When I’ve been asked what my best piece of advice would be for someone getting started or even for someone already in their career, no matter what field they’re in, I always reply with the same thing.

Now this advice seems too simple. It seems as though it doesn’t really apply. However, I can tell you that this advice simply works.

So many of us are constantly in our own heads. We’re constantly putting ourselves and our abilities, our education down. So many of us can’t seem to get over the notion that we’re not really qualified, we don’t really know what we’re talking about.

Now just a few years ago, I would say that I thought that this advice was a load of crap. But then one day I was in my class in grad school and my professor, somebody I knew and looked up to as a very intelligent and highly qualified individual, confessed that everyone gets imposter syndrome. They confessed that so many of the people that are top of their fields don’t really feel as though they know what they’re really doing. They feel as though one day somebody is going to find out that they’re making it all up. That they’re not really as qualified as they pretend to be. That someday soon someone would show up and call them out and everything would come crashing down.

This statement really spoke to me. I feel like so much of our education teaches us that we have to figure out what we’re going to do with our lives and we have to figure it out quick. This idea is something that is constantly reinforced and when you don’t know what you want to do or maybe you do know and you have absolutely no idea how to get there, this can be really disheartening. Realizing that somebody I looked up to, somebody that I knew was successful felt this way, made me feel as though I would eventually get it together. It made me realize that I was not really alone in what I was feeling and that things would eventually work out.

This whole interaction led me to realize that we all have these feelings. Deep down, none of feel as though we’re good enough or that we deserve our success.

I am here to tell you to start ignoring that feeling. Now I get it’s hard. Having to retrain your brain and that little voice in the back of your head that tells you that you’re not good enough is really, really difficult. But once, you can get past that, once you can get past that feeling your confidence is going to shine through.

So much of work or really life, is learning to deal with these feelings. Learning to handle the voice in the back your head that tells you it’s all going to come tumbling down, that someone is going to find out you’re really not who you say you are. But if you can get past that feeling, if you can keep grinding, if you can fake it until ’till you make it, you can get through anything.