by Kevin
Our next guest article comes from Christian Stewart, Aeronautical Engineer Associate at Lockheed Martin. Christian began working at Lockheed full time in January of 2020 after graduating from Oklahoma Christian University with an Engineering degree.
Christian is currently going through the mentoring program. During one of our conversations he mentioned something he termed, “the imposter syndrome.” Although the term was not something I had heard often, the symptoms certainly sounded familiar (negative self talk, feeling of unworthiness, etc). I asked Christian to describe this issue in more detail and provide a few tips that he has found helpful in dealing with this negativity. I believe many other young professionals will relate to Christian’s experience and will find his advice worthwhile.
by Christian
In the spring of 2014, I found myself sitting in the office of the Dean of Admissions of my dream college. My mother had a friend that worked for the school that had kindly arranged a meeting with him to discuss the school, as it was my top choice at the time for my undergraduate engineering studies. At some point during the discussion, the topic of career fields came up, and the dean asked me if I had an idea of where I wanted to work after college. I told him that I really wanted to work for Lockheed Martin, as I had several good friends whose dads worked there. I had even had the opportunity to tour the Waterton Canyon facility a year earlier for the unveiling of a Mars spacecraft, so I was certainly intrigued and excited for the possibility of working there one day. The dean’s response is one I haven’t forgotten to this day, and it had an impact I didn’t fully understand until years later. He said, “Lockheed Martin takes the cream of the crop each year.”
I highly doubt that the dean meant any ill intent with his statement, he was simply noting the highly competitive nature of positions at the company. But the second I heard that, I wrote myself off. There was no motivational bell that went off in my head that spurred me on towards getting really focused and giving my best effort towards getting a job at Lockheed. All that went through my head at that moment was a subtle, but unequivocal cementing of my identity as being not smart enough to get a job at Lockheed.
Throughout high school and college, I struggled constantly with comparing myself to others in nearly every area of my life. High school is perhaps the best example of this. I went to a highly competitive public high school in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. It felt like a gauntlet of rankings everywhere I looked. I was good friends with the kid who finished 5th in our class out of 480, along with several others who finished school with above 4.00 GPA and 33-35’s on their ACT tests. I did perfectly fine for myself academically (I won’t share the numbers, as that would distract from my point here), but there was always an underlying assumption in my mind that I was not “one of the smart kids”. I accepted that I did well in school and even that I was smart, to a degree. But when it came to the 4.00 GPA/35 ACT students, I simply was not that student. I can distinctly remember multiple occasions when I would think to myself, “If I just tried I could be one of the smart kids.” This thought, ironically enough, was completely accurate. But every time I thought it, something within me rose up and smothered it, reminding me that I was not smart enough to be “one of them”. These constant comparisons became my identity, and it manifested itself empirically in my grades. In fact, I believe this negative self talk and constant comparison is the very reason that I did not attain the grades that I so desperately wanted. The comparing and negative self talk didn’t stop with academics, however.
In the athletic realm, arguably the quintessential high school hierarchy, I was far from a standout performer. I tried out for the high school soccer team my freshman year, and I was cut. This was for good reason, as I was mediocre at best on the field. However, I rarely, if ever, took practice seriously enough to ever see significant improvement. If I look back and am honest with myself, soccer wasn’t really my biggest passion at the time. I was mostly doing it because my friends were trying out too, and I wanted to establish some sort of “identity” for myself as high school started up. I’ll come back and address how my perspective on practice/training has changed since those high school days. As with academics, though, I was not motivated to train and practice to improve and attempt to make the team the following year. I simply attributed my getting cut from the team to me not being good at soccer, and coupling that with a middling level of passion for the sport, I ended up never again trying out for the soccer team. (An aside: I did end up playing ultimate frisbee for my high school my senior year. It remains one of very few sports I think I have some level of natural talent for. I enjoy it greatly and it motivated me to train/practice and improve my skills. The summer after I graduated I was actually invited to play on my coaches summer league team, where we won the Denver city league season. Point of the aside: find what you enjoy doing, it will motivate you to practice and improve at it, which builds confidence, which builds motivation, etc.)
