Everyone in the world is hoping for one thing. That nobody notices they don’t belong.

Everyone in the world suffers from imposter syndrome sooner or later. I can guarantee you, no matter what stage you reach in your life, you’ll be desperately asking yourself how your peers are still ignorant to the fact that you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.

You don’t believe you’re good enough, secretly. That’s what’s really going on here. You don’t believe you have what it takes. You’re a creator, a writer, an artist. But you think that you’re the odd one out, with no skills and no chance of getting anywhere.

I know this, because I’ve been there too. And my mentors have been there. When I speak to people who are far more accomplished than you and I, they don’t hesitate to tell me – they’ve been there.

The trick is, when you’re working on becoming something or accomplishing something, there’s no real benchmark. There’s no line that you can measure yourself against.

At no point do the literary community or the tech industry or the local landscape painting sorority get to agree on a standard by which new entrants will be judged good enough. Trust me.

You’re going to meet a few people who think that’s the case, sure. But those people don’t matter. Those people are assholes. They don’t think they’re good enough, so they want to beat on you. Trust me, they’re never going to be qualified to say you can or can’t do something..

If there’s a path that you want to investigate, and perhaps travel down, there’s no point in being shy, hanging back and refusing to take a shot. How is that going to help you? The first steps will be the hardest, but once you get on your way, it’ll slowly get easier.

You’ll learn. You’ll uncover new forks in the road, and you’ll find opportunities to become so much better at it. But you’ve got to start out with whatever raw ability or knowledge or skills you have. They’re your own personal baseline, your own way to judge whether or not you’re progressing.

The people who let themselves stagnate and never take the paths that they dreamed they could, they’re going to end up miserable. They’re going to sit around in a reclining chair and moan about the lives they didn’t live. Don’t be like that.

You are probably good enough. And if you aren’t, you will be tomorrow. Or the day after that. This should be your mantra. It should be a tiny voice screaming in your ear every day. It should be the motto on your coat of arms. If you always believe that you’re good enough, you will have the chance to capture the essence of what makes you and your work unique. You won’t be copying other people until you erase your own voice – which is what happens when you constantly try to measure yourself against someone else’s baseline.

If you want to believe that you’re good enough to be who you want, or paint something fucking beautiful, or code, or make or build anything, or write a book, you have to find a way to stop apologising for it. You have to be able to stand next to your work and tell every passer-by that you did it. And that you’re proud of it, no matter the flaws or failings.

If you believe you’re good enough, you won’t fear the gatekeeper. You won’t hide your work away and refuse to show it to an editor. You won’t be too scared to show it to other people in your space and community. In fact, you could even have the guts to bypass the gatekeeper completely and go it on your own.

If you believe you’re good enough, you’ll have a level of security that will let you ask for help. Ask for advice. Ask for assistance. You can go up to anyone who has the ability to teach you something about what you want to do. After all, you’re good enough to be in the same field as them. What do you have to be afraid of?