Someone told me this week I should do speaking engagements. Help others think positively. Share my wisdom with the world.
I smiled and said thank you.
And I did not tell them that three days before that conversation I had to give myself four separate TED talks just to get out of bed.
That is the gap nobody talks about. Between who people see and who is actually in the room.
Let me tell you who I actually am on some days.
I live with anxiety and depression. Not the kind that gets talked about in soft lighting with a warm cup of tea and a gratitude journal nearby. The kind that makes a perfectly ordinary Tuesday feel like moving through wet concrete. The kind where the morning alarm goes off and your brain immediately starts negotiating – reasons to stay, reasons to move, a full internal debate before your feet hit the floor.
Some mornings I win that debate quickly. Some mornings it takes everything I have.
And then I get up. I show up. I do the work. I travel internationally. I run businesses. I lose weight. I write. I produce. I show up in rooms and say smart things and people look at me like I have it figured out.
I do not have it figured out. I have it managed. Those are not the same thing.
The numbers say I am not alone. Not even close.
75% of high-achieving female executives have experienced imposter syndrome. Three out of four women who have objectively succeeded still carry persistent doubt that they deserve to be where they are.
Black women experience imposter syndrome at an 81% rate compared to 67% of white women. We are not just faking it more often. We are faking it in rooms that were not built for us, in front of people who are sometimes waiting for us to prove we do not belong, while managing the additional weight of being the only one, the first one, or the representative of everyone who looks like us.
21% of women report experiencing imposter syndrome very frequently or always, compared to 12% of men.
And here is the one that should end the conversation about whether this is weakness: if years of medical training and board certification cannot prevent imposter feelings, the problem runs deeper than any credential can reach. You cannot achieve your way out of it. You cannot credential your way past it. It does not care how many degrees are on your wall or how many times you have been the smartest person in the room.
It is still there. Whispering that you got lucky. That they are about to find out. That you are not what they think you are.
Here is what I want to say about faking it.
Faking it gets a bad reputation. Like it is dishonest. Like you are running some kind of con on the world.
I want to reframe that.
What most people call faking it is actually the daily practice of choosing to show up before you feel ready. Before you feel capable. Before the anxiety has cleared and the depression has lifted and you feel like the version of yourself that deserves to be in the room.
You show up anyway. You do the work anyway. And then you move.
That is not fraud. That is discipline. That is the unsexy, unglamorous, nobody-posts-about-this version of what it actually takes to build something while your brain is working against you.
Wisdom does not come from having it together. Wisdom comes from continuing to move when you do not.
What I have learned from the inside of it.
Anxiety lies. It tells you the worst outcome is the most likely one. It tells you that the feeling you have right now is the feeling you will always have. It is wrong on both counts. Consistently. And knowing it is lying does not always make the lie quieter, but it gives you something to push back against.
Depression steals. It takes your energy, your motivation, your ability to feel the things that are supposed to feel good. And it does it quietly enough that sometimes you do not notice what is gone until you are already running on empty.
Managing both while building a life that looks the way mine looks from the outside requires a level of intention most people never have to develop. I am not grateful for the illness. I am clear-eyed about what it has forced me to build in myself.
The internal negotiation before the alarm wins. The decision, made fresh every single morning, to be the person people think I already am.
That decision, repeated daily, is what wisdom actually looks like from the inside. It is not a quote on a poster. It is not a speaking engagement. It is a woman in her bedroom at 7am reminding herself who she is before the world gets a chance to tell her.
If someone told you that you should be inspiring others right now.
And you smiled and said thank you.
And you did not tell them about the morning you almost did not make it out of bed.
I see you.
You are not a fraud. You are not faking it in the way that means lying. You are faking it in the way that means you decided the version of yourself that shows up is more true than the version that stays under the covers.
Keep going. Give yourself whatever it takes to start the day. And then another round if you need it.
The world needs what you are building. Even on the days you have to build it from the floor.
Do you fake it some days? Do you live with anxiety, depression, or both while showing up anyway? Drop it in the comments. This is a safe place to say it out loud.
