package. Until recently I saw it as just another thing to learn to deal with. Like having difficult conversations, or public speaking, I just needed to get over it.

Well, now I’m not so sure. When I started reflecting on my recent work, I began to notice patterns in how insecurity affects my behaviour. The more I dug, the more I found.

Asking for help gets really hard when you feel insecure.

Which is counterintuitive, really. The times when I most need help — when I feel least like I know what the hell I’m doing — are the times I feel least comfortable asking for it. Insecurity makes you feel more like you need to prove you can figure it out on your own — you’re basically shooting yourself in the foot.

So, we silo ourselves, we spend too long on things that don’t matter, and we don’t show our work to others until we think it’s up to scratch. The real priorities go out the window, buried under this irrational feeling, and our work inevitably suffers.

On the other hand, getting defensive gets really easy.

Taking feedback well a tough design (and life) lesson we all face. I even wrote a previous article about it. But doing a good job of it when our confidence in our work is already shaky? That’s asking for failure. Instead of focusing on the top priority — digging into the flaws in a design — we’re more likely to worry about how we’re being perceived. What better way to dispel our self-doubt than by defending and justifying our decisions, even to ourselves? Cue: high defensiveness, bad design.

How can I get over it?

I said I’m not great at dealing with my insecurity. My method up until now has been this: try to learn all the things. Be better. Identify weak spots and knowledge gaps and stamp them out. OK, more like: identify the weak spots and then get immediately overwhelmed by how much I don’t know, panic and go for a lie down. But you get the idea.

Maybe there’s another way.

Maybe instead of trying to become less insecure I could just… become less insecure about being insecure. Maybe insecurity isn’t an enemy that I should, or can, defeat, but something I can embrace. Maybe the real problem isn’t feeling insecure — maybe it’s not talking about it enough.

I’m not just talking about saying “I don’t know”, though that’s important. I’m talking about being able to openly say, “I don’t know, and that scares me.” By calling out that I’m feeling insecure, and highlighting to myself and others how it affects me — what behaviours it might be triggering, how it influences my decision making — perhaps insecurity will start to lose its power, leaving in its place a more authentic, self-aware way of working.

And, in the process, it might just help others to feel more secure about their insecurities too.