Get “those demons out of your head, » Obama advised young women.
Michelle Obama told an audience in London Monday that she has long felt “impostor syndrome” over her status as a “symbol of hope.”
The former first lady was speaking with author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at a sell-out event to promote her autobiography, Becoming, the BBC reported.
“I still have a little impostor syndrome, it never goes away, that you’re actually listening to me,” she told the audience at the Southbank Centre.
« It doesn’t go away, that feeling that you shouldn’t take me that seriously. What do I know? I share that with you because we all have doubts in our abilities, about our power and what that power is. « If I’m giving people hope then that is a responsibility, so I have to make sure that I am accountable. »
The term “impostor phenomenon” was coined in a 1978 paper by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, who noticed that successful women sometimes expressed fears that their achievements were down to luck .
