Ep 6: Imposter Syndrome at Work: How a $0 Mouse Pad and a Whiteboard Pun Helped Me Get Out of My Own Way

For 8 years, I did what most of us are told to do when work feels wrong. I changed things. I pivoted roles inside engineering. I changed teams. I got promoted into jobs I didn't fully understand yet, because I was good at interviews and good at telling a story about myself.

None of it worked.

The imposter syndrome followed me into every new role. The loneliness followed me too. Eventually that turned into depression. Not because I lacked good friends or support. The thing that was actually wrong had nothing to do with my job title.

The Real Problem Was Never My Job

I want to be specific here, because I think this is the part people skip. I was successful by every outside measure. I was doing good work. I kept getting promoted. And I still had to talk myself into going into the office 5 days a week.

That gap, between how well things looked and how disconnected I felt inside them, is what imposter syndrome actually is. It's not a confidence problem you can promote your way out of. I kept treating the job as the thing to change. The job was never the thing.

The Question I Finally Asked Myself

The shift started with a book called Joyful, by Ingrid Fetell Lee, a designer and former design director at IDEO. Her work lays out 10 "aesthetics of joy." Simple, physical things that reliably shift how you feel.

Reading it, I asked myself a question I had never let myself ask before. If changing my role isn't fixing this, what do I actually have control over? The honest answer was small, almost embarrassing. My cubicle. What I put in it. That was the whole scope of control I had.

This is design thinking in its most basic form. Not a framework for a whiteboard in a conference room. A habit of asking what's actually in your control when the big obvious lever isn't available to you.

Where It Actually Started: A $0 Mouse Pad

The first thing I changed cost nothing. I had a mouse pad from a trip with my mom years earlier. A cheap souvenir with a cat balanced on a bouncy ball, bought in a small shop while we were college hunting. I brought it to my desk.

It sounds too small to matter. But it was the first time in years I let something in my workspace exist just because it meant something to me. No professional justification attached.

Small Actions Into Massive Actions

Once I noticed nobody grilled me about the mouse pad, I kept going. A small rug. A warm light table lamp to cut the office fluorescents. Confetti drapes over my cubicle, just because they made it feel like a tiny party every time I walked in.

Then the whiteboard I'd had sitting unused at my desk for years. I started spending 10 minutes on my lunch break drawing a pun on it. Visuals, wordplay, whatever came to me. Then I'd hang it outside my cubicle for anyone to see.

The reaction wasn't judgment. It was warmth. People started looking forward to it. Eventually I started posting the drawings on my personal Instagram, and people I rarely spoke to in the office started commenting that it made their week better too.

What I Learned About Fear and Permission

Here's the part that mattered more than any single object. Every time I did one of these small things, the thing I was afraid would happen (judgment, being seen as less professional) never happened. What I'd been treating as a real risk was mostly anticipatory anxiety, not an accurate read on my actual workplace.

I didn't need permission from anyone else to bring my personality to work. I needed to give it to myself. The irony isn't lost on me that the same instinct that started with a mouse pad is the reason I now put my voice and opinions out publicly, every week, on this show.

One Thing You Can Try This Week

If there's one thing to take from this, it's not "redecorate your office." It's smaller than that. Find one object for your desk that is genuinely just for you. Not for coworkers to comment on. Not for anyone's approval. One object, no audience but you.

Work is part of your life. It's not the whole of it. You're still allowed to be a full person while you're there.

Want to go deeper on the Aesthetics of Joy framework and apply it to your own career and life transition? Join the free NJ Career and Life Decision Lab meetup, Wednesday, August 12 at 12:30 PM ET. SIGN UP HERE. Open to anyone, wherever you are.

Listen to the full episode of Your Life Unbounded. If it resonated, send it to one person who needs permission to bring a little more of themselves to work. Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

• Full Transcript

  Gloria Julien (00:00)

  Welcome back to Your Life Unbounded. I'm Gloria Julien your career and life decision coach. And today I want to share with you the year I drew a pun on my whiteboard every single week and hunt it outside of my cubicle And I did this for an entire year.

  Now it might not sound like much to you, especially if you're someone who's already comfortable showing up at work as yourself, but to me it meant a lot because that was one of the first times I really put my personality out there publicly without reservation and without trying to prove anything to anybody.

  I'd started my entire engineering career as somebody who thought I had to be a certain way. And it made me suffer from imposter syndrome, which eventually developed into loneliness and depression. I dreaded going into the office, and I never looked forward to my Mondays. I had to convince myself every single morning, five days a week, to go.

  Do a good job that was lukewarm and unfulfilling for me. I felt so disconnected from myself and I knew it. And I tried to pivot my role within engineering a few times before I got to drawing that pun on my whiteboard, thinking that

  Maybe this isn't the type of engineering that I wanted to do. Maybe it was a different type. But over eight years of

  Pivoting and doing engineering work, that feeling of disconnection, that imposter syndrome, it followed me regardless of what job I was doing. Every single day, I doubted whether I was even good at my job, despite doing good work, despite being successful, I got promoted into a role I honestly didn't know much about.

  But since I was good at interviews and I had the skills on paper and I'm very good storyteller, I made it happen. The whole time that creative, fun, playful part of me just stopped showing up inside or outside of work because I was so drained from wearing this professional engineer mask that there was nothing left for myself. And the longer that went on, the more loneliness and depression crept in.

