Corbin Hiar, E&E News and Lisa Riordan Seville - NBC News - Thursday, January 16, 2020

PHILADELPHIA — Last May, an air monitor on the border of the East Coast's largest oil refinery recorded a level of benzene, a cancer-causing gas, more than 21 times the federal limit.
In June, an explosive early morning fire rocked the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery, terrifying nearby residents. Weeks after the disaster, as PES filed for bankruptcy and wound down operations, another air monitor in the network that rings the facility quietly registered the same sky-high reading for benzene. Long-term exposure to the sweet-smelling chemical has been linked to leukemia, lymphoma and a host of blood and immune system disorders.
That monitor, on the edge of this 1,300-acre complex of steel and pipe, is across an expressway from schools, parks, a strip mall and hundreds of homes.
Charles Reeves lives less than a mile and a half north of both air monitors in the largely African American neighborhood of Grays Ferry. A community organizer in this area of low-slung row houses, Reeves keeps tabs on the news in the neighborhood. He said no one informed him or his neighbors that they may have been exposed to benzene until he was contacted by NBC News, E&E News and the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a nonprofit newsroom based at American University.
"Poor people don't get information," said Reeves, 61, a grandfather and prostate cancer survivor. "Whichever way that blows, we're going to be affected."
The refinery disaster in June unleashed over 5,200 pounds of deadly hydrofluoric acid. A 4 a.m. leak inside a unit that produced high-octane gasoline caused a series of explosions that sent a ball of fire into the night sky. One blast hurtled a slab of metal bigger than a school bus across the river. Quick action by workers meant no one was killed or seriously injured. The refinery ceased production in August.
The catastrophic blaze provided a stark illustration of the hazards the refinery has long posed for Philadelphians. But even in its wake, officials gave no formal notice to residents that the same facility had registered among the highest benzene levels of any refinery in the country, according to data submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Philadelphia Energy Solutions, or PES, is just one of a dozen refineries of the more than 130 refineries operating across the country that have consistently exceeded the EPA's "action level" of 9 micrograms per cubic meter of air, according to data compiled and analyzed by the Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group that advocated for the fenceline monitoring program now required at all refineries.
High benzene readings registered by the network of monitors around a refinery don't necessarily translate to dangerous levels in the community, according to the city and EPA. But former EPA officials who examined the hard-to-access data compared ongoing high benzene concentrations around the Philadelphia refinery and near other top benzene emitters to levels more often seen in China and India. And they criticized local and federal officials for failing to address the problem or adequately warn the public.
That information could also come into play for investors eyeing the South Philadelphia site. Its creditors are looking to unload the refinery at a closely watched bankruptcy auction on Friday, as both residents and former workers watch from the sidelines.
The pollution threat from the bankrupt refinery didn't begin last spring or end in July 2019 for Reeves and his neighbors.
Opened in the late 1800s and long operated by Sunoco, the refinery was temporarily saved from insolvency in 2012 by a group of investors led by the Washington, D.C.-based private-equity giant Carlyle Group.
For more than a year and a half prior to the fire, air monitors near the blast site and along the perimeter of the refinery registered troubling levels of benzene, according to "fenceline" data submitted by refineries to the EPA.
The data, which EPA began posting early last year, shows the refinery exceeded the benzene emissions limit for all but 12 weeks from the end of January 2018 to late September 2019 — an 86-week span.
That may have exposed thousands of Philadelphians to troubling levels of benzene, including children like those who often play in the streets of Grays Ferry.
More than 297,000 people live within three miles of the refinery. About 60 percent of those residents are minority, and nearly 45 percent live below the poverty line, according to census data.
"The residents of South Philadelphia bear the environmental cost of the refinery and get almost none of the benefit," said Peter DeCarlo, an atmospheric scientist who spent the last eight years at Philadelphia's Drexel University. "It's a classic environmental justice issue."
In June, PES sent local and federal regulators a plan for how it aimed to cut benzene emissions, which the company mainly blamed on leaks and a neighboring facility.
Since then, city officials have not spoken publicly about the high benzene readings or the plan for addressing those emissions.
Bankruptcy battle looms
Now Reeves and other clean air advocates are fighting to keep the 335,000 barrel-per-day refinery closed.
