Nope. I’m not talking about that Among Us game yang lagi rame belakangan ini (walaupun sebenernya saya mulai sungguh tergoda untuk nyoba, karena dulu saya suka banget maen Werewolves). It’s the impostor syndrome that I am talking about here.
Pernah denger impostor sydrome? Kalau dari segi arti, impostor sendiri menurut Cambridge adalah a person who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive others. Or in other words, orang yang pura-pura menjadi orang lain. Kalau impostor syndrome, kondisi dimana kita ngerasa kita nggak selayak orang lain untuk berada di posisi kita saat ini. Minder. Rendah diri. Feeling like we don’t belong.
Pernah ngerasa kek gitu?? Well, if you ask me that question… Iya. Sering.
To be honest, impostor syndrome is something that I deal with for so long. And man it’s such a hard feeling. Saya suka ngerasa, setdah, kekna saya nggak pantes deh berada di sini. Saya nggak pantes ada di antara orang-orang ini. Secara ya, kayaknya kalau liat kiri kanan depan belakang, semua orang kok ya jauh lebih baik dibandingkan saya.
And believe me, that kind of feeling can really eat you from the inside.
However, of course, it’s not the best approach to see yourself.
Mbak Ayu Kartika Dewi (iya, yang staf khusus Presiden itu) kalau nggak salah pernah bilang, wajar kalau kita terkadang merasakan hal semacam itu. Sekarang, gimana caranya supaya kita bisa membuat perasaan minder kita itu jadi motivasi untuk belajar lebih banyak lagi dari orang lain. (Also, those weren’t the exact words. I can’t remember her exact words but I think it’s somewhere along those).
Mungkin salah satu yang membuat kita merasa semakin minder dan ngerasain impostor syndrome itu adalah karena kita ngerasa that we’re the only ones feeling so small like that among the others. Saya inget sekali, waktu sekolah dulu saya pernah ngomong ke temen saya, “I feel like I’m the only one feeling lost in the class.”. Dan dia jawab, “Well, maybe they also feel lost too. But maybe they hide that feeling better than you.”
Saya langsung diem, dan mikir. Iya juga ya.
Kemudian saya baca, pengalaman Neil Gaiman (iya, yang salah satu penulis favorit saya itu) terkait hal ini. Long story short, dia pernah ketemu dalam suatu acara dengan Neil Armstrong. Dan Neil Armstrong cerita ke Neil Gaiman, kalo dia ngerasa tidak ada apa-apanya dibandingkan orang-orang yang hadir di acara tersebut. (Like, dude? You’re the first man to step on the freaking moon and you feel like you’re no one???). Dia bilang, kalau Neil Armstrong saja merasa dia tidak ada apa-apanya dibandingkan orang lain, mungkin sebenernya banyak orang yang juga merasakan hal yang sama. And somehow, it makes me feel a bit better. And it’s normal, isn’t it? To feel better when you realize that you’re not the only one feeling a certain way?
Still, it isn’t easy to have the confidence. While for some people, it seems like the air of confidence is just something that they’re born with, for other people (people like meee…) it’s just…hard. In my bad days, I even hate myself so much as I feel like I have nothing that I can be proud of. Tapi lalu saya inget, terapis saya (Ben, wherever you are, may God bless your kind heart and soul) pernah ngomong, “You see yourself through a different lens than the lens that other people are using to see you.” At that time, I didn’t really understand what he meant. He tried to explain, “Other people see you as a hardworking person and you didn’t see it because for you it’s just something that you do. Other people see your achievement but you didn’t see it because you keep focusing on other people’s achievement.”
I stared at him and thought, maybe he’s right.
He was right. Of course.
Saya pernah baca di Tumblr, our positive traits, all the good things about us are like paper stuck on our back. While other people can see it, we can’t see it ourselves.
Saya selalu ngerasa I suck at public speaking, but some people said that I do quite a decent job in public speaking. Saya ngerasa saya bukan tipe yang bisa ngasih pep-talk atau semacam motivational speech gitu. Tapi Alhamdulillah, tetap ada beberapa orang yang merasa termotivasi atau semangat kembali setelah ngobrol dengan saya. Saya ngerasa saya suka clueless dengan kerjaan saya di kampus (aside from the teaching stuff), tapi kata Mama, kalau memang saya separah yang saya pikir, tidak mungkin dong orang mempercayakan kerjaan ke saya? Now ask yourself and answer it honestly, what are the things that people say that you’re good at?
We do have our good sides. We do deserve to be where we are. But sometimes, we just can’t see it. And I guess, it’s because we keep on seeing other people, wishing to be more like them and less like us while actually just being us is enough.
It’s not about to be the best of all. It’s not even about to be better than others. It’s about to be a better version of ourselves. It’s about to do the best that we can. Maybe our best is not better than others. But if it’s our best, then it’s all that matter. If we’ve done the best that we can, then we deserve to be where we are.
So whenever I start to feel like an impostor, whenever I feel like I don’t belong, I’ll stop for a while to take a deep breathe, and think about the things that I have done to get myself here.To think about how far I have gone from where I was back then. I look at the mirror and try to see myself the way other people see me. The way I should see myself.
It’s not easy. There are still some bad days where I want nothing but to dig a deep hole and just throw myself into it. But hey, I guess that’s hust the way life is, huh?
Ami, over and out :)!
PS: Betewe, saya beneran kepikiran pengen main Among Us nih LOL