Impostor syndrome after success: why does it hit right now?

The contract is signed. You read it twice, closed the laptop, and for about a minute you felt great. Then, as you put your mug in the sink, the sentence arrives. "I wonder when they'll figure out I just got lucky."

Strange, right? Until yesterday that voice was asleep. When you were working with the same old clients, on things you can do with your eyes closed, nobody expected you to live up to anything. Now that the result is here, it wakes up.

Why do I feel like an impostor when things are going well?

Because the result raises the stakes. While you stay small you have nothing to lose, and a voice calling you a fake has no audience to expose you in front of. The day they hand you the big project, invite you to speak or introduce you as "the expert", the audience is there. And the fear of being found out grows right along with it.

This thing has had a name since 1978. Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes described it while studying women with brilliant careers who felt like frauds waiting to be caught. Later it turned out to apply to everyone, men included. It isn't a clinical diagnosis, and you won't find it in the medical manuals. It's a crooked way of explaining your own results to yourself. And there's one detail that took a huge weight off my shoulders: success doesn't switch it off. Often it feeds it.

I know this firsthand. At school the voice told me I wasn't cut out for science, and it even had proof, because I really did fail subjects. I graduated in physics and the voice changed the subject: a real scientist is something else. I finished my PhD and started again from the bottom, pushing trolleys at Decathlon. I worked my way up to running logistics across five countries. Every single time, the voice had a new argument. In my book I wrote this sentence in capital letters. The voice doesn't go away with success. It changes the subject.

Is impostor syndrome a sign of growth?

Often, yes. And this is where the whole thing flips.

People who are genuinely new to a field rarely ask "will I be good enough?". They're comfortable where they are, because they can't see the gap between what they know and what there is to know. If you're asking the question, you see that gap very clearly. You see it because you've learned enough to understand how big the field is.

So next time the voice turns up after a big yes, try reading it backwards. It's telling you that you've walked into a new room, and that today's work is bigger than the work you did a year ago. It's telling you that someone out there saw something in you that you still struggle to see.

It hurts like new shoes in the first few days. Then they stretch.

The real trouble lies elsewhere, and it's worth looking at it squarely. The impostor doesn't make you incompetent. It makes you slow. It makes you put off the proposal, lower the quote "just to be safe", ask for a third opinion when your own was enough. And while you hesitate, someone with half your skills and twice your nerve takes the spot.

How do I stop thinking it was just luck?

There's bad news and good news.

The bad news is that convincing yourself doesn't work. You can tell yourself in the mirror that you're good, but the voice is a lawyer and always gets the last word. Arguing with it is time wasted.

The good news is that self-confidence works like a filing cabinet. It fills up with evidence, one piece at a time. The psychologist Albert Bandura called it self-efficacy, and his core idea is simple: the belief that you can do something comes from things you've actually done, not from motivational quotes.

The problem is that in this filing cabinet the impostor is the bookkeeper, and it cooks the books. Everything that goes well gets filed under "luck". Everything that goes wrong gets filed under "this is who you really are". With accounting like that you can win for twenty years and still close every year at a loss.

The move is to take the pen away from it. You need a physical place, whether that's a notebook, a note on your phone or a file. Every time a result comes in, you write it there, with the date and no adjectives. "March 14, contract signed, first client outside my region." No "but", no "it was easy anyway". Just facts.

When the voice comes back, and it will, you don't answer it. You open the file and read.

What should I do the next time I get a win?

Write it down straight away. That same evening, if you can.

There's a short window in which a result is still a fact. After a few days the bookkeeper gets its hands on it and reclassifies it. It was easy, they were being nice, anyone could have done it. If you wrote it down first, the true version stays there with its date, and nobody can edit it anymore.

Then there's the second half of the job, the one almost everyone skips. You reread the file before the decisions that matter, like the quote you're about to send or the price you haven't touched in three years. Those are the moments when the voice is loudest. And they're exactly when you need to see in black and white how far you've come.

One last thing. The impostor's voice loves silence. It tells you to keep your head down, to wait until you're ready, to let your work speak for itself. Work never speaks for itself. People who are good and stay quiet become invisible, and leave the space to people who are less good but show up more. I go into this in How to Get Noticed at Work, Without Selling Smoke.

I still have that voice. While I was writing my book it kept asking who I thought I was to write it. I let it talk and I finished the book anyway.

If your win has just landed and the voice is already busy reclassifying it, let's look at it together over a coffee. Thirty minutes, your facts on the table, and we'll see what they really say.

Frequently asked questions

Why do I feel like an impostor even though I've achieved good results?

Because the feeling doesn't depend on your results but on how you explain them to yourself. People who experience it put their successes down to luck or to other people's kindness, and their mistakes down to who they are. With that kind of bookkeeping the evidence never adds up, and the higher you climb the higher the stakes. That's why it often gets worse right after a success.

Is impostor syndrome a mental illness?

No. It's a phenomenon documented since the 1970s, first described by Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, but it isn't a clinical diagnosis and doesn't appear in the diagnostic manuals. It affects a great many capable people. If the discomfort becomes constant and costs you sleep or the will to do things, talk to a mental health professional.

How do you overcome impostor syndrome?

It usually doesn't go away for good: it comes back with every new project, in an updated version. What you can do is take power away from the voice. The simplest tool is an evidence file, where you write down every result with its date and the bare fact, no adjectives or comments. When the voice shows up you don't argue with it, you open the file and read.

Can feeling like an impostor be a good sign?

Often, yes. People who are new to a field rarely wonder whether they'll measure up, because they can't see how much there is to know. If you're asking, you can see the distance between where you are and where you could get to. That same sensitivity pushes you to prepare better. The problem starts when you let it make your decisions for you.