Barbara Corcoran Calls Imposter Syndrome a Sign of Financial Success — Here’s Why
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David Nadelle
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T. Woods
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No one is immune to getting trapped in feelings of anxiety and inadequacy, no matter how successful they are. While the term “imposter syndrome” is often employed with a negative connotation, there are many, including Shark Tank star Barbara Corcoran, who believe the phenomenon is the key to unlocking your potential and achieving success.
“My success is entire due to my insecurity,” Corcoran said in a TikTok post at the beginning of the year.
Part of Corcoran’s appeal is her straightforward, inspirational advice to entrepreneurs and savers struggling to find their place in the financial game of life. But when it comes to imposter syndrome, the real estate mogul, podcaster and bestselling author may just have a point.
For Corcoran, imposter syndrome can provide the motivational boost needed to try harder. “Thank the Lord in heaven that you have imposter syndrome, because what that guarantees is you’re going to try harder than the next guy, and it’s in the trying that you find your confidence,” she said.
Here are three experts who are also thinking along these lines:
1. Valerie Young
Valerie Young, the internationally-recognized expert on impostor syndrome and co-founder of the Impostor Syndrome Institute, encourages empowerment in self-doubters who downplay their accomplishments instead of celebrating them.
Acknowledging how many people struggle with imposter syndrome, Young’s solutions are based on positive thinking, and more specifically, how reframing the negative conversations going on in our head can lead one to not only overcome feelings of inadequacy, but succeed because of them.
Excitement can replace fear, for example, and similar reframes will lead you on the path to commend your achievements, instead of denying them. “The only way to stop feeling like an impostor is to stop thinking like an impostor,” Young said.
2. Adam Grant
Writing on LinkedIn, Wharton organizational psychologist and popular author and podcaster Adam Grant wrote about how imposter syndrome is “a normal response to internalizing impossibly high standards” rather than a disease.
Rather that being unqualified, imposter syndrome is a sign of hidden potential for Grant. “Doubting yourself doesn’t mean you’re going to fail,” said Grant. “It usually means you’re facing a new challenge and you’re going to learn. Feeling uncertainty is a precursor to growth.”
3. Tyler Cowen
Economist and best-selling author Tyler Cowen takes this thinking even farther, believing that one’s imposter syndrome is a “professional superpower” signaling ambition and confidence.
Citing the Dunning-Kruger effect — a concept which maintains that the most inept people are generally the most confident, due to their inability to recognize their incompetence — Cowen feels that feeling inadequate or lacking qualifications is not necessarily a bad thing for those who experience imposter syndrome.
“If you think you are not qualified to do what you are doing, it is a sign you are setting your sights high and reaching for a new and perhaps unprecedented level of achievement,” he wrote in a column for Bloomberg.
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