They would like to see the site, which has been home to oil storage facilities since shortly after the Civil War, converted to a less polluting commercial use. At least one advocacy group, Philly Thrive, is planning to bus opponents of reopening the refinery to New York City, where the PES auction will be held in the offices of the refinery's bankruptcy lawyers.
Advocates have also pressured Mayor Jim Kenney to oppose bids that include fossil fuel components. The Delaware bankruptcy court that's overseeing the refinery sale has granted his administration a consulting role during the auction.
Labor unions, on the other hand, want to see the refinery back up and running. Most of the hulking refinery was unaffected by the blast. More than 1,000 oil workers lost their jobs last year when PES abruptly closed, citing financial fallout from the fire.
They argue the refinery benefited the Philadelphia region.
"There's an idea out there that we weren't good neighbors. But that's false," said Ryan O'Callaghan, a laid-off worker and former president of United Steelworkers Local 10-1.
"We all live around the refinery," said O'Callaghan, who grew up in Grays Ferry and now lives seven miles away. "I belong to a social club in South Philly. Most of my time is spent there."
PES first filed for bankruptcy in 2018 to shed debt it blamed on EPA's ethanol mandate for gasoline.
PES is currently owned largely by its former creditors, according to bankruptcy filings. Credit Suisse Asset Management and Bardin Hill Investment Partners, which each control more than a quarter of the company, are now the primary owners. Carlyle maintains a 15 percent stake and Energy Transfer Operating LP, Sunoco's parent company, owns just over 7 percent.
Soon after the refinery shut down, Mayor Kenney created an expert panel to help the city evaluate its options. But Kenney didn't inform the Refinery Advisory Group of the benzene issue, said Mark Alan Hughes, the chairman of the advisory group's environment and science committee.
Potential buyers of the PES refinery or investors in the land should know about the benzene problems and potential legal liability for the emissions, Hughes said.
"If it becomes clear that there is a very strong lawsuit here, then it's going to affect your bidding," said Hughes, who is also the faculty director of the University of Pennsylvania's Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.
Carlyle and Credit Suisse Asset Management didn't respond to requests for comment on the refinery's benzene emissions or how they could affect the sale. Bardin Hill declined to comment and Energy Transfer Operating LP directed questions to PES, which also didn't respond to inquiries.
James Garrow, a spokesman for Philadelphia's Department of Public Health, said in a statement that "it is a well-known fact that refineries emit benzene during operation." He said that a city-run air monitor a half mile from the refinery didn't record excessive benzene emissions after the disaster and that any "responsible bidder" would seek out such information.
Reeves, the community organizer, was critical of the city's outreach efforts around the refinery sale.
"The same people, the same companies that allowed the stuff to happen are trying to decide what happens in the future," he said.
"Where are the people who still live here, who can't afford to leave?" he asked. "We're still getting kicked to the back."
Americans at risk
PES and most other U.S. refineries began monitoring benzene emissions on Jan. 30, 2018, to comply with a 2015 EPA rule that tightened emission standards for refineries.
In proposing the regulation, EPA argued that benzene — a naturally occurring component of crude oil and still a key ingredient in gasoline — is mainly released by leaking equipment. It's a good "indicator of other air toxics emitted from fugitive sources," the agency said.
When the rule took effect, PES was planning to go public and warned potential investors that the "fenceline monitoring requirement may lead to corrective action measures, including the installation of additional pollution controls, even if the refinery is otherwise in compliance with its air emissions permits."
The benzene monitoring requirement forced PES and other refinery operators to place air monitoring tubes around the borders of their refineries and then measure and analyze the amount of the carcinogenic gas that those monitors detected every two weeks. For refineries whose average annual emission topped the action level of 9 micrograms of benzene per cubic meter of air, the regulation required operators to determine the cause of the refinery's excess emissions and create a plan to reduce them.
"We project that no refinery should exceed that fenceline benzene concentration action level if in full compliance" with the stricter emissions standards, the rule said.
In weeks before and after the 2019 fire, some of the monitors along the fenceline repeatedly hit 190 micrograms per cubic meter. The emissions levels, however, could have been even higher since PES noted that the reading "exceeds instrument calibration range."
"Oh my god," said Bob Sonawane, a toxicologist who worked in EPA's Office of Research and Development for more than three decades. "The numbers that you're saying are very, very high, like some things happening in China, India and many other places."
