[saganus]

I came to the conclusion (which I later confirmed by reading a quote by someone famous, can't remember right now), that most intelligent people will realize that no matter how intelligent they are, there always someone else more intelligent. And even if you look up to THE most intelligent people of mankind's history (think polymaths, the DaVincis, Eulers, Leibnizs, etc), they STILL knew they couldn't know everything/be the best at everything. There's even a famous scene in a Simpsons chapter where Homer looks up to Edison as an inventor and then he realizes that even Edison looks up to someone (I think DaVinci in the cartoon).

So at some point when my impostor syndrome gets to me, I remember that in the end it's really never going to go away and secondly, it will keep me reminding me that there's still a lot to learn and that helps me stay humble because I know any day I might meet the most improbable of persons, that will teach me something that I didn't know.

In other words, I have found that keeping my impostor syndrome alive (but not letting it paralyze me as another poster suggests) helps me keep my ego in check. On one hand my ego let's me enjoy the painful fruits of frustration and experience and then my syndrome avoids that from letting me float so high that I burn with the flames of ego.

In the end, that still doesn't negate the fact that it's a constant drain of energy having to balance the two. I guess that's part of the reason why they say ignorance is bliss... although I'm not sure it's a particularly enjoyable bliss.