Nietzsche & Imposter Syndrome: Your Failure to Connect Your Soul to Your Role
How can Nietzsche prevent your oh-so-darling demons of self-doubt in the boardroom?
Today, we’re talking Nietzsche. That rowdy upstart whose moustache is as iconic as Nike’s little swish.
And we’re talking Imposter Syndrome. That buzz behind our ears, whispering sour nothings about who we are and what we are capable of. If you let its words take root, each move you’re expected to make will be plagued by self-doubt. An emotion you can’t help but wear on your cashmere sleeve.
Now imagine the alternative: You swan into the boardroom, no longer with fear in your fingers, not because the fear has gone from ‘you’, but because no longer can you call them ‘your’ fingers. They are your character’s now, written into a scripted performance of you. And these fingers are driven by an explosive dynamism as ignitable as SpaceX rocket fuel.
The Weighty Word to Start Us Off: the Übermensch
It’s Nietzsche’s 1883 book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where he first uses the term Übermensch, a weighty word that doesn’t quite roll off the tongue more than punch it. Zarathustra, the book’s main character, Zarathustra, suggests that it is an aim for humanity to set itself, moving from personal values inspired by Christianity to ones more ‘down-to-earth’.
Vague enough? Let’s colour between these lines.
First colour: Christianity. Nietzsche viewed humanity as having its morality directly tied to very Biblical origins. Now, these origins have their own origins from an entity above and beyond our own: God. As such, he labelled this type of morality as ‘Otherworldly’. It required a belief in an immortal soul, separate from (and better than) the body.
Second colour: Earth. The opposite to that ‘Otherworldliness’? The ground beneath our feet, the wind at our backs, and the dog-eat-dog rat-race Hunger Games-esque place we like to call home. I’ll call it ‘This-worldliness’
Third colour: the clash. Not the band, but the contrast between the colours above: Christianity vs. Earth (not currently available on pay-per-view).
For Nietzsche, he doesn’t see the need for us to “seek beyond the stars for reasons”. In other words, we can give meaning to our lives without requiring a belief in Christian values, values built on the idea of a perfect soul encased in our imperfect bodies.
Reminder: we’re not here to debate the truth and validity of ideas such as these. Instead, we’re here to find new ways of framing old problems that business executives (and others) are troubled by. Every theory has multiple layers. To be inspired by a layer and adapt it to your needs is not the same as endorsing it. Remember that.
How does Übermensch relate to Imposter Syndrome?
Disconnection.
Imposter Syndrome, much like the divide between the Otherwordly and the This-worldly, is a disconnect with oneself. It’s both an internal disharmony and a misalignment between you and the world around you. You don’t feel a bridge between the position you’re in and who, if we cut away the shallow surface, you are at your core.
But: Nietzsche has this to say:
“what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end”.
Let’s explore.
The Buzz-Standard Advice for Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
Typical advice for overcoming imposter syndrome involves every guru’s favourite buzzwords: having belief in yourself, attaining an elusive confidence to accept who you are. Once done - so the billion-dollar-story goes - the syndrome will sink faster than Christmas cocktails down your receptionist’s mouth.
Yet… well, no. Such advice confuses aspects of the end goal with the process. Belief, confidence, and acceptance are not steps to the door, but the screws, wood, and hinges that form the door.
To jump to them is putting the cart before the corporate horse.
So, what is one to do? What’s the alternative?
The Solution: Dance Like Nobody's Watching
To perform.
To dance like nobody’s watching — even when the eyes from the ground floor to the penthouse are firmly fixed upon you.
Yes, to bridge the divide between the Otherworldliness of who you’re expected to be, and the This-worldliness of who you currently are, you must learn not from self-help books, but from Oscar ceremonies.
To remove one’s self-doubts, you must go beyond the typical understanding of ascending past your worries through concepts that fit well into YouTube thumbnails and Podcast titles: instead, you must lie to yourself in the most human, Earthly way possible: through acting, performance.
Become the theatre, darling, as “To ‘give style’ to one’s character [is] a great and rare art!”
Performance is not the same as belief.
It is a conscious attempt to mislead both others and, - when taken to extremes - ourselves, using words as tools and weapons. Performance is constructed. It is a conscious choreography, designed to do something.
This is instead of the buzzword advice, which results in you constantly playing catch-up to the rules of the game.
No, you set the rules of the self - you:
“survey all the strengths of weaknesses that [your] nature has to offer and then fit them into an artistic plan until each appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye.”
The Wrap-Up: Where Soul Meets Role
Could my rambling be considered a new wrapped on the old truth of: “just do it and confidence will follow”? Yes. But, it answers the question that feels like a paradox, that everyone is too scared to speak: “how do I “just do it”?”.
My answer? You perform, you read a script.
Even Nietzsche’s words sing of this, where he says:
“What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the Übermensch: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment…”
— much like stage fright that, once overcome, becomes a laughable feeling of relief.
So, dear executive philosophers: you must become the Superhuman Actor.
Are you ready to play the part to finally be the part?
Or will the cat forever have your tongue?
