Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Ever Feel Like a Fraud?
Feel Like a Fraud? At Times, Maybe You Should
Stare into a mirror long enough and it’s hard not to wonder whether that’s a mask staring back, and if so, who’s really behind it.
A similar self-doubt can cloud a public identity as well, especially for anyone who has just stepped into a new role. College graduate. New mother. Medical doctor. Even, for that matter, presidential nominee.
Presidents and parents, after all, are expected to make crucial decisions on a dime. Doctors are being asked to save lives, and graduate students to know how Aristotle’s conception of virtue differed from Aquinas’s conception of — uh-oh.
Who’s kidding whom?
Social psychologists have studied what they call the impostor phenomenon since at least the 1970s, when a pair of therapists at Georgia State University used the phrase to describe the internal experience of a group of high-achieving women who had a secret sense they were not as capable as others thought. Since then researchers have documented such fears in adults of all ages, as well as adolescents.
Their findings have veered well away from the original conception of impostorism as a reflection of an anxious personality or a cultural stereotype. Feelings of phoniness appear to alter people’s goals in unexpected ways and may also protect them against subconscious self-delusions.
Questionnaires measuring impostor fears ask people how much they agree with statements like these: “At times, I feel my success has been due to some kind of luck.” “I can give the impression that I’m more competent than I really am.” “If I’m to receive a promotion of some kind, I hesitate to tell others until it’s an accomplished fact.”
Researchers have found, as expected, that people who score highly on such scales tend to be less confident, more moody and rattled by performance anxieties than those who score lower.
But the dread of being found out is hardly always paralyzing. Two Purdue psychologists, Shamala Kumar and Carolyn M. Jagacinski, gave 135 college students a series of questionnaires, measuring anxiety level, impostor feelings and approach to academic goals. They found that women who scored highly also reported a strong desire to show that they could do better than others. They competed harder.
By contrast, men who scored highly on the impostor scale showed more desire to avoid contests in areas where they felt vulnerable. “The motivation was to avoid doing poorly, looking weak,” Dr. Jagacinski said.
Yet if feelings of phoniness were all bad, it seems unlikely that they would be so familiar to so many emotionally well-adapted people.
In a 2000 study at Wake Forest University, psychologists had people who scored highly on an impostor scale predict how they would do on a coming test of intellectual and social skills. An experimenter, they were told, would discuss their answers with them later.
Sure enough, the self-styled impostors predicted that they would do poorly. But when making the same predictions in private — anonymously, they were told — the same people rated their chances on the test as highly as people who scored low on the impostor scale.
In short, the researchers concluded, many self-styled impostors are phony phonies: they adopt self-deprecation as a social strategy, consciously or not, and are secretly more confident than they let on.
“Particularly when people think that they might not be able to live up to others’ views of them, they may maintain that they are not as good as other people think,” Dr. Mark Leary, the lead author, wrote in an e-mail message. “In this way, they lower others’ expectations — and get credit for being humble.”
In a study published in September, Rory O’Brien McElwee and Tricia Yurak of Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J., had 253 students take an exhaustive battery of tests assessing how people present themselves in public. They found that psychologically speaking, impostorism looked a lot more like a self-presentation strategy than a personality trait.
In an interview, Dr. McElwee said that as a social strategy, projecting oneself as an impostor can lower expectations for a performance and take pressure off a person — as long as the self-deprecation doesn’t go too far. “It’s the difference between saying you got drunk before the SAT and actually doing it,” she said. “One provides a ready excuse, and the other is self-destructive.”
In mild doses, feeling like a fraud also tempers the natural instinct to define one’s own competence in self-serving ways. Researchers have shown in careful studies that people tend to be poor judges of their own performance and often to overrate their abilities. Their opinions about how well they’ve done on a test, or at a job, or in a class are often way off others’ evaluations. They’re confident that they can detect liars (they can’t) and forecast grades (not so well).
This native confidence is likely to be functional: in a world of profound uncertainty, self-serving delusion probably helps people to get out of bed and chase their pet projects.
But it can be poison when the job calls for expertise and accountability, and the expertise is wanting. From her study, Dr. McElwee concluded that impostor fears most likely came and went in most people, and were most acute when, for example, a teacher first had to stand up in front of a class, or a new mechanic or lawyer took on real liability.
At those times feeling like a fraud amounts to more than the stirrings of an anxious temperament or the desire to project a protective humility. It reflects a respect for the limits of one’s own abilities, and an intuition that only a true impostor would be afraid to ask for help.
Article written by BENEDICT CAREY, originally published: February 5, 2008 in New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05mind.html)
Stare into a mirror long enough and it’s hard not to wonder whether that’s a mask staring back, and if so, who’s really behind it.
