How quickly someone answers you is rarely a sign of how much they care about you. Delayed replies to emails, texts, and calls are often symptoms of being overextended or overwhelmed. Unless it's urgent, the true test of a relationship isn't the speed of response. It's the quality of attention.
Your opening point is a helpful reminder. I struggle with this - I always think if someone doesn't respond, they are ignoring me, even though deep down I know that isn't the case. With email, I've found that if I can't respond to someone immediately, or need to provide an answer that requires deeper thought, sending a quick note that I will respond later helps set expectations (ties in with quality of response). I also appreciate when others do this.
Fascinating stuff re: the imposter syndrome. I was reading yesterday in Michel de Montaigne’s essays and he mentioned it extensively in his essay on “presumptions” and how he suffered from it massively. He didn’t call it imposter syndrome, but he alluded to the fact that he’s the worst in having confidence in his skills, while the others value them more than him, talking about his writing in that case..
“Those who fail to experiment fail to learn.” That one really hit home for me. Are we afraid to break the arbitrary monotony we prematurely set for ourselves??
Wild how it takes just one more person telling me to keep going to continue on. I am not an imposter, and you said so, thus I shall keep being the writer I know I am.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. (Please do not let this repetitive slew of gratitude be a reflection of my writing style. Oops, imposter syndrome strikes again...)
Thanks for including the New Yorker article on imposter syndrome, which featured Jodi-Ann Burey and I, two women of color who are quoted and featured in the article you included, who also wrote the HBR article on this topic.
I'd love to better understand your takeaways from the article; Leslie Jamison specifically outlines how imposter syndrome came to be today because women were underestimated.
So your takeaway of, "When multiple people believe in you, it might be time to believe them," is confusing to me. In fact, the issue is how can we get more leaders to believe in us because for too long they HAVEN'T, especially professional women of color. Our recommendation to women of color is the opposite of, "believe what people tell you," it's: "managers, please fix your biases and create an inclusive culture so we can all belong."
I agree that ghosting isn't a gauge of a bad friendship, but I also think that the "ghosting culture" has gotten out of control. I think as a generalization people don't value virtues enough and have too self-obsessed and subsequently self-destructive life values and this has helped lead to more sense of ghosting and more social atomization. Another reason is we don't value social-emotional intelligence in mainstream culture which might be the primary wisdom domain of older women as another generalization, which we aren't trying to empirically get that from them and bring it into mainstream culture for utilitarian benefit because there isn't a realization of how connected and important it is to human wellbeing.
Re: Americans Are Fake and the Dutch Are Rude!, I can relate to her experience as an American that’s lived in Japan for several years.
I do think, however, that the words “emotion” and “feeling” are not clearly defined and often used with different shades of meaning. I recognize the thinking-feeling distinction is fuzzy, but some of the author’s argument seems to rely on it being so in all cases when interpreting what happened in her many anecdotes.
America’s population is ~237 times bigger than the Netherlands with a vast and varied immigrant population. What’s described in this article is her experience in a midwestern town in Michigan. Hardly a representative sample.
Your opening point is a helpful reminder. I struggle with this - I always think if someone doesn't respond, they are ignoring me, even though deep down I know that isn't the case. With email, I've found that if I can't respond to someone immediately, or need to provide an answer that requires deeper thought, sending a quick note that I will respond later helps set expectations (ties in with quality of response). I also appreciate when others do this.
Fascinating stuff re: the imposter syndrome. I was reading yesterday in Michel de Montaigne’s essays and he mentioned it extensively in his essay on “presumptions” and how he suffered from it massively. He didn’t call it imposter syndrome, but he alluded to the fact that he’s the worst in having confidence in his skills, while the others value them more than him, talking about his writing in that case..
“Those who fail to experiment fail to learn.” That one really hit home for me. Are we afraid to break the arbitrary monotony we prematurely set for ourselves??
Wild how it takes just one more person telling me to keep going to continue on. I am not an imposter, and you said so, thus I shall keep being the writer I know I am.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. (Please do not let this repetitive slew of gratitude be a reflection of my writing style. Oops, imposter syndrome strikes again...)
Dear Adam,
Thanks for including the New Yorker article on imposter syndrome, which featured Jodi-Ann Burey and I, two women of color who are quoted and featured in the article you included, who also wrote the HBR article on this topic.
I'd love to better understand your takeaways from the article; Leslie Jamison specifically outlines how imposter syndrome came to be today because women were underestimated.
So your takeaway of, "When multiple people believe in you, it might be time to believe them," is confusing to me. In fact, the issue is how can we get more leaders to believe in us because for too long they HAVEN'T, especially professional women of color. Our recommendation to women of color is the opposite of, "believe what people tell you," it's: "managers, please fix your biases and create an inclusive culture so we can all belong."
In solidarity,
Ruchika
I agree that ghosting isn't a gauge of a bad friendship, but I also think that the "ghosting culture" has gotten out of control. I think as a generalization people don't value virtues enough and have too self-obsessed and subsequently self-destructive life values and this has helped lead to more sense of ghosting and more social atomization. Another reason is we don't value social-emotional intelligence in mainstream culture which might be the primary wisdom domain of older women as another generalization, which we aren't trying to empirically get that from them and bring it into mainstream culture for utilitarian benefit because there isn't a realization of how connected and important it is to human wellbeing.
Re: Americans Are Fake and the Dutch Are Rude!, I can relate to her experience as an American that’s lived in Japan for several years.
I do think, however, that the words “emotion” and “feeling” are not clearly defined and often used with different shades of meaning. I recognize the thinking-feeling distinction is fuzzy, but some of the author’s argument seems to rely on it being so in all cases when interpreting what happened in her many anecdotes.
America’s population is ~237 times bigger than the Netherlands with a vast and varied immigrant population. What’s described in this article is her experience in a midwestern town in Michigan. Hardly a representative sample.