Overcoming Imposter Syndrome as a Freelance Writer

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What is Imposter Syndrome?

Are you a freelance writer who feels like you are less qualified than your peers or that all the opportunities you get are undeserved? You’re not alone. Despite any amount of success and recognition we receive for our hard work, many freelance writers suffer from imposter syndrome—the feeling that no matter what we do, we will never be good enough or that our success is the result of flukes and luck, rather than given skills or hours and hours of hard work. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

You know that little voice in your head that likes to criticize everything you do? The voice that tries to convince you that your writing, or whatever else you’re working on, isn’t good enough? That someone else has already done it better, so you have no business trying to do it now? That no one will like your work, so what you’re doing is pointless?

Hopefully your inner critic isn’t nearly as harsh as mine can be at times. Imposter syndrome is the feeling that this little voice gives us, that makes us lose most if not all of the confidence that we had in ourselves to accomplish something. In this case, your confidence in being a good, productive writer.

According to the National Institute of Health, “Imposter syndrome is a commonly reported and experienced phenomenon that affects high-functioning, high-achieving individuals.”

Identifying Your Imposter Syndrome

Do you feel as though some degree of imposter syndrome is what’s standing in the way of you and success in freelance writing? The first step in overcoming imposter syndrome is to identify what way it is manifesting in your creative life. Below are five of the more common ways that imposter syndrome is known to manifest. If you feel as though one of these is calling you out specifically, that’s your sign to continue reading.

Fear of Failure: No one wants to fail, but you might be dealing with fear of failure if you find yourself avoiding tasks that could potentially expose your perceived inadequacies in a light of “failure”. Instead of giving something that you would likely excel at a try, you choose not to at all out of fear of failure.

Self-doubt: If you have self-doubt, you are constantly questioning whether you are good enough at something. Even if you’ve proven to yourself that you can, in fact do said thing. You still doubt that you are good enough to be successful.

Sensitivity to Criticism: You find that you are incredibly sensitive to any level of negative feed back, and tend to dwell on it for long periods of time. As well as let it sit heavily on your confidence levels. Feeling some way about negative feed back is simply a human quality, but when it stops you in your tracks and becomes a barrier between you and success as a freelance writer, this may be how imposter syndrome is manifesting in your creative life.

Perfectionism: You’ve set yourself unreasonably high standards, and if all pieces are not in line perfectly for your perceived “perfect execution”, it leads you into a downward spiral of procrastination and anxiety. You might notice this one in more than one aspect of your life as well, if you do see it as a barrier in your writing.

Attributing success to external factors: You do achieve what you set out to do, but instead of feeling accomplished and internally successful, you attribute your success to external factors. Factors such a luck, timing, or other external factors that played a role but not as prominently as you did.

How to Overcome Imposter Syndrome

There is more to over coming imposter syndrome than just somehow suddenly becoming more self confident and believing in your own abilities. After you recognize where your imposter syndrome is manifesting from, you can then take steps to combat it and change the way you think as well as how you talk to yourself.

Practice Self-Talk: A lot of what fuels imposter syndrome is an abundance of negative self-talk. Replacing your negative self-talk with positive affirmations can help you to combat imposter syndrome and see your successes for through a more positive lens. A few positive affirmations that you might like to use include…

• ”I am good enough.”
• ”I am a talented and creative writer.”
• I am always learning and growing as a writer.”
• I trust in my writing process and my ability to craft great pieces about *insert writing niche here*.”

You can acknowledge your negative thoughts and how you are feeling but you don’t have to live there. The take away here is to incorporate more positive thoughts that will take up more space than the negative ones, and ultimately begin to hold more weight than the negative beliefs that are holding you back.

Challenge Negative Thoughts: Negative thoughts are just a part of being human. It’s what you allow those thoughts to do to you and your outlook on yourself and your abilities that matters most. There are a few methods that you could utilize in order to challenge your negative thoughts.

Performing a self reality check is one way to combat your negative thoughts in the moment.With a reality check you can question the validity of your own negative thoughts, and look for supporting evidence that points toward them being true. When you do not find any solid evidence to support your negative thought you can then replace it with a positive one.

As a writer of any kind, it’s hard not to fall into the trap of feeling as though you are just recreating the wheel in your writing. That what you are creating has already been written, the client will most certainly reject your work due to some lack of originality.

A reality check for this sort of thinking could be along the lines of, asking yourself “Do I not have a portfolio of my writing available for clients to view before hiring me? If they felt my writing was unoriginal, they probably wouldn’t have hired me in the first place.” And challenge those negative thoughts with solid facts.

Replacing a negative thought with a positive one can also be referred to as “cognitive reframing“. This is when you take a negative thought and attempt to view it from another frame or angle. You aren’t changing the situation or the facts, but you are putting yourself in a more positive perceptive of what you are thinking.

Replacing negative thoughts as a freelance writer can be difficult at times. Thoughts like “I’ll never be as successful as such and such who’s making thousands of dollars a month already…” or “no client is going to want to hire me. There’s nothing special about my writing…” and so on. Every one of these statements can be flipped and viewed through a more positive lens.

“Such and such had to start somewhere, they didn’t just wake up successful a week after beginning their freelance writing journey. You have to start somewhere also.”

“Not enough clients know about you yet, or have read your work to find out that you would, in fact, be the perfect fit for their project. There are hundreds of thousands of people out there who are in need of a freelance writer. You haven’t encountered all of them, to be able to think that NO client would want to hire you.”

Build Self Confidence, the Right Way: Building self confidence isn’t something you just manifest through positive thinking. There are tangible steps you can take to support the growth of your self confidence over time. One thing you can start by doing is setting yourself realistic goals. You can still shoot for your big long term goals, but you might find that you reach success more easily when you break your large goals down into multiple smaller ones.

For instance, maybe your goal is to start making a full time income of $5,000 per month as a freelance writer, but you’ve just started out in the past two months. But you’re feeling disappointed that you aren’t close to reaching that $5,000 mark just yet. So instead, you break your goal down. You aim to make a consistent $500 per month for at least 3 months in a row. Anything more is just a bonus, and an additional step toward the long term goal.

Scalable goals like the example above, aren’t only more reasonable but also allow for small wins to occur along the way. Boosting your confidence levels, further fueling your motivation to keep working toward your goals.

Redefining Your Goals and Success: Your goals are just that, YOURS. You set the bar, and you define what you consider to be reaching success. Maybe you set a goal to make a certain amount of money each month while writing, or to sign on X number of clients within your first three months of freelance writing. You could benefit from revisiting your goals and maybe scaling them back to something more achievable in the short term.

You need to shoot for all the small wins that you can get! You don’t need stop aiming for your biggest goal, but maybe create mini goals that you can hit on your path to your ultimate goal. You can turn a goal of making $5000 a month regularly, into a goal of “make $1000 a month two months in a row.” As you continue to scale your business toward that $5000 a month goal.

Conclusion

Imposter syndrome can be an overwhelming feeling for many freelance writers, but you don’t need to let it stand in your way of success. With some effort and dedication you can identify the sources of your imposter syndrome and take steps to overcome these ways and take bigger strides toward success as a freelance writer.

If you’re struggling with imposter syndrome, remember that you are not alone. Take steps today to tackle imposter syndrome for yourself. What have you done to over come imposter syndrome in your freelance writing career or other aspects of your life?