A similar self-doubt can cloud a public identity as well, especially for anyone who has just stepped into a new role. College graduate. New mother. Medical doctor. Even, for that matter, presidential nominee.
Presidents and parents, after all, are expected to make crucial decisions on a dime. Doctors are being asked to save lives, and graduate students to know how Aristotle’s conception of virtue differed from Aquinas’s conception of — uh-oh.
Who’s kidding whom?
Social psychologists have studied what they call the impostor phenomenon since at least the 1970s, when a pair of therapists at Georgia State University used the phrase to describe the internal experience of a group of high-achieving women who had a secret sense they were not as capable as others thought. Since then researchers have documented such fears in adults of all ages, as well as adolescents.
Their findings have veered well away from the original conception of impostorism as a reflection of an anxious personality or a cultural stereotype. Feelings of phoniness appear to alter people’s goals in unexpected ways and may also protect them against subconscious self-delusions.
Questionnaires measuring impostor fears ask people how much they agree with statements like these: “At times, I feel my success has been due to some kind of luck.” “I can give the impression that I’m more competent than I really am.” “If I’m to receive a promotion of some kind, I hesitate to tell others until it’s an accomplished fact.”
Researchers have found, as expected, that people who score highly on such scales tend to be less confident, more moody and rattled by performance anxieties than those who score lower.
But the dread of being found out is hardly always paralyzing. Two Purdue psychologists, Shamala Kumar and Carolyn M. Jagacinski, gave 135 college students a series of questionnaires, measuring anxiety level, impostor feelings and approach to academic goals. They found that women who scored highly also reported a strong desire to show that they could do better than others. They competed harder.
By contrast, men who scored highly on the impostor scale showed more desire to avoid contests in areas where they felt vulnerable. “The motivation was to avoid doing poorly, looking weak,” Dr. Jagacinski said.
Yet if feelings of phoniness were all bad, it seems unlikely that they would be so familiar to so many emotionally well-adapted people.
In a 2000 study at Wake Forest University, psychologists had people who scored highly on an impostor scale predict how they would do on a coming test of intellectual and social skills. An experimenter, they were told, would discuss their answers with them later.
Sure enough, the self-styled impostors predicted that they would do poorly. But when making the same predictions in private — anonymously, they were told — the same people rated their chances on the test as highly as people who scored low on the impostor scale.
In short, the researchers concluded, many self-styled impostors are phony phonies: they adopt self-deprecation as a social strategy, consciously or not, and are secretly more confident than they let on.
“Particularly when people think that they might not be able to live up to others’ views of them, they may maintain that they are not as good as other people think,” Dr. Mark Leary, the lead author, wrote in an e-mail message. “In this way, they lower others’ expectations — and get credit for being humble.”
In a study published in September, Rory O’Brien McElwee and Tricia Yurak of Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J., had 253 students take an exhaustive battery of tests assessing how people present themselves in public. They found that psychologically speaking, impostorism looked a lot more like a self-presentation strategy than a personality trait.
In an interview, Dr. McElwee said that as a social strategy, projecting oneself as an impostor can lower expectations for a performance and take pressure off a person — as long as the self-deprecation doesn’t go too far. “It’s the difference between saying you got drunk before the SAT and actually doing it,” she said. “One provides a ready excuse, and the other is self-destructive.”
In mild doses, feeling like a fraud also tempers the natural instinct to define one’s own competence in self-serving ways. Researchers have shown in careful studies that people tend to be poor judges of their own performance and often to overrate their abilities. Their opinions about how well they’ve done on a test, or at a job, or in a class are often way off others’ evaluations. They’re confident that they can detect liars (they can’t) and forecast grades (not so well).
This native confidence is likely to be functional: in a world of profound uncertainty, self-serving delusion probably helps people to get out of bed and chase their pet projects.
But it can be poison when the job calls for expertise and accountability, and the expertise is wanting. From her study, Dr. McElwee concluded that impostor fears most likely came and went in most people, and were most acute when, for example, a teacher first had to stand up in front of a class, or a new mechanic or lawyer took on real liability.
At those times feeling like a fraud amounts to more than the stirrings of an anxious temperament or the desire to project a protective humility. It reflects a respect for the limits of one’s own abilities, and an intuition that only a true impostor would be afraid to ask for help.
Article written by BENEDICT CAREY, originally published: February 5, 2008 in New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05mind.html)
Friday, October 7, 2011
A Calling Into Higher Education
This blog post is a short pseudo-apologetic for higher education.