I want to get briefly into some research that's been conducted on the power of negative thinking. Trevor Moawad is a leading peak performance coach, and has coached hundreds of top teams/players across multiple collegiate and professional sports. Here are some facts about negativity that he gave on a podcast episode I listened to recently: 1) Your increase in errors can go up by over 30%, 2) 83% of illnesses are facilitated, exacerbated, or started from negative thinking, 3) Consumption of negativity (news consumption) for 3 minutes is a 27% increase in the likelihood that we’ll say we had a terrible day. Those are some pretty crazy numbers. But even crazier...studies have shown that negative thoughts are 4-7x more powerful than their equivalent positive thought. In addition, thoughts that are spoken out loud are 10x more powerful than if we merely think them. When we couple these together, a frightening multiple emerges. A negative thought, when spoken out loud, is 40-70x more powerful than its equivalent positive thought. Perhaps the most infamous example of the power of a spoken negative thought comes from the 1986 World Series, which featured the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets. The Red Sox were up 3-2 in the Series against the favored Mets, and Game 6 was tied after 9 innings. With two outs in the 10th inning, first baseman Bill Buckner rushed a routine ground ball hit towards him, causing the ball to roll off the side of his glove and into shallow right field. This allowed the winning run to score from second base, sending the Series to Game 7, which the Red Sox lost 8-5. This is one of the most infamous errors in World Series history, but not merely due to the botched ground ball. 19 days before Game 6, Buckner was interviewed by a Boston news station about the upcoming World Series. In the interview, he said the following: "The dreams are that you're gonna have a great series and win. The nightmares are that you're gonna let the winning run score on a ground ball through your legs. Those things happen, you know. I think a lot of it is just fate." Now, Bill Buckner foreshadowing that scenario didn’t invalidate the years of Major League experience he had under his belt. But by speaking it, he created a subconscious plant in his mind. These subconscious plants become a subtle part of our identities, sometimes lying undetected until a certain scenario arises. When Bill Buckner was faced with that ground ball, his mind reverted to that plant and he misplayed the ball, allowing it to roll past him and causing his team to lose the game.
Looking back at my high school and college years, I realized that I had a consistent pattern of negative thinking that very likely had significant effects on my academic and athletic performances. They were subtle, repetitive sentiments that over time came to define my identity. Over the past year or so as I’ve begun my post-college adult life, I’ve (thankfully) realized that those thoughts are not what define me. One of the best examples I can share from my own life of breaking through negative subconscious plants is running. Through high school and college, I tried to get into running several different times, and the longest I ever held a consistent running routine was maybe 3 months. I had a long held belief that I was not built for running, and I wasn’t good at it. The reason I wasn’t good at running had nothing to do with me not being built for running, it was entirely due to the fact that I never stuck with running long enough to see significant improvement. This created a negative feedback loop every time I tried to get into running, because I would attribute it to me not being built for running, lose motivation, and then drop the habit. This year, however, I broke through that limiting belief. I set a huge goal for myself of running a sub-25 minute 5k (3.11 miles). I had originally set this goal in the summer of 2018, and it had fallen by the wayside a couple of times. I started running in March, and ran my first 5k of the year on April 10. My time: a 29:29. 13 weeks later, I finally achieved the sub-25 minute 5k with a time of 24:50. After breaking this long-sought after goal, I decided to continue on with my training, and I reset my goal to a sub-20 minute 5k. As I write this in mid-November, my current PR is 22:30. In 7 months, I’ve dropped 7 minutes off of my 5k time. I share this progress with you because it showcases what happens when you remove the negative mental barriers and focus all your energy on improving on something you’re passionate about. Through achieving the 25 minute 5k, and continuing to get closer to the 20 minute barrier, I have been able to prove to myself that my running performance has nothing to do with “being a runner” or not. That is not an identity that I was born with, it’s something that I have created for myself through action, learning, failure, re-learning, and more action. Each time I go out and run, I cast a vote towards my identity as a runner. This leads me to a key point: you’re not unworthy of your goals in life, you’re simply inexperienced. I got better at running by running...a lot. You can achieve whatever you’re passionate about, but it’s crucial to acknowledge the work that it will take to gain experience and confidence in that area of your life. Even more important, it is paramount to fall in love with the process of improving. When we get into a reductionist mindset and focus on our results, we can easily fall into the trap of defining ourselves based on our achievements. Our achievements are amazing, yes, but we are so much more than our achievements. We are the source of those achievements, so we should celebrate us, not simply what we achieve.
This leads me to my final point. One of the foundational truths that I’ve been working very hard at accepting and believing is that worthiness is not something we can achieve. I mentioned at the beginning of this article that I felt unworthy to work at Lockheed Martin coming into college. I ended up interning there for three summers and getting a job working on the F-35 fighter jet program in January. I was elated to have gotten my dream job, until I started working, and the negative thoughts came rushing right back in. “Am I smart enough to be here?” “I don’t know as much as these other engineers know.” “I feel like a total imposter.” Here I was, at my dream job, and I still didn’t feel content or happy. I quickly realized that getting good at my job would take time, humility, constant curiosity, and hard work. There is no transcript, athletic accomplishment, dream job, relationship, or salary we can have that will suddenly check enough boxes for us to “be worthy”. Worthiness is something that we are all born with as created beings, an innate gift from God that is undeniable. So I implore you, acknowledge the gift of worthiness each and every day. From that foundation of worthiness and self-confidence, find your passions and pursue them. When you fail, acknowledge it as part of the process. If you’re not failing, you’re not setting big enough goals. Take the information from the failure, analyze it, and turn it into motivation and focus points going forward. As you gain more experience in your passions, you will gain confidence and skill, which will build motivation, which leads to learning how to improve, which leads to more confidence, and the cycle goes on. Fall in love with this moment and the process of learning and experiencing life to the fullest.