One of my favorite phrases, something I saw in a magazine ad for parents long ago when my kids were little, said, “Be Brave. Even if you’re not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.”

I cut out the ad and pinned it to my bulletin board at work next to photos of Zach and Johanna along with another that showed three wild Pigpen-looking kids that said, “The stress the average mom goes through on a daily basis would bring the rest of the world to their knees.”

I was always reminding myself that I was strong and brave, even when I didn’t feel like it.

It’s been one of my mantras every day since. Even when I feel like a total imposter in my own life. Even when I think I’m going to be exposed for not having a clue what I’m doing. I can pretend to be brave.

My brain and the rest of the world doesn’t know that I’m not.

“Imposter Syndrome. It has to be real, otherwise why would I be feeling it all the time?”

That’s what one of my friends said to me recently and there was a moment when I thought, Wait! Are those words confusing or what? Are the feelings imposters or am I an imposter?

If you google “Imposter Syndrome” right now you’ll get over six million results (I like the one in the link that says, “Quit telling women they have imposter syndrome”).

That’s because “Imposter Syndrome” seems to be our new catch phrase. Everyone’s writing about it. So, not to be left out of a trend that’s sorta driving me crazy, I think maybe I ought to throw my two cents in.

I feel like an imposter almost all the time.

Do you?

In 1984 when I was twenty-four and looking for a job after my first divorce, I opened up the Clovis, New Mexico yellow pages (for those of you under thirty, yes, yellow pages were a real thing that we used daily) and started with the A’s. Accountants and Attorneys were first. I called all the accounting offices. No one needed office help.

I moved on to the Attorneys. Finally at the end of the listings, at Esther Van Soelen, the receptionist said, “Yes, in fact, we’re looking for a legal secretary. Feel free to drop by and leave your resume.”

I was petrified. That was REAL imposter syndrome. I needed a job and I had no legal experience. So, just like you’ve done every time you worked on your resume (don’t think the world doesn’t know this), I fluffed up my resume and said that while I was selling Chamber of Commerce memberships in Amarillo, Texas, I had also served on the Legal Ethics Committee.

I thought using the term “legal” would get me some mileage in a law firm. I created my own reality for a minute.

I needed a job and I didn’t want to be a waitress again. I wanted to get dressed up and sit at a desk and do what we all did in the eighties, which was wear skinny ribbon ties and wear pantyhose. I also wanted to start a new life in a new place with a tiny bit of clout, because the divorce had left me feeling like I had none.

What I did have was a two year old and an empty bank account.

When I was called in for an interview, the kindest lawyer in the world, Gilbert Gutierrez, interviewed me. “So you know shorthand? You can run a dictation machine?”

I nodded to both. He gave me a quick shorthand test by verbally dictating a letter. On the spot I created an abbreviated style of writing, something akin to what I used to do while note-taking in college classes (lest you wonder, no, I didn’t finish college before that job. That’s a tale of an entirely different kind of fake courage). I read it back, apologizing for my rustiness. Then we went to the dictaphone.

So, here’s the deal. I had never seen a dictaphone.

I was sitting in an office visible to the waiting room, so I was on display. He handed me a tiny dictaphone tape, a piece of paper, pointed to the typewriter and said, “I’ll be back in about ten minutes.”

If you’ve never seen a dictaphone as well, feel free to Google it. It’s a secretarial torture device unless you know how to run it.

I looked at it, pushed the tiny tape down into the player, put on the headphones and looked for the play button. But of course, it played too fast. There was no Googling “how to use a dictaphone” in those days, so I had to hunt for a solution. Quickly. I checked the back of the player and found a cord that lead to a foot pedal. Still no clues.

I pushed play again. Too fast. I was typing as quickly as possible, listening, and trying to play with the foot pedal without any idea what it was there for.

Suffice it to say that at the end of the ten minutes, I had quickly educated myself in the fact that one button on the foot pedal was forward, one was back. I was sweating and my letter was full of errors. I was on the verge of tears, but so desperate to make a good impression that I made myself get over it. I faked it.

But Gilbert got it. He saw through my fake courage and understood that behind all that fake bravado was someone who was dedicated to doing whatever he asked me to do in his law practice. He was Esther’s young new associate and I suspect he had used a bit of false bravado in his day as well.

And he hired me.

That was one of my favorite jobs of all time. I was young and stupid, mostly, but I worked in an office with one of the first women who practiced law in eastern New Mexico. Esther had lived in England for a while, so every day at 3:00 p.m., we put a bell on the door and retired to the kitchen at the back of the office for tea. Everyone, including her driven partner, Attorney Hal Grieg.

We visited, we knew one another’s kids, one another’s sorrows and celebrations. There were recipes shared and stories told. That office of disparate souls was my second home at a time when I really needed it.

I went on to be a paralegal for twenty-seven years (thank God an accountant didn’t need my help that day I perused the Yellow Pages. I am no good with numbers). It fed my kids for a long time. And I learned a lot. We went from dictaphones to fax machines with rolls of paper that I had to cut up every morning into pages, to Selectric typewriters that could correct themselves without White-Out. I taught the rest of the office how to use the first word processor. I was a Wordperfect whiz kid.

Tough times call for tough measures. Grit calls for being brave even when you don’t feel like it. Because guess what?

No One Can Tell The Difference.

More recently, I felt like an imposter when I decided to publish my book, when I decided to leave real estate for coaching, when I hired a launch team, when I started recording a podcast. Almost every day, life presents me with a challenge for which I don’t think I’m qualified.

But what’s the alternative? To stop tilting at windmills? Stop learning? End my quest to find some new source of inspiration and energy?

Never.

If you’re feeling like an imposter, be a phony instead. Pretend to be brave even when you don’t feel like it.

Because no one can tell the difference. And eventually even you won’t know that you’re an imposter. Because you aren’t.