My first premise is simple and it is:
1) We are all gifted and called to be ministers
2) We are not all called to "pulpit" ministries
My second premise is built upon the first premise and it is:
1) If a calling into pulpit ministry naturally compels us to bible college and/or masters programs in divinity, then
2) Non-pulpit ministries should also cultivate their callings, certainly up to and including college
There are undoubtedly those who can succeed and be effective in the scope of their callings without higher education. For those men and women of God, that works. That makes sense. But, to avoid higher education because we just need to "trust God to provide" is shallow thinking, and at the very least an incomplete scope of perspective. This mindset would be akin to the thinking that "waiting on God" is loafing around. We know, this is not the case.
If a man or woman of God is called into a professional field for the sake of the Gospel, he or she cannot expect to have accidentally ended up there without proper training. People who pursue careers in these fields- like medicine, law, engineering, education, business, or others- devote years of due diligence and personal time sacrifice cultivating their calling.
Is this different than the person called to a pulpit ministry? I propose that it is not. Gifts are gifts. Callings are callings. To each individual, God has purposed an intended sphere of influence and pathways that are ordered to cover this earth with His glory. Every calling and gift must be cultivated to produce anything worthwhile and effective.
My first premise is simple and it is:
1) We are all gifted and called to be ministers
2) We are not all called to "pulpit" ministries
My second premise is built upon the first premise and it is:
1) If a calling into pulpit ministry naturally compels us to bible college and/or masters programs in divinity, then
2) Non-pulpit ministries should also cultivate their callings, certainly up to and including college
There are undoubtedly those who can succeed and be effective in the scope of their callings without higher education. For those men and women of God, that works. That makes sense. But, to avoid higher education because we just need to "trust God to provide" is shallow thinking, and at the very least an incomplete scope of perspective. This mindset would be akin to the thinking that "waiting on God" is loafing around. We know, this is not the case.
If a man or woman of God is called into a professional field for the sake of the Gospel, he or she cannot expect to have accidentally ended up there without proper training. People who pursue careers in these fields- like medicine, law, engineering, education, business, or others- devote years of due diligence and personal time sacrifice cultivating their calling.
Is this different than the person called to a pulpit ministry? I propose that it is not. Gifts are gifts. Callings are callings. To each individual, God has purposed an intended sphere of influence and pathways that are ordered to cover this earth with His glory. Every calling and gift must be cultivated to produce anything worthwhile and effective.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Legacies Without Limits
Its official! I have secured the domain! Exciting new grassroots projects on the horizon... looking forward to building this thing from the ground up: www.legacieswithoutlimits.org. Stay tuned!
Also, you can follow us on Twitter @ username: worldlegacies
Also, you can follow us on Twitter @ username: worldlegacies
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Worship Thought
When we enter worship, we ought to press through until the weights have been exchanged: Exchange the weights that easily beset us for the weight of His glory.
Worship until we've felt a release- that's when He is glorified. The only thing that gets between God and His people is ourselves.
Worship is throwing our crown at His feet. Worship is getting ourselves off the throne. Worship is getting our eyes affixed on Him. Worship is kneeling before sovereignty. Worship is reestablishing His kingship in our lives.
Worship until we've felt a release- that's when He is glorified. The only thing that gets between God and His people is ourselves.
Worship is throwing our crown at His feet. Worship is getting ourselves off the throne. Worship is getting our eyes affixed on Him. Worship is kneeling before sovereignty. Worship is reestablishing His kingship in our lives.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
GOD THOUGHT
If I told my son over and over again to not run in the street and he does... then gets hit by a car, I would not expect or desire my son to run away from me or hide with life-threatening injuries. His disobedience would not push me away... my love for him, my concern for his wellbeing, my lifelong investment in his growth and maturity would compel me to show mercy.
It is too often Christians find themselves spiritually banged up or in duress from our disobedience... and too often we hide (like our earthy father, Adam, hid) or we run away perhaps fearful of reproach or (allowing our pride to reign) concerned with how our disobedience makes us look. Our mind conjures up everything but the truth of God's love and mercy to deter us from finding safety and redemption in Him.
If we live by this one rule, we will without a doubt, endure 'til the end: WE SHOULD ALWAYS RUN TO GOD, NEVER RUN FROM GOD
His grace is still sufficient. His mercies await.
It is too often Christians find themselves spiritually banged up or in duress from our disobedience... and too often we hide (like our earthy father, Adam, hid) or we run away perhaps fearful of reproach or (allowing our pride to reign) concerned with how our disobedience makes us look. Our mind conjures up everything but the truth of God's love and mercy to deter us from finding safety and redemption in Him.
If we live by this one rule, we will without a doubt, endure 'til the end: WE SHOULD ALWAYS RUN TO GOD, NEVER RUN FROM GOD
His grace is still sufficient. His mercies await.
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