I was scrolling through LinkedIn on Monday and came across this video by Steven Bartlett, a well known young entrepreneur who appears on the TV show Dragon’s Den. At this point I’m pretty much done with my project, I’m just writing up my report. But I wanted to share my thoughts about this video because I think it’s important and adds something to my research.

The phrase comfort zone was coined in 1991 by a Judith Bardwick, a management thinker in a book called Danger in the Comfort Zone.

“The comfort zone is a behavioral state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk.”

Going by this definition of the comfort zone, it is reasonable to infer that being out of your comfort zone induces anxiety. However anxiety and imposter syndrome don’t necessarily go hand in hand. For example, a person might be trying horse riding for the first time. Something that they have never done before and is very out of their comfort zone. They might be very anxious about it – what if they fall off and break their neck? What if the horse isn’t strong enough to carry them?

But do they feel like an imposter in this situation? I doubt it.

Yerkes and Dodson conducted an experiment in 1907, establishing a link between anxiety and performance. The main idea of their study is that nervous systems have a perfect zone of arousal. Too little and you’re in your comfort zone, and you begin to get bored. But too much, and you panic. This panic goes on to stall your progress and decreases your performance. (See diagram below)

Going back to the original video that inspired this post, I don’t think we should all feel like imposters. For some people, feeling like an imposter drives them to work harder and to succeed no matter what. For other, feeling like an imposter makes them freeze and sees productivity plummet. In my opinion, it is slightly unfair to tell people how they should feel. Especially if you have a huge platform like Steven Bartlett does. There will be people who don’t feel like an imposter wondering if there’s something wrong with them. I don’t mean to imply that he had any bad intentions with this video, but I think that he could have phrased it a lot better. It is important for people to have role models and I imagine Steven is this for a lot of people. And his words have a lot of weight for people who look up to him.

https://positivepsychology.com/comfort-zone/

https://www.simplypsychology.org/what-is-the-yerkes-dodson-law.html