A Smart Girl's Guide to Cultivating Self-Confidence

via GeekFeminism:

It seems like a certain amount of “irrational” self-confidence is necessary for success in geeky fields. While you’re failing repeatedly, you have to keep believing you can do it and you’re smart enough to figure it out. Have you experienced this? What do you do about it?

• Remember you’re not alone
  Imposter syndrome refers to the fact that many people feel like they’re not good enough to be doing what they’re doing. They feel like they’re impostors who don’t belong and eventually someone will notice and kick them out of the field.
  Dunning-Kruger effect refers to a very strange cognitive bias: People who are vaguely incompetent will over-rate their abilities, and those who are highly competent will under-rate theirs.
• Cultivate your shield of arrogance
  The Three Virtues of a Programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. It’s really handy if you can grin, wink, and say “of course I can do that, because I’m awesome” and then follow through. I publish academic papers in computer security, a field known for harsh practitioners, so I need enough arrogance to look at a terrible review and say, “Does this person even know what they’re talking about?” before I think, “OMG, they hated my work.”
• Find your cheerleading squad
  Just like cheerleaders are often very talented athletes, you’re going to need some very talented people on your cheerleading team: people who can fairly judge your abilities and whose opinions you’ll actually believe when they say that you’re awesome.
• Celebrate your accomplishments
  Research has shown that women don’t promote themselves as much as they should. (See: Women Don’t Ask!) If your cheerleading squad only hears from you when things are rough, it’s going to be harder for them to bring up [good] examples later.
• Don’t forget to be awesome
  It’s really hard to be down about yourself or your accomplishments when you’re too busy being awesome: that is, actually learning and doing the things that you want to do. It’s a bit circular, but if you can let go of self-confidence issues long enough to do cool stuff, then doing cool stuff will help you let go of self-confidence issues because you’ll have more examples of your awesomeness right there.

Distilled for re-blogging, do click through to the full post.

I still remember describing “feeling like a fraud” to my mom when I was eleven (or so). I’m quite lucky that, as a teacher of gifted children, she looked at me and said, “That’s imposter syndrome! Only stupid people think they’re so great that they never question their ability!” A bit ham handed, perhaps, but that thought has helped me overcome many an omg-I-don’t-belong-here kind of thought.

A friend was also just telling me that she and another girl started a personal accountability daily email, wherein they each indicate a daily “To Do” that they want someone else to know they are going to get done (so they actually do it) and a daily “Ta Da” to celebrate one thing, no matter how small, that they accomplished.  What a great idea.