In a corrective action plan required by the refinery rule, PES blamed many of its high benzene readings on a different company's petroleum terminal across the Schuylkill River as well as its own "benzene tanks and benzene unloading operations" that it argued are "nonrefinery operations and therefore not sources to be controlled." The refinery operator also promised to conduct additional sampling and inspections and work with the neighboring facility.
Garrow, the health department spokesman, said the city didn't receive the PES document until three days after the June 21 refinery disaster. But even then, city officials did not tell the public. At a press conference on June 25 about the refinery fire, Mayor Kenney told reporters "there are no findings that would suggest a threat to public health."
Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and former head of EPA's enforcement office, cast doubt on the refinery's attempt to explain away its high benzene readings.
"The monitoring they report is supposed to screen out background levels, including what comes from upwind sources," he said.
The plan also doesn't appear to be working. As of Sept. 25, 2019 — the last biweekly period EPA has posted online and more than two months after PES stopped producing fuel — the refinery's average annual emission level was 49 micrograms per cubic meter. That's higher than any other refinery that reported data to EPA and over five times the benzene action level.
Yet Sonawane, the toxicologist, said even the federal action level is "not protective of public health."
A hazard summary he worked on while at EPA warned that anyone exposed to air with more than 0.45 micrograms per cubic meter of benzene over their lifetime would have a greater than one in 1 million chance of developing cancer "as a direct result of continuously breathing air containing this chemical." That risk increases to more than 10 in 1 million at the level set by the federal refinery rule.
In Grays Ferry, that means residents, over a lifetime of exposure, may have been breathing air of a quality that the EPA estimates could be linked to an incidence of cancer of more than 100 adults out of a population of 1 million.
Children in the neighborhood could be at even greater risk of developing certain cancers, Sonawane estimated, citing research published after 2003, when EPA last reviewed the health dangers posed by benzene.
For example, a 2015 analysis in the American Journal of Epidemiology found "children might be affected at lower benzene levels than adults."
Silent regulators
Public health advocates are critical of Philadelphia and EPA for staying mostly silent about the benzene levels in South Philadelphia and around the country.
"That makes no sense," said Schaeffer, with the Environmental Integrity Project. "It's bad government and bad corporate management."
Schaeffer criticized Mayor Kenney for failing to tell residents about the benzene problem and for not talking about the company's response, as the powerful investors who own the refinery try to sell it off.
Schaeffer was also critical of his former agency. While city officials may have incentives to keep quiet because of the impending sale, Schaeffer said that the "EPA shouldn't have quite the same constraints."
"That's why you have feds overseeing all these state and local programs," he said. "So they should be on the hook, too."
Public health and the environment are a top concern for EPA, the agency said in an email, and it has worked to reduce emissions from all types of facilities, including refineries. When it comes to informing the public, EPA said it often lets local partners take the lead.
Asked about the agency's response to the PES plan to reduce benzene emissions, the agency said that it "does not comment on ongoing potential enforcement activities unless and until we take a public action."
For his part, Reeves expects little to change for the residents of Grays Ferry and other fenceline neighborhoods.
"The [bankruptcy] judge right now is making decisions without the input of the community," Reeves said while his grandchildren and a group of boys he mentors played on the street outside his home. He added that refinery workers had "told us to move."
But moving, he said, is not an option for many people in his neighborhood.

Sir David Attenborough warns of climate 'crisis moment'
By David Shukman
Science editor
16 January 2020

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China needs to tackle climate change - Attenborough
"The moment of crisis has come" in efforts to tackle climate change, Sir David Attenborough has warned.
According to the renowned naturalist and broadcaster, "we have been putting things off for year after year".
"As I speak, southeast Australia is on fire. Why? Because the temperatures of the Earth are increasing," he said.
Sir David's comments came in a BBC News interview to launch a year of special coverage on the subject of climate change.
Scientists say climate change is one of several factors behind the Australian fires; others include how forests are managed and natural patterns in the weather.
Sir David told me it was "palpable nonsense" for some politicians and commentators to suggest that the Australian fires were nothing to do with the world becoming warmer.
"We know perfectly well," he said, that human activity is behind the heating of the planet.
BBC announces new climate change coverage
What is climate change?
Where we are in seven charts
Greenland's ice faces melting 'death sentence'
Download the updated BBC Energy Briