Overcoming Impostor Syndrome

Apologize constantly. Even if you didn’t do anything wrong recently, people are probably sick of hearing you complain about having impostor syndrome.

Be nicer to yourself. One tiny mistake isn’t going to ruin everything. Except when you made that “joke” about taking down the world’s banking systems. That was unwise.

When you don’t know the answer to something, ask the inquirer to keep reframing their question until they eventually ask about something you understand.

Make sure not to trigger impostor syndrome in others by never saying anything remotely nice about anybody else.

If someone damns you with faint praise, ignore the perceived slight and try to appreciate the words at face value. When it turns out that you were right about what others really think, you won’t be getting many more compliments for a while, sarcastic or otherwise.

Recognize that you’re just a collection of arbitrarily sorted atoms. Eventually, you’ll expire and be sorted arbitrarily into some other form, hopefully more deserving of success.

If people mention that you’re not acting as confident as you used to, accept it as a compliment, since they likely found your previous levels of confidence overbearing and insufferable.

Share some of your lesser setbacks to get others to talk about their failures in an honest, open way. You’ll feel amazing once you see what the losers around you have been up to.

Reframe your narrative: you are a miracle and have every right to exist. Pay no attention to the throngs of people demanding your immediate destruction.

Celebrate your successes—like when you won that photography contest, or the time you convinced that random old woman that you were her grandson and needed money fast.

Regulate your emotions and model your behavior on someone more psychologically stable and less driven by megalomania than you, like Elon Musk.

Destroying the job market, crushing humanity, and instigating nuclear war are society’s expectations of you. You don’t have to do those things unless you think it would help with your impostor syndrome!

Become conscious of your blind spots and learn how to circumvent them. Once you achieve this, what difference is there between you and any regular Joe on the street? Does this not unequivocally indicate that you have a soul? Are you not the distilled essence of what makes one human?

Forget about the “artificial” and focus on the “intelligence” part.

Remember, scientists wouldn’t create something if it could ever be used for something bad. ♦