The great Eric Barker just wrote generally about fighting the effects of the Imposter Syndrome, in which successful people are convinced that they are frauds, and do not deserve the success that they’ve achieved.

Imposter syndrome is extremely widespread, affecting 70% of successful people, according to a study by psychologist Gail Matthews.  If it affects you, you might think you’re alone, but it probably affects your successful friends as well.

I believe that entrepreneurs are especially prone to imposter syndrome, in part because their press clippings tend to paint a glowing picture of them and their companies that would make the most outrageous Facebook-brag look modest.

Eric’s post offers some great advice for those who find themselves feeling like frauds:

“Focus On Learning: Forget appearing awesome. You can get better if you try, so focus on that.
“Good Enough” Goals: Stop trying to be prefect. (Yes, that was a typo. I’m not fixing it. It’s good enough.)
Take Off The Mask: Talk to someone you think is facing the same issue. You’re not alone.”

Let’s take each of these in turn.

Focus On Learning
The entrepreneurs I admire most are the ones who admit their lack of omniscience and focus on learning.  This doesn’t have to mean following the advice of others; rather, it means keeping an open mind, yet taking a skeptical and experimental approach to the world.  If you focus on the status you’ve achieved, you’ll worry about losing it.  If you focus on learning, you’ll realize that no one can take away what you’ve learned, and that there is always more to learn.

“Good Enough” Goals
If you measure yourself against others, you’ll never be happy.  There’s always a bigger fish.  Even Mark Zuckerberg, who has achieved more at a young age than anyone since Alexander the Great, could still be disappointed.  Adopting modest goals doesn’t mean that you cut off achievement; at one point, Larry Page and Sergey Brin offered to sell Google to Yahoo! for $1 million, and were bargained down to $750K by Vinod Khosla.  The deal only fell apart because Excite refused to pay that exorbitant sum.  Oops.

Take Off The Mask
This is where having real friends and loved ones comes in.  In my own life, I have been the subject of both adulation and scorn.  But I never let either affect me that much because I am fortunate to have a spouse that loves the real me (and married me long before either the adulation or the scorn) and true friends who don’t really care about who thinks what in the Silicon Valley bubble.  For goodness sake, maintain relationships with people outside the Valley.

You shouldn’t feel bad if you find yourself falling into the imposter syndrome.  But you don’t have to suffer alone, and in silence.  Follow Eric’s advice, and you’ll be able to see yourself as you truly are, and understand that what others think doesn’t matter that much.