 Hello, everyone. Today, I'm going to tell you how to be more productive, get over your fears, and feel better about yourself. Today, you will start your journey to overcome the imposter syndrome. Four years ago, I was working in New York on a project. It was a project for a big media company, and I was working on their strategy. Their website got 10,000 hits a day, whereas all my previous websites only got 1,000 visitors a day, or less. So it was 10 times bigger than anything I've ever worked on. One day, I walked to work, and I approached a big office building in Mittell, Manhattan. I walked through the revolving door and into an empty elevator. And even before I reached the 46th floor, I found myself crying. But I pulled myself together, and I walked into the office and started my day. A couple days later, the same thing happened. And not until it happened for the third time that I found myself crying in the elevator, I knew I had to do something about it. So that day, I asked a co-worker of mine for a meeting, and I wanted to talk to her about it. She came to the meeting with a box of my favorite cupcakes. She wanted to celebrate phase one launch of the project that we were working on, and with a big smile on her face, she told me how much she enjoyed working with me and how the department had praised my work. When all I wanted to do was ask her, what am I doing here? I was so confused. That night, I met a friend of mine for drinks, and I talked to him about it. I told him that I didn't feel like I was qualified enough for the job, that I knew that there were so many more people out there that there were so much more qualified than I was, and that I was scared that they would find out any day and that they would fire me. My anxiety sometimes got so bad, so overwhelming that it affected my work, and that I told him that my inner struggle didn't really match the positive feedback that I was getting. My friend looked at me and smiled, and he said, Sonia, we all feel this way sometimes. These are all very clear symptoms of the imposter syndrome. So what is the imposter syndrome? The imposter syndrome is that discouraging, judgmental, and disabling voice in your head that tells you you are not good enough. You are not good enough to apply for that job. You're not good enough to take on that project. You're not good enough to speak at that conference. It also tells you it's basically your inner critic. It also tells you that you don't know enough yet. You only got that project because you were lucky, and that it had nothing to do with your skills. It convinces you that you will fail and that you are a fraud, and everybody is going to find out soon. It basically feeds your insecurities, and it discourages you to step up. Leading up to this talk, I asked 12 well-known members of the WordPress community about their experience with the imposter syndrome. Amongst them were core contributors, founders of big WordPress agencies and people that worked at Automatic. 10 out of 12 people admitted that they were having the imposter syndrome. Would you have guessed that? Those are all people that you look up to. So I asked them a couple of questions, and here are just a few answers that they said. How do you experience the imposter syndrome? So much self-doubt, constant worry that I'm not, that I don't have the chops. The others have made a mistake in trusting me. This is a WordPress core contributor. What does your inner critic tell you? I'm a fake. Oh my God, everyone is more talented than I am. The imposter syndrome is irrational. It communicates underlying fears that we have, but it also, the thoughts that it puts into our heads, they're not a reflection of reality. But luckily you are not alone. Please raise your hand if any of you feel the same way. If any of you have some of these symptoms, wow. I'm not qualified enough for that job. I cannot be a team lead because my coworkers are all better than me. That job is too easy, I'm clearly not getting it. They will find out I'm a fake and they will fire me. Now please keep your hands raised and look around you. The majority of us have it, but we don't talk about it. We don't want to admit that we feel this way. We don't want to admit that we feel vulnerable. Now today I'd like to share the three ways that helped me overcome my imposter syndrome with you. When I found community, that's basically the first step for me to overcome my imposter syndrome. When I first started working as a freelancer, I would work from home alone. So I felt pretty isolated. And all the people, the only developers and designers that I talked to, I talked to them online. But I never met any of them in person. So I decided I'm gonna go to networking events, to meet people in my industry. I met a lot of interesting people and I listened to them talk about their amazing projects that they were working on. They dropped big name clients and the more accomplished they seemed, the smaller I would get on the inside. So these corporate networking events basically fed my imposter syndrome more than helped me connect to others in the industry. So I stopped going. It wasn't until a friend of mine introduced me to the WordPress community. Oh, sorry. It wasn't until my friend introduced me to the WordPress community. When I found out that the people at those events, at the meetups, local meetups in New York, they were so welcoming, so down to earth. And they had a lot of the same questions that I had. I didn't feel small anymore. At the beginning, I would still hesitate to tell them about my projects and when I didn't know something because of the experience at the other networking events, but soon I realized that other people weren't afraid to share and quite the opposite actually happened. People helped each other. And then something beautiful in eyeopening happened. I too was able to help others with questions they had and with answers that they needed. And when I realized that, I really opened up. I felt valued and I was able to give back and help others. So it was more of an exchange. The WordPress community has become my group, my tribe, my family. A lot of my closest friends are amongst you today and they keep inspiring me and encouraging me. Are you involved in your local WordPress community yet? Local meetups are the closest point of contact to the community. And connecting to people and to the community is the first step to overcome your imposter syndrome. Local meetups are the cornerstone of our community and I encourage you to go to your local meetups and if there are none in your city, become an organizer. You can go to make.workpress.org and find out everything about it. Go to the community