August 26, 2025|ב' אלול ה' אלפים תשפ"ה The Real You: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome This Elul
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Have you ever felt like a fraud—as though you’re just making it up as you go, and one day the world will discover you aren’t as capable as they thought? This feeling can appear in professional life, family life, religious life—or in all three.
I’ll admit something personal. For several years after I graduated, I had a recurring nightmare: the registrar’s office called to demand my diploma back because I hadn’t really earned it. Even now, after more than twenty years serving as a rav, I catch myself thinking, “Who am I to give this derasha, officiate at this wedding, answer that halachic question, or give that shiur?”
If you’ve ever felt this way, you are not alone. Studies show that as many as 70% of people experience what psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978 coined “imposter syndrome.” It’s the conviction that your accomplishments aren’t truly earned—that success comes from luck, timing, or having somehow fooled others into thinking you’re competent. A feeling of faking it on the outside while imprisoned by a gnawing feeling of unworthiness on the inside. Doctors feel it. Lawyers feel it. Parents feel it. Rabbis feel it.
And our greatest leaders felt it too.
When Aharon was called to serve in the Mishkan on its opening day, the Torah describes him hesitating. Rashi explains that Aharon felt unworthy, like a fraud. Moshe, who once resisted his own calling by insisting he wasn’t a speaker or a leader, reassured him: “Why are you ashamed? You were chosen for this.” That moment reframes imposter syndrome. It is not weakness—it is part of the human experience, even for the greatest among us.
We have begun the month of Elul, the countdown to Rosh Hashanah and the start of a new year, a new beginning. The Talmud teaches that Rosh Hashanah not only marks the creation of humanity, but also the day Yosef HaTzadik was released from prison. Why highlight that event? Because Yosef’s liberation mirrors the opportunity given to each of us. New beginnings, a fresh start, begin with being freed like Yosef—freed from prisons of self-doubt, from the false narratives we tell ourselves, from the limitations we impose on who we can be.
That is why the Navi Amos calls us “she’eiris Yosef”—the remnant of Yosef. This time of year, we too are invited to walk out of our prisons, to prepare for our new beginning.
A couple of years ago, I met with a tzaddik in Beit Shemesh, Rav Avraham Zvi Kluger, who gave me a total paradigm shift in how to experience this time of year. He explained that Elul and Rosh Hashanah are not about our failures but our potential. Hashem sees not only where we fall short, but He knows the best version of ourselves—the moments when we rose above, when we were patient, loving, disciplined, and strong. He knows that is our true self, the real us. The slip-ups and shortcomings, the failures, are the aberrations, not the other way around.
We mistakenly think the real us is the one who loses our cool with our spouse or children, the one who looks at the wrong things when nobody is looking or indulges the urge to say the wrong thing to curry favor with the listener. We mistakenly think that when we show up despite our shortcomings, when we occasionally get it right, that makes us imposters.
But that is wrong! The truth is that when we are able to stay calm and be patient with those we love, when we have the discipline to do the right thing despite being tempted to follow our urge, that is who we really are, that is the true us, it is who we really are.
When the shofar sounds each morning of this month and on Rosh Hashanah, it doesn’t call us to wallow in guilt. The Rambam writes that it awakens us to look into our souls, to remember who we really are and what we are capable of. Rosh Hashanah’s teshuvah is not about confession—that comes on Yom Kippur. Rosh Hashanah’s teshuvah is about recognition: remembering our best selves and realigning with them.
As Rav Kook wrote in Oros HaTeshuvah, “The primary role of teshuvah is to return to one’s true self, to the root of one’s soul.”
We are defined by our strength, not our weaknesses; we are our best moments, not our worst. While we have to take ownership and responsibility for our failures, we deserve the success and achievements we have earned.
In 1977, Laura Schultz, 63, was in the kitchen of her home in Tallahassee, Florida, when she heard her 6-year-old grandson screaming from the driveway outside. Schultz ran to the door to find her grandson pinned beneath the rear tire of a full-size Buick. Giving no consideration to limitations or barriers, Schultz ran to the car, used one hand to lift the rear of the vehicle, and used the other hand to drag her grandson to safety.
For years, Schultz refused to speak about the incident. After finally agreeing to an interview with peak performance coach Dr. Charles Garfield, Schultz was asked why she had remained silent about her miracle. Schultz revealed that the incident had scared her and reminded her that she had wasted most of her life living far beneath her true potential. If she had that strength inside her all along, why hadn’t she realized it or utilized it more often or more fully?
With a little coaching from Garfield, Schultz returned to college, earned her degree, and went on, at nearly 70 years of age, to fulfill her long-held dream of becoming a college professor.
Like Schultz, we often dismiss our best moments as exceptions, flukes, or lucky breaks. But those moments are the real us. They reveal what Hashem already knows—that we carry extraordinary potential inside. Don’t ignore the strength that is inside you. Your best moment as a mother or father, as a husband or wife, as an eved Hashem—that is the real you. Believe it, embrace it, nurture it, repeat it, and grow it.
Spend Elul overcoming your imposter syndrome and seeing and believing in the real you. This year, instead of just limiting our challenges, let’s challenge our limits.