  It didn't matter who had around me. I had good friends and good support systems. But that feeling came back to me no matter what I changed. After years of feeling like an imposter, I finally decided enough was enough. I didn't want to keep walking into the workplace feeling like I had to be somebody else. While I was looking for books on creating more joy in life,

  I found one called Joyful by Ingrid Fettel Lee. she's a designer, formerly a design director at IDEO a really big company known for their design thinking and great products

  And in her book, she lays out 10 aesthetics of joy that are really easy to bring into any space. But what sparked me from reading that book was that I had control over my cubicle, over what I chose to put in it. But because I had been trying to be this version of a professional engineer for so long, I hadn't let myself show any personality there.

  Not even something as small as a photo. And reading that book allowed me to ask the question I've never asked before. That if the job isn't the problem, if changing titles and changing roles isn't going to fix this disconnected feeling that I have, then what do I actually have control over? And the answer was, what I put in my cubicle. That thought at first really scared me.

  It meant putting myself out there, even in a small way. It meant anyone who walked by could judge it, to criticize it. It felt like a personal attack just waiting to happen. And for so long I didn't do anything. But eventually I hit that point where I needed to do something in my work life to feel joyful. And so the first thing I did was change my mouse pad. And I know it sounds silly, but that mouse pad has a story.

  I got it years ago walking around a small town in San Diego with my mom when we were college hunting. We stumbled on a store selling a children's book

  And in that store happened to be a mouse pad. Now, at the time I wasn't interested in buying a children's book, so I settled for having a mouse pad had that had a cute cat that was off balance on a bouncy ball. And I took that as my souvenir for that time. And bringing it bringing it into my work.

  Place finally started making it feel even just a little bit personal because it reminded me of that calm, peaceful time that I was just walking around town with my mom. And that was really the start of me bringing pieces of myself into the office because otherwise I was stressed and anxious all day holding up this professional persona.

  from there it grew. I got a small rug, so the space felt more like mine. I got a table lamp with a warm temperature light to contrast the harsh fluorescence of the office. And I also got these confetti drapes that I hun above my cubicle Just to help my cubicle feel more fun. So every time I walked in, it felt like I was having a tiny party, which is really odd.

  When you go into the office, but it made me feel so much joy and happy. And I feel even warm talking about it now. At first, doing all of these small things to bring my personality into this space and to help generate a little bit more joy into this space, it felt really scary at first because it was like making my office look unprofessional. But every time I added a small personal piece, I found out.

  That nobody cared. Nobody grilled me about it. And if anything, most people said something positive. And if they didn't, they just didn't say anything. And in some ways, I think it gave them permission and inspiration to make their space cozier too. And finally, the whiteboard. I

  I had had one at my desk for a really long time, thinking I would use it, but it went unused. So I decided to put it to work and decided that I wanted to have some kind of creative outlet to contrast the rigidity of engineering. So I started spending about 10 minutes a week on my lunch break drawing a pun with visuals and some writing with it. And sometimes it was seasonal or sometimes it was just whatever came to me.

  And I love puns So that this activity, it just made me laugh every time I did it. So each time I was done, I hun it outside of my cubicle for everyone to see. And some people smiled, some people noticed, some people didn't. But overall, the feedback was really positive and really warm. People told me they looked forward to seeing what I would come up with the next week. And eventually.

  I got bold enough to start posting them on my personal Instagram. And that started getting some traction too. people I would never rarely have conversations with suddenly commented back saying that they loved my last drawing and it made them feel really fun and they looked forward to me doing it all the time.

  And for me it felt so warm and fulfilling, like I was sharing my piece of joy with other people, and it was not as scary as I thought it might be.

  So that's where the real shift was happening is that it was never about the whiteboard, never about the rug or the lamp. It was that those things proved that if I showed my personality at work, that wasn't dangerous. It was just my anticipatory anxiety convincing me that it would be.

  I finally allowed myself to be myself. And it had never occurred to me before that I was even allowed to because I had to have such a strong idea of what that professional engineer had to look like that I followed it for years. And the irony is, is today I'm recording a podcast. I'm putting my voice, my personality, my opinions out there publicly on LinkedIn and Instagram.

  That my personality is now an actual part of my coaching business. That growth from being scared to put myself out there to now being a core part of my business, I generally never saw that coming. None of it would have existed if I hadn't given myself the permission to bring even a just a little bit of joy into the office, which eventually came became that pun on a whiteboard.

  So if there's one thing you could do this week to bring a little more joy into your workspace, here is what I would say. Find one object for your desk that is genuinely just for you. Something that reminds you of joy every time you look at it. Work is a part of life, but not the whole part of it. So you're allowed to be human and show who you are while you're there, especially when it feels overwhelming, stressful, and anxious.

  But the one requirement that I have is that this object, whatever you bring, it has to be for you,

  no one else. That's the only way to build up your sense of joy in that workplace because

  It creates more of what you want.

  And if you want to learn more about the 10 Aesthetics of Joy by Ingrid Fetell Lee I want to invite you to my very first virtual meetup on August 12th at 12 30 p.m. Eastern Time. And it's completely free and just for 30 minutes. I'll put the link in the show notes. My group is called NJ Career and Life Decision Lab but it's open to anyone wherever you are. The purpose

  is to build a community for people going through big career and life transitions. So you don't feel alone. And so we can normalize that it's okay to feel messy right now. In this first meetup, we'll talk more about the book Joyful and what it means to bring more of that into your work life. So here's my ask.

  Send this episode to one person who could use inspiration to bring joy into their life and invite them as your guest to my meetup group. I would love to see you and your friends there. This has been an episode of Your Life Unbounded. I'm Gloria Julien spelled J-U-L-I-E-N, and I'll see you next time.