You're Not a Fraud. But Something in You Might Be

A Virtue-Based Response to the Spiritual Rot of Impostor Syndrome

Mar 24, 2025

Over the last few months, I’ve had conversations with founders and entrepreneurs, small business owners and C-level executives: the creators, owners, hirers, risk-takers, and innovators at the helms. Different industries. Different journeys. But a consistent theme runs through far too many of them, and it's eerily similar.

Softly. Almost shy. Almost embarrassed. They reveal to me that they feel like impostors.

But wait, a feeling is fleeting. This is something deeper. Something more sinister.

It’s a perspective. A long-held certainty that if they’ve succeeded, they didn’t earn it. And if they’ve failed, or will fail, it merely confirms what they believed all along: they’re faking it. Even when they’re doing their jobs well and especially when other people are depending on them. They carry the weight of teams, payroll, clients, expectations and still, they feel like part of a charade.

This isn’t just self-doubt. It’s internal decay. And it produces a specific, cumulative exhaustion. It doesn’t just drain confidence. It drains the soul.

Psychologists will tell you that impostor syndrome is “the fear of being exposed as a fraud.” That’s the clinical definition. It’s not psychologically wrong. But in my experience, it’s spiritually flawed.

So I thought I’d start here. This week, I want to examine impostor syndrome not just as an error in thinking, but as a spiritual distortion, something that needs cleansing, surrender, and virtue.

Because this syndrome doesn’t just lie to you about your ability. It works against your intention. It chokes your goodness. It keeps you locked in a revolving door of self-absorption. It robs you of the ability to give, to create, to operate with clarity and focus.

So, as always, I’ll give you my two cents. And I’ll offer a remedy. Not by asserting ability. But by trusting. Not by building yourself up. But by surrendering.

I’ll bring in the saints, the mystics, and the intricacies of Christian teaching to help clarify what it means to reclaim your work, not as a soapbox to affirm your existence, but as a vocation of love, given freely and without self-justification.

This isn’t about becoming more confident.

It’s about becoming more free.

Let’s go.

Impostor Syndrome Isn’t Just in Your Head. It’s in Your Soul

In the modern entrepreneurial world, we are drowning in a culture of self-obsession masquerading as self-help. We are told by gurus, coaches, influencers, and algorithm-chasing experts that success is purely a matter of self-optimization. Find your "why," visualize your future, manifest your millions. The formula is clear: you are the source, the method, and the reward.

But this is a lie. A damaging one.

And nowhere does this lie manifest more venomously than in the affliction of impostor syndrome—that deep, gnawing sense that you are a fraud, that your success is accidental, that you are one misstep away from collapse. Entrepreneurs, especially those trying to build with integrity know this voice well. It's the low drone in the background of every pitch, every hire, every late night. "You're faking it." "You're not good enough." "You're not who they think you are."

At its core, impostor syndrome is not just a mindset issue, it is a spiritual dislocation. It is the fruit of a culture that has cut the entrepreneur off from the objective good and the call to serve. It turns business into a solipsistic exercise in self-justification. It traps the entrepreneur in a psychological loop of self-suspicion. When you believe you are the center of success, you must also take on the unbearable burden of being the reason for every failure, every delay, every confusion. And this is precisely the soil in which vice, not virtue, grows.

The Enemy of Surrender

Impostor syndrome thrives in a world where the entrepreneur cannot surrender; not to God, not to the work, not to the mission, and certainly not to others. It feeds on isolation and control. It chokes the virtues especially the virtue of magnanimity (the greatness of soul that aims at noble things) and humility (the right understanding of oneself in relation to the good and to God). In the fog of impostorism, the entrepreneur either retreats into fear or overcompensates with self-aggrandizement. Both destroy the ability to lead authentically.

The alternative is terrifying only because it is honest: You are not the cause of your own success. You never were. Your role is not to dominate outcomes but to pursue the good relentlessly with skill, integrity, discipline, and love. Your job is to seek the flourishing of others (thank you Aristotle), your clients, your team, your community. That is the only durable path forward.

The Exit from the Impostor Trap

True entrepreneurial confidence is not swagger. It is not hustle porn. It is not faking it until you make it. It is clarity of mission, rooted in the objective reality that value is created through service and that success is a byproduct of virtue in action. You escape impostor syndrome not by puffing yourself up, but by getting out of your own head and immersing yourself in the real, concrete good of others.

This is precisely what Pope St. John Paul II reminded the world in Centesimus Annus, when he wrote:

“The purpose of a business firm is not simply to make a profit, but is to be found in its very existence as a community of persons who in various ways are endeavoring to satisfy their basic needs, and who form a particular group at the service of the whole of society” (Centesimus Annus, §35).

Thank you John Paul II, that’s beautiful! This explodes the myth of the entrepreneur as an isolated genius or self-sufficient savior. Instead, it situates the entrepreneur within a community, within a moral ecosystem where the entrepreneur’s task is not self-justification, but service, solidarity, and stewardship.

When your gaze is no longer turned inward (obsessing over your adequacy) but outward, toward the flourishing of others, a strange thing happens. The internal chaos subsides. You begin to feel at home in your own vocation. You begin to trust the work and not just your self-image. You stop pretending and start participating in something greater than yourself.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s what entrepreneurship was always meant to be: not a stage for self-glory, but a vocation of love in action.

So What Do You Do With This?

Stop asking, “Am I an imposter?” That question is a trap. It keeps you in the mirror, endlessly checking your own reflection for signs of legitimacy. Ask instead: Is what I’m doing good? Is it true? Is it serving anyone but me?

And if the answer is yes, then keep going. Even if the voice in your head says you’re faking it. Because chances are, the people who don’t feel like imposters are the ones you should be worried about.

This is not about eliminating impostor syndrome. This is about walking through it without letting it own you. It’s about remembering that your value isn’t rooted in your performance, your press coverage, or your next funding round.

It’s rooted in your willingness to do the hard, unsexy, humble work of building something that isn’t all about you.

Your inner critic isn’t a prophet. It’s a parasite. Starve it, and get back to building something that isn’t all about you.

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