The Fear of Being Judged
I wrote this post back in August 2019; it's a little funny to me to think about how much I wrote about this kind of thing 5 years ago, and still deal with it today. I thought this was worth re-posting because of the link to the podcast episode
“Don’t think of confidence as being a switch.”
Stephen Gates
Words from Stephen Gates, a creative design leader and host of The Crazy One podcast. The meaning behind that is you need to practice confidence – it’s not an inherent trait that people either have or don’t have. A recent podcast episode came out, which included that line, but also talked about some of the common fears in the workplace.
The “fear of being judged” specifically inspired me to do some thinking; this is something I hold in the back of my head all the time. I don’t share my work as widely as I could, because I (secretly) don’t want my friends and co-workers to see it and jusge me for it. I feel like my stuff isn’t good enough for them (some impostor syndrome seeping in here).
And occasionally, I have “oh shit” moments when I realize my co-workers see what I put online. Are they reading and listening to what I’m putting out there? Thankfully, the team I manage seems to have no clue of my online presence. Just the same, I think this is one of the reasons why I find it hard to share my work online.
However, I know that I’m not alone, and that’s one way in which this podcast episode helped me to understand. Clearly this episode wasn’t directed at me, it was directed at people like me. In that sense, things like this help. And hearing from people with more success than I do share that they have the same feelings (impostor syndrome, fear of being judged, etc.), that’s also immensely helpful.
I’m not sure if I said what I set out to say in this piece, but I think it adequately gets across why I don’t put more effort into some of the things I do online.
Reply by email Share this post
Or if you prefer, find me on Mastodon.