I don’t feel worthy of this opportunity.

A client recently said that to me before we’d even had our first coaching session. I didn’t empathize with them.

I sympathized.

In May 2015 I said the exact same thing, and I remember how devastating it felt. Months earlier I’d been invited to speak at a TEDx conference. Whereas my clients today are actively seeking out TEDx opportunities, it wasn’t even on my radar.

When you’re an unknown magician, all you do is think about finding the next gig. You might be booked solid this month, but there’s no guarantee next month will look the same. So you become financially conversative to the point of frugal.

My fiancé was still in grad school full-time and I was covering all of our living expenses by doing card tricks and telling jokes. We had a great life. I loved my work and I’d been at it for nearly 10 years. I was successful enough, but I didn’t think anyone cared about my opinions.

When I received an invitation to speak at a TEDx conference I accepted without hesitation. But my initial excitement was quickly met by panic and dread.

I had never heard the term “thought leadership” in my life. TED talks were for famous people, academics, and researchers.

They definitely weren’t for magicians working for $100/night at Applebees.

Smart Stuff

I couldn’t even decide what to speak about. My list included topics as diverse as:

• Skepticism (philosophy) – “Things are not what they seem”
• Perspective taking – magicians are experts at understanding different points of view
• Assumptions – magic is about turning your own assumptions against you
• The morality of lying and deception
• The difference between “magic” and “real magic”

My TEDx organizer Parag Joshi was helpful here. He liked “assumptions” and “perspectives” the best.

So I took those two topics to my friend Zoe Chance, an esteemed Yale professor who teaches at the School of Management. She didn’t even hesitate:

Perspective-taking.

Okay, great, I’ve got a topic, I thought. Now what?

I wasn’t an expert on perspective-taking. I barely knew what the term meant, only that it was a smart, academic way to describe something magicians do naturally. TED likes smart stuff, right?

Zoe helped me write and refine the talk, find a story to hang my idea worth spreading on, and learn how to tell it in that TED-style we’ve all come to know.

When you’re worried about looking like an idiot during a live speech with a 3-camera shoot that you can’t edit, redo, or take back…

You rehearse. And I mean, like your life depends on it.

I practiced my speech word-for-word literally 200 times. Musicians will tell you if you don’t hate your own song, you haven’t practiced it enough. And boy did I start to hate my song.

Song? More like a riff. An obnoxious, self-involved, out-of-tune whistle that nobody could possibly want to hear.

I don’t feel worthy of this opportunity.

There’s a smart term for that, too: imposter syndrome.

Bad News

You’re an imposter. It’s true. You don’t really know what you’re doing, and someday someone might catch on.

I’m also an imposter. I don’t really know what I’m doing. Neither does Barak Obama, Sara Blakely, Bill Murray, Neil Degrasse Tyson, or Brene Brown.

None of us do. We’re all just doing the best we can and hoping things will work out. Nobody really has the answers, least of all super smart people. In fact, the smarter someone is, the more they realize how much they still don’t know.

But you know what you’re not? An Imposter, capital “I.”

Real Imposters don’t have imposter syndrome, because they don’t actually care about their work or their audience. They’re only interested in getting ahead, in serving themselves. Real Imposters are burdened by the fear of failure – failing is the worst thing they can imagine.

You? You’re burdened by the fear of success. Here’s my TEDx coaching client turned friend and colleague Cait Scudder describing this idea in her TEDx talk “Rising is a Risk: Do it Anyway.”

What if this works?

What if you get the big promotion, make the sale, launch your course, get a book deal, win the election…

And then you have to live up to the promise you made?

If that’s what you’re truly worried about then I have good news for you: You’re going to be great. Because you care. You should be scared. This is your moment. It’s your calling. Your chance to make things better.

And when you make mistakes, which you will, people will forgive you. That’s what happens when you act out of pure intentions.

Use It

Comedian Henry Rollins described a conversation with Ozzy Osbourne, backstage before the show:

“He said, “Is there anybody out there?”

 

And I said, “Uh… like 19,000 people. Are you kidding?”

 

He said, “I’m always worried that no one’s gonna show up.” ”

Last year when I wrote a blog about staying relevant, and used Ozzy as the prime example, I hadn’t seen this clip. Now it makes total sense. Ozzy’s ability to stay relevant is driven by imposter syndrome.

Maybe tonight’s the night everyone finally figures out I’m not good.

That’s what drives him to give his full, authentic, genuine self to his audience night after night, year after year, for over 50 years. And it’s why, as Henry Rollins jokes, they need WD-40 to squeeze everyone into the theater.

Use your fear of success as a driving force. You feel like an imposter? Good. Keep learning. Keep reading. Keep writing. Stay humble. Stay true.

The Myth of Success

People assume that after my TEDx talk went viral with 3.5 million views I gained confidence. And in some ways, I did. The virality of that talk was proof-positive that my ideas were needed and had a global audience.

But it was also terrifying. Because companies started paying a lot of money to fly me across the world to speak. They could hire anyone in the world for their annual conference, with one chance to kick off the entire 3-day event, and they wanted me?

I don’t feel worthy of this opportunity.

Imposter syndrome doesn’t go away. For most successful people it only intensifies as their influence grows. I’ve helped so many leaders, entrepreneurs, and small business owners deliver the TEDx talk of their dreams.

Every single one of them broke down at some point during our work together, convinced that no one would care about their story or their idea.

I can predict which minute of which session we’re going to have the mindset conversation about imposter syndrome. And every single one of them went on to deliver a talk that changed lives.

None of us are truly worthy of anything. We’re just specks of dust wandering aimlessly trying to find meaning in an infinite and chaotic universe.

But worthy or not, this is your opportunity. What are you going to do with it?