SINGING “I Have Confidence” from The Sound of Music at the top of your lungs can sometimes boost your own confidence when it’s ebbing low – as I’m sure some of you will know. It is not, however, a one-size-fits-all remedy for low self-esteem, performance anxiety or self-doubt.
Though warbling it loudly and out of tune in the shower can be a great self-rousing solution for the anxieties of starting a new job – as a governess, or whatever – it may not work so well during the interview.
I am a big fan of The Sound of Music, and that song – which I regularly sing loudly in the shower. It is very effective, not just because of its sentiment (“I have confidence in MEEEEEEEEEEEEE”) but because it drowns out that whispering voice of self-doubt.
Were I to sing it outside of the bathroom, or in the company of anyone else, it would quickly lose its effect as a confidence booster and deliver a confidence blow – chiefly because I can’t sing at all, and anyone listening would feel compelled to remind me of that.
As a singer, I am, without doubt, an imposter. But what about as an actor and a writer? No matter how well qualified and experienced I am, or however much other people trust my capabilities, there is always a nagging voice that whispers, “Lesley, you’re a fraud. This life of yours – you don’t know how to do it, do you? It’s just one big guess. You’re blagging it. You’ll never grow up – never know all the things you need to know. And, one day, you’re going to get found out”.
Then the voice does a kind of Hammer Horror laugh – “Mwuhahaha” – and dips behind its cloak.
Call me paranoid, but I think I may be suffering from Imposter Syndrome – which I suppose is a kind of paranoia. It is a real condition which I first heard about on BBC Radio 4 last year. Its guiding principle – “Just because you think you’re blagging it, doesn’t mean you’re not” – undoubtedly derives from the guiding principle of paranoia, “Just because you think people are out to get you, doesn’t mean they’re not”.
ACTUALLY, I just blagged those guiding principles. Thankfully, the two American academics who first coined the phrase, Imposter Syndrome (psychology professor Pauline Clance and psychologist Suzanne Imes), applied more rigour, completing a full and comprehensive study entitled The Impostor Phenomenon Among High Achieving Women (1978).
Talking in a programme which first aired on Radio 4 in 2006, corporate high-flier Janette Rawlinson echoed Clance and Imes’s assertion that women are more susceptible to self-doubt in the workplace. She noted that this is particularly true in corporate life, where self-promotion and competitiveness – qualities deemed positive and admirable in men – can be seen as aggressive and negative in women.
“There is this feeling that we will get ‘found out’ because, psychologically, we have taken on so many negative messages,” she said.
However, it is not only women who suffer from Imposter Syndrome. An unnamed, but highly-successful, male journalist spoke on the programme about his perpetual struggle with self-doubt.
“I just think life is a gigantic confidence trick that you play on everybody else,” he said.
He explained why he envies people who don’t know how little they know: “I admire the Melinda Messengers, who can do a chat show without realising they’re absolutely hopeless at it because nobody’s told them and they haven’t got the imagination to realise. And it is like the bumblebee that flies but, aerodynamically, he shouldn’t be able to. But he isn’t able to read the book that tells him he can’t.”
AS I ponder my ability to pull off a series of new artistic challenges this year, I am reminded of the Woman’s Hour programme (which I listened to again on the iPlayer) and of another programme broadcast on Radio 4 last year which I couldn’t find on the iPlayer, but which explored in depth the effect of Imposter Syndrome on preeminent scientists, whose scope for “blagging it” is ostensibly less than those working in business or the arts.
If memory serves, a guest on that programme proposed that a small measure of self-doubt was a healthy thing and that, paradoxically, those of us who worry about being a fraud at work are less likely to be one. On the other hand, those who operate with an unflinching certainty in their own abilities betray a lack of clear judgment.
To say I was a wee bit terrified at the prospect of delivering my first radio play, and possibly directing my first full stage production, this year would be an understatement.
If, like the bumblebee, I was unaware of the reality of what would be involved, I could stumble into it with blind ambition and blag as I go. As it is, I have had the benefit and, in some ways, the curse of being exposed to the world of theatre and radio drama for years. So I know how much skill, talent and ingenuity go into writing and directing plays.
The fact that I am nagged by self-doubt in almost everything I do, including the things I am best qualified for, could work in my favour. After all, if life is just one long blag and I’m making it all up as I go along, why should a new challenge feel any different?
Of course, it will feel different because I have a lot less experience of blagging radio play-writing and theatre directing than I do acting. I won’t have the muscle memory of almost 20 years’ treading boards and 10 years’ playing to microphones. Unlike Melinda Messenger and equivalent talk-show presenters, I’m aware of how much I don’t know – or at least have a fair idea.
But I’m not going to let a little case of Imposter Syndrome hold me back. I’m going to think positive and sing “I Have Confidence” loudly, out of tune, in the shower every day. And if a little self-doubt goes a long way, I should be fine.