As humans, we have a wonderful capability: the ability to tell ourselves stories in the face of reality. However, this great skill often results in our diminishing of accomplishments and exaltation of failures. Our stories tend to overemphasize our positive outcomes or our negative outcomes and are rarely balanced in their content. In this brief post, in the line of thinking about impostor phenomenon, I want to remind you that you are the ultimate author of your story. How you write it impacts your self-identity and your possible selves (what you believe you can become).
Dan P. McAdams, a primary researcher in the field of Narrative Identity, proposes that what is often called an identity “is really an inner story or personal myth that integrates a person’s life in time (past, present, and future) and social space (the manifold roles a person plays in society). Like a Victorian novel, the story is organized into life chapters and punctuated by key scenes like high points, low points, and turning points… nuclear episodes.” (McAdams, Dan P. 2022. Narrative Identity and the Redemptive Self. Narrative Works) He goes on to say that “the life story is situated in a context of value, belief, and assumptions about how the world should work… an ideological setting.” (Ibid.) According to this view, our identity is the inner story of our life over time in the context of our environment and ideology. We construct this story from the nuclear episodes that have occurred in our lives.
However, it is important to remember that we are authors in contexts. That is, we are authoring our story within the culture at large. Our culture impresses upon us various story arcs that are acceptable or normative in our society. In fact, this can be a significant eye-opening moment for any individual: understanding that the stories they tell about themselves are often structured according to learned narratives. These learned narratives can be sourced from national cultures, regional cultures, religious cultures, and even familial cultures. Here is the most important thing to know: just because your culture has settled on particular narratives does not mean they are true and must be applied to your story. You can evaluate these narratives and explore alternatives.
My Starting Narrative
When I was growing up in West Virginia in extreme poverty, I was told I had to do certain things because it’s what you do to survive. These messages came from my family, the community, and the educational system. The goal was to provide guardrails for my life so that I could survive as the others had in my community. The goal was not to stifle me, but to help me “get by” within assumed constraints. There was no narrative for how to expand beyond those constraints. The narrative was entirely about how to survive (have the minimum required to live) in my context. Therefore, my narrative identity was developing to be “a person in poverty in West Virginia.”
Narrative Interrupted
My sixth-grade Math teacher, Mr. Cain was my least-favorite teacher in elementary school. Why? He did not accept my narrative, which was effectively to do this (minimal set of actions) because that’s how you survive. He had a new narrative for me, which was effectively do all you can do to thrive. He did this by requiring that I work through extra math problems in class that were not required of others. Why did he do this? Because I would achieve the minimal set of actions required in 10-20 percent of the time the other students required. So, when I was finished with the required problems, he gave me more. Needless to say, I disliked him. However, though I didn’t know it at the time, he interrupted my narrative. I won’t tell the rest of that story here; it is sufficient to say that Mr. Cain helped me to start building a new narrative – one of potential and with a focus on achievement rather than survival alone. I was a boy who was really good at math and happened to be from a poverty-stricken area of West Virginia. My environment was NOT my story. My story was playing out IN that environment.
Because this is a blog post and not a rhetorical thesis, I’ll summarize my point now. If you suffer from imposter phenomenon or if you doubt your ability to achieve some goal, it is more likely a narrative problem than a problem in reality. I challenge you to evaluate your stories. Revisit nuclear episodes in your life and reinterpret them from an achievement perspective. Because, in the end, achievement is a story, and you get to write yours.
End Note
If you want to learn more about the concepts and ideas in this brief post and the research behind them, look for research on autobiographical reasoning, redemptive narratives, possible selves, narrative coherence, narrative editing (narrative interventions and repeated narration), narrative rigidity, contamination narratives, and cultural master narratives.
-Tom