team and join them. And there's also a link for meetup.com where they list all the meetups around the world. Another way for me to overcome my imposter syndrome is by speaking. Speaking to share my knowledge helps me to conquer it. Have you ever considered to speak at an event like a local meetup or even a work camp? How does that idea feel? What are the first thoughts that come into your head? Maybe you think I have nothing worth sharing. Maybe you think I'm not an expert in this. Maybe you feel or maybe you're scared that you won't be any good. Today I'm speaking in front of, on a public stage for the eighth time. And this time I chose the topic of the imposter syndrome. I chose the topic because my imposter syndrome almost prevented me from applying to speak at Work Camp Europe. I came up with a lot of top topics to talk about and every time I considered one, my imposter would basically tell me I'm not good enough and I have nothing to share and it basically prevented me. So before submissions closed, I basically just submitted the topic of the imposter syndrome. And when I got the email that I got approved to speak, I was equally excited and I was also terrified. Because I thought I'm not an ex... Well, those are some of the things in the content. Sorry, I lost it there. Okay. Equally excited and terrified, it felt like I'm going to jump out of a plane and I was just waiting to crash and burn. But luckily I have amazing people in my life who constantly encourage me and lend their support. It's funny how sometimes we listen to the people that are closest to us more when they criticize us rather than when they praise us. We should listen to their praise. We do deserve it. Speaking at events helps me dismantle the false statements of the imposter syndrome. If you've ever spoken at an event before, do you know the feeling when you step off stage and you feel like it wasn't good enough? I know the feeling really well. But what happened there is that it's how we measure ourselves subjectively. You should not trust this feeling. What you need to trust is the feedback that you get. So when you step off stage, you need to ask the right question. Don't just ask, how did I do? Ask people, what did you like best about my presentation? Was there anything that I could have improved? And if all the feedback is positive, very likely that you did a great job. So if you've ever considered speaking and you hesitated to apply, I would encourage you to apply to speak at your next local meetup or word camp. Thirdly, I started contributing. Contributing to WordPress is something that a lot of people in this room already do. If you have never contributed before, I would encourage you to look more into it. When I became part of the community, I would start contributing during word camp, contributor days here and there over the years. But I would never really contribute outside of contributor days. Because I thought, what big contributions can I make anyway? I'm not a developer, so I cannot contribute to core. There are so many designers out there that are so much better than me. I simply didn't feel I was good enough to contribute yet. But when you compare yourself, because that's what I was basically doing, I would compare myself to all the other people that were contributing to so many people that I was looking up to in the community. What you do when you compare yourself to others is basically that you compare your shortcomings, all your little mistakes, to their biggest accomplishments, their shiniest moments. And how is that being fair to yourself? We all make mistakes, and when you contribute, people will see that you make mistakes, but it's okay. We know that we need to make mistakes to learn, but we are so afraid to fail. Failure feels like such a big thing and has such big implications. But you should fail a lot, because you will learn from it. You will learn so much and you will grow. But then one day something shifted. It was in 2014, when I went to work at Seattle Contributor Day, and Siobhan approached me to invite me to work on a project that she was thinking about for a long time. She wanted to work on improving the image editing experience, and she put together a small team that day. So Morton, Siobhan and I were working on Scope and Initial UX sketches. We started analyzing and documenting the issues, and even after Contributor Day, we started a weekly meeting, we continued working on the project, we posted updates on the Make blog, and it was great because I was able to bring in my expertise and my ideas and got great feedback, and I felt really valued, I just got great feedback from people in the community, people that I looked up to, so I became more confident to contribute. It made me realize that, yes, my contributions are welcomed and they're valued. I realized that comparing myself to others makes no sense. We're all made up of the sum of all of our skills, of our education, whether it's formal or informal, and the experiences that we have with the work that we do. We need to stop comparing ourselves to others. It's basically like comparing Star Wars to Star Trek. It's the same thing, right? I mean, they both have space ships, they have weird characters, and they fight battles. It's the same thing, right? No, it's not the same thing. They're not even in the same genre. One is science fiction and the other one is fantasy. So you cannot compare the two, just like you cannot compare yourself to others. And then I realized something else. We all cook with water. Even the people that you look up to the most, they too sometimes just follow the flow and just dive in and try it. And that's okay. But what the difference is that they do the first step and they do the work. So now you might not be sure what you can contribute to. That actually can be quite a selfish decision. Just think about what do you want to know? Maybe you want to learn more about accessibility. Why not join the accessibility team? They always look for more people. And you will learn so much while contributing. I personally contribute to translations at the moment. I help with events, I speak, and I also want to get more involved in the UX and design team again. Overcoming your imposter syndrome is a journey, but you are not alone in this. Having joined the community, speaking at events and contributing to WordPress helped me become friends with my imposter syndrome. So I'd like to invite you. Tomorrow there is a contributor day. Please join me and contribute to WordPress to start overcome your imposter syndrome. And if you're still not sure how you can make WordPress better, please find me tomorrow and we can figure it out together. Thank you.