What my eight-year-old sister taught me about imposter syndrome - integrity, discipline, and the excitement to try again

I struggle with the fear of not knowing enough. I struggle with the possibility of failure and the fear of not being able to hold my own hand through it. I struggle with imposter syndrome.

When you’re the first to do something, the first in your family to go to college, the first to step into a career path, you carry the weight of uncertainty. You walk into rooms where no one looks like you, where no one seems as flustered as you, and where everyone appears to have a roadmap but you. There is no familiar voice to turn to for reassurance, no safety net of lived experience to tell you, “Yes, this is how it works!” or “You’re doing the right thing.”

Psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, who first coined the term impostor phenomenon, described it as the persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud despite evidence of success. Their research showed that many high-achieving individuals, particularly women, lived in a constant state of self-doubt, convinced that their achievements were due to luck or deception rather than ability.

This post by Anjali Mistry explores the impact of impostor syndrome on women in the workforce, particularly in law, and the role of mentorship in overcoming self-doubt.

For me, that persistent fear is all too familiar. And yet, the thing that has cured my imposter syndrome time and time again is the perspective of an eight-year-old girl who means the world to me—my little sister, Shandiin. Her name is Navajo for sunshine, and she is exactly that: a warm, comforting light, illuminating a path forward.

For an eight-year-old, she carries a lot of fear. She gets anxious about being late. She is reluctant to try new foods. She is scared of failure, as most kids are. But the remarkable thing about her isn’t her fear, it’s what she does despite it.

Recently, she competed in her first taekwondo tournament. It was a huge deal because she was new to the sport. My parents recently moved from Texas to California. In Texas, she took karate, but taekwondo is different. Different forms, different goals, different stances. Yet in just six months, she embraced an entirely new discipline.

I love watching her practice because I can see how much she wants it. She is a typical energetic, silly kid, always joking and playing. But in practice, she is different. She stands still, listens intently, absorbing every movement her instructors make. She isn’t just present—she is studying. And before we knew it, she had won her studio’s award for integrity.

During class, when the kids were told to complete their moves and sit when finished, some sat down early, following the crowd. But not Shandiin. It didn’t matter if she was the last one standing—she completed every move to fruition. She wasn’t afraid of being slower because she was focused on doing it right.

Her integrity and discipline is why she was chosen for the tournament training team despite being new to the sport. 

But she was hesitant to join. She didn’t know what a tournament looked like. She didn’t know if her skills matched up. No one in our family had ever done taekwondo, so we had no wisdom to pass down.

Sound familiar? It’s the first-gen experience in a different form.

You step into spaces where no one before you has gone. There’s no advice to lean on, no “this is what I learned” to guide you. You study those around you, listen closely, and try to decipher the unspoken rules. You wonder if you belong. You wonder if you’ll be good enough.

But then, you show up anyway.

That’s what Shandiin did. When she came home from her tournament after placing third, she wasn’t most excited about her medal—she was excited to try again. She went on and on about the next competition, about how she had observed the sparring category, one she had been hesitant to try, so she could be more familiar with it next time. She was already thinking about what she would do differently.

She wasn’t discouraged by her inexperience. She was making a plan to tackle a challenge instead of giving up on herself. And the next week, she was back at practice. Same energy. Same drive. Same willingness to learn.

Watching her, I realized: this is how you beat imposter syndrome, in tournaments and in life.

You don’t count yourself out because you’re afraid of being inexperienced. You don’t let the unknown stop you. You step in, watch, learn and try. You might fail, but that’s just an opportunity to learn and try again with new knowledge and perspective.

This post by SC also discusses challenging your feelings of uncertainty to learn and grow.

And when you do, you don’t just shine a path for yourself — you make it easier for those who come next.

Shandiin isn’t just teaching me some of her taekwondo moves in our living room. She’s teaching me how to step into the unknown and see it as an opportunity to grow. She is teaching me how to trust myself even when I don’t have all the answers. She is showing me that the best way to defeat imposter syndrome is with integrity, discipline, and the excitement to try again.