On top of our spirit and natural instincts, we, as adults, carry heavy loads: programmed behaviours, trauma responses, and elaborate protection mechanisms. These layers certainly played a role in our development. We either absorbed them through our upbringing, or we actively built them as shields when life’s harsher experiences hit us.
But we can hardly consider this mechanical way of living—running on taught algorithms and defensive reflexes—as our natural state of being.
Today, we are looking at one specific, existential aspect of being human: Competence. And our deep-seated need to feel it. It is a primal drive, and every single one of us has it.
The psychological pioneers Edward Deci and Richard Ryan studied this extensively. In their work on Self-Determination Theory (SDT), they placed the need for competence at the center of human motivation, right alongside autonomy and relatedness.
In this context, the need for competence is defined as the inherent desire to feel effective when interacting with our environment. It is crucial to understand that true competence is not about being an expert compared to someone else. Rather, it is the internal, deeply personal experience of mastery, growth, and capability.
If you want to find a reliable source of absolute truth, a glimpse into how existence on Earth would look if we were all more in tune with our nature, you can do one single easy thing. Observe children.
Children still possess that raw innocence; they haven't yet been completely derailed from their primal instincts.
From a very young age they display all three of the above mentioned: competence, autonomy and relatedness needs.
And how can you tell if a child has a particularly strong drive for competence? Or if they are going through a developmental phase where competence takes center stage?
You look for one very specific behavior:
The Experiments
This is the child who repeats the same action over, and over, and over again. You watch them struggle, doing more and more of the exact same thing until they finally have a breakthrough and master it. They will take a single activity that excites them—or a subject they find interesting—and "obsessively" repeat it.
Once they’ve tried it enough times to guarantee it produces the same result, you will observe something fascinating: they add a tiny tweak. A small deviation. And then, they try that new version again and again.
This is their natural method for mastering themselves and their physical abilities, but it's also how they learn and decode the world around them. They are like brilliant little mad scientists.
We all know the famous quote attributed to Einstein: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Children seem to know this lesson inherently, but their brilliance lies also in a complementary truth: If you only try something once, you don't actually know if the second time will yield the same result.
Even if you try it three, four, or five times, it might still feel like there is insufficient data to formulate a solid conclusion. But after a considerable amount of repetition, once the results are undeniably consistent, it is time to listen to Einstein and change course. And the kids do! Every single time. After long, absorbed periods of running the exact same experiment, they move on to the next phase, or abandon it for an entirely different experiment.
To the absolute horror of any parent watching, this natural quest for mastery often looks like pure, unfiltered chaos.
Picture a toddler casually pushing a glass off the kitchen counter. It shatters. Fascinating. But a single data point isn't enough for our little scientist, so they drop a second glass, and then a third. Okay, consistent results.
Now, it is time to introduce a variable: What if the glass is full of milk? Does it still break? Crash. Yes, it does. Let's try that again just to be absolutely sure. Crash. Yes, milk doesn't change the outcome. Brilliant! Now for the next phase of the experiment: What if we change the environment and drop it on the living room rug instead of the hard tile?
While the adults are hyperventilating over the mess and the danger, the child isn't being malicious or destructive. They are simply entirely absorbed in the magic of the scientific method—building their competence and understanding the physics of their world, one shattered glass at a time.
There are profound lessons hidden in this seemingly simple, everyday behavior. It is a masterclass in resilience, determination, and discipline. A lesson on growth, but also, it is a lesson on letting go and moving on.
When we look at how children operate, it is clear how their competence is built organically with each new "project." Once they successfully complete an experiment, the lessons and skills they gained are deeply rooted. There is absolutely no way to apply this level of conscientious, dedicated behavior to developing a skill and walk away feeling insecure about it.
So why do adults have so many areas where we feel completely insecure? Lately, I rarely meet anyone who can sincerely claim they have never experienced Impostor Syndrome.
As long as we are on Earth, we cannot stop learning; life is a continuous classroom. We might as well learn how to learn from the experts: the children. We need to relearn how to actually become competent—and just as importantly, how to feel competent.
The key lies entirely in the process. It is about being completely absorbed by the journey, and understanding how natural that journey is supposed to be.
And the twin engines driving that process are Curiosity and Openness.
The profound sense of WONDER.
If you embark on a journey entirely fixated on a specific destination, it is impossible to keep your curiosity alive. You cannot buy a plane ticket to Rome and then innocently look out the window and ask yourself: "Ooooh, I wonder where this plane will take me today."
Let's take that metaphor further. You buy a very expensive ticket to Rome, but due to unforeseen circumstances, the plane lands in Paris!! What do you feel?
You might become angry and start a crusade against the airline. You might become overwhelmed with frustration at the inconvenience. You might be sad and disappointed. Or worse, you might turn inward, filling up with self-doubt: "This must be my fault. I bought the wrong ticket. I got on the wrong plane." This is exactly what usually happens to us in our adult lives when things don't go to plan.
OR... (and here enters openness)... you might feel thrilled. "Wow, look where I ended up! A whole new world of possibilities that I didn’t even think about is now right in front of me. I’m curious to see how this will play out."
The reality is that you are now standing in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
Let's bring this back to our daily experiments. When we adults start a new project, a new job, or try to learn a new skill that requires competence, we usually enter the arena already fixated on the outcome. We obsess over how well we should perform from day one. We constantly compare our messy, current phase with the polished, final result we imagine in our heads. Or worse, we try to skip all the vital steps of the experiment because we think we already know what the final conclusion should be.
Think about a traditional mathematics class. The underlying belief is: By the end of this, I SHOULD know mathematics.
We enter the room with a genuine desire to learn, but somewhere along the way, we stop the endless, playful experiments and start rushing the process toward its mandated outcome. Instead of enjoying the process—which naturally comes with highs and lows, failures and breakthroughs—we begin to obsess over the result.
What does "knowing mathematics" actually mean in this context? It means getting good grades. "Okay, so I have to get good grades. How can I get good grades? Maybe I can copy the results from someone else. Maybe I can get my hands on the exam subjects early and only study those. Maybe I can just work extra hard to blindly memorize the answers to every possible problem."
Suddenly, it is all about the grade. Submitting yourself to the vulnerability of a real experiment—where you sincerely try to solve a problem and risk getting the "wrong" result—is completely out of the question. There is no more joy in the process. There is no more room for that lightning strike of inspiration you get when you finally, genuinely figure out the solution to a complex problem. Everything becomes a frantic race for the final grade.
And you might actually get the good grade. You might even end up knowing mathematics at the highest academic level. But at what cost? You are exhausted. You are terrified someone will figure out you're a "fraud." You might receive endless praise, but it feels heavy and burdening. And surely, despite your grades, you have absolutely zero internal confidence in your actual competence.
You can see how the very essence of true learning is lost here. It dies right alongside your curiosity and your openness to any alternative results that the endeavor might have brought you.
You can also see how deeply rooted this destructive pattern is in the schooling systems we are subjected to from such a young age. It is almost impossible to escape it, perhaps only mitigated if you had very conscious, open parents who knew how to nurture your curiosity and respect your unique learning process without fixating on the report card.
So what exactly breeds Impostor Syndrome? At its core, it is simply the perceived feeling that you lack competence in any given situation. But when you trace that haunting feeling back to its origin, it always leads to the same place: a distortion of the "little mad scientist" method.
When Impostor Syndrome takes hold, we have abandoned the experiment and fixated purely on the outcome.
This tiny, seemingly insignificant shift in perspective—between being fiercely present in the messy process versus obsessively chasing a final result—changes everything. Even if you mechanically take all the correct steps and check all the right boxes, your mind is living in the future. You sever your connection to the organic, step-by-step process of building competence.
Because your awareness wasn't actually present for the climb, your inner self doesn't register the growth. You might technically achieve the goal, but your spirit lost track of the journey. You arrive at the finish line and look down at your hands, feeling like a fraud who somehow accidentally teleported there. You have the result, but you don't feel the competence.
The antidote to this is presence. It is the practice of honoring the exact step you are currently on, right this second, with openness, joy, and unrelenting curiosity.
It is no coincidence that a relentless, almost childlike curiosity is one of the most common traits shared by visionary billionaires and innovators. Furthermore, think about the most genuinely confident person you know. I am willing to bet they don't just brag about their shiny final successes.
Instead, they talk passionately about their entire journey. They own every embarrassing failure, every unexpected pivot, and every grueling learning curve. They don't feel like impostors because they never skipped to the end; they stayed wide awake, honoring every single step of the experiment.
As a kid, I loved learning. I still do. It is one of my absolute greatest joys to dive deep and uncover the mechanics of complex subjects. My spirit is literally in ecstasy when I uncover the answer to a physics or math problem, or when I immerse myself so deeply in a subject that I start generating brilliant, innovative ideas on how to push the boundaries even further.
But somewhere along the way, I, too, learned this toxic pattern of obsessing over the outcome. And it robs me of so much joy in my life. I want my endless curiosity and openness back.
Because of this, I’ve started a new quest: researching exactly where our connection to this spark is severed, and figuring out how to create the right internal and external environment to nurture this connection back to life within my own being.
To be clear, I am not saying we should never buy "tickets to Rome." This isn't about wandering the earth aimlessly, floating without direction. It is incredibly important to find the things that excite us and follow them through.
What it is about is setting the best possible goals for yourself, working diligently toward them, but
Leaving enough room for your spirit to actually accompany you on the journey
It is about taking joy in the attempt.
Taking joy in the failure.
Allowing natural resilience and discipline to emerge organically from your passion, rather than using them as self-imposed mechanisms of torture.
Taking joy in letting go and moving on.
And, of course, taking joy in the success when it arrives.
So, I leave you with an invitation: Go observe a kid
Watch a child doing their tiny, messy experiments. It could be your kid, a friend’s kid, or just a random toddler in the park.
You will instantly recognize that "the experiment is on" when you see that intensely focused, determined look wash over their face. In that moment, they do not hear their mom asking them not to throw that glass because it might break. They don't hear the warnings not to put that dirty thing in their mouth, or not to climb that structure because they might fall. Or, even if they do hear her, they do it anyway. They are driven by a tenacious, unstoppable force to see the experiment through to its natural conclusion.
That is how you recognise it.
And when you do stumble upon this scene, take a few quiet moments to truly observe this miraculously simple, brilliant way of being.
If you watch closely enough, you just might learn something profound about yourself.