I remember landing my first piece in a magazine I’d idolized for years — the kind you hoard. This was a bucket list moment. A full-circle, frame-it-on-the-wall, “someone pinch me” kind of win. This wasn’t fluff.
So of course, I assumed it was a mistake.
I was sitting in my office, probably between Zoom calls, when the email came in. I had to read it twice. Maybe three times. My immediate thought was: “Wait — me? Really?” I half-expected Ashton Kutcher to burst through my monitor and tell me I was being punk’d. (He did not.)
Then came the full-body panic.
Was I good enough? Did they mean to approve my piece? Would they still stand by it if they met me in person? Then a quiet, unwelcome voice started whispering, “Are you sure you belong here?”
Here’s the kicker: this didn’t happen right out of school. Or even in my light the world on fire twenties (or gasp, thirties). I am ten years into running my own agency. Two decades into my creative career. Forty-something years into living. And still, that moment left me second-guessing everything.
When do we start feeling like the adult in the room?
A Generation Stuck in the Middle
Millennials are now running the meetings, leading the brainstorms, mentoring the interns. We’re the creative directors, the agency owners, the people clients look to for “vision.” We’re also still googling if it’s OK to write ‘per my last email’ without sounding like a sociopath. (It’s not. But we do it anyway.)
We’re not new here. But why do most of us still feel like we’re sneaking in the back door of our own careers?
Part of it, I think, is the era we came up in. We were raised on a cocktail of “you can be anything” optimism and late-stage capitalism. We watched our parents work one job for thirty years while we were told to build our personal brand before we had dental insurance. Throw in a few recessions, a pandemic, and the charming rise of unpaid internships and algorithmic relevance, and it’s no wonder we’re all slightly feral.
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Social media doesn’t help. We’ve got a front-row seat to everyone else’s highlight reel: the awards, the speaking gigs, the perfectly filtered photos of someone’s team “crushing it” while you’re just trying to survive Q4. You start to believe that confidence is the currency — and if you don’t have it, you’re broke — or at least broken.
And, creative industries have a legacy. They reward pedigree, performance, and proximity. We learned early that loud confidence gets the mic, while thoughtful work waits to be discovered.
So, we chase legitimacy like it’s a moving target. The next title. The next client. The next list.
But here’s the quiet truth: we already earned our seat.
The Myth of Arrival
We were sold a story: that if we just worked hard, hit milestones and collected proof points, the doubt would go away. That there’d be this moment where we’d finally arrive.
Spoiler: that moment never comes.
No number of “wins” has fully quieted that voice for me. I’ve built the portfolio. I’ve won the awards. Only to still lie awake, wondering if I’ve somehow tricked everyone.
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Because the system was designed to keep us climbing.
It feeds on scarcity. It whispers that you’re only as good as your last project. That someone out there is doing it better, faster, with a cleaner grid and a better strategy. That legitimacy is forever out of reach.
And because we’ve internalized that chase, we rarely stop to ask: “What if we’ve already made it? What if arrival isn’t a title or an external nod, but the moment we decide we’re enough as we are?”
But that’s harder to say out loud when the industry keeps handing out gold stars for burnout.
Reframing Growth
Eventually, I realized the imposter voice probably wasn’t going anywhere. So instead of trying to out-achieve it, I started getting curious about it.
That voice isn’t proof that I don’t belong. It’s proof that I care. That I’m still growing. That I haven’t checked out. And maybe that’s the new definition of success—not the absence of doubt, but the ability to keep going even with “it” riding shotgun.
For me, growth isn’t about climbing the next rung. It’s about recalibrating internally. Learning to notice when I’m outsourcing my confidence — again. Learning to pause before I throw money at yet another mastermind, webinar or bootcamp, hoping someone will just tell me what to do.
Because let’s be honest: half of us are just looking for an adult in the room. Some mythical figure who will look at our mess of ideas and say, ‘You’re on the right track — keep going.’
But here’s the twist: we are the adults in the room now. And admitting that we don’t have it all figured out? That’s not weak — it’s human. It’s relatable. It’s leadership. Because no one does.
So now, when the voice pipes up, I name it. I don’t argue with it. I don’t try to shut it down. I just say, “Yep. I hear you. But we’re doing this anyway.”
Because waiting for the doubt to disappear is a great way to miss the work you’re meant to do.
Redesigning Belonging
If you’ve made it this far and found yourself nodding along — welcome. You’re not broken. You’re not faking it. You’re just living with a brain that was taught to measure worth in external validation and gold stars.
But here’s the good news: we don’t have to keep playing that game.
We’ve spent so long asking if we belong in the rooms we’ve already earned our way into. We second-guess. We shrink. We wait for outside “legitimacy.”
What if we stopped doing that?
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What if leadership looked less like certainty — and more like honesty? What if we admitted that confidence is often a performance — and that we’re allowed to lead, even while we’re still figuring things out?
Because everyone is just as unsure as you are, so maybe we stop asking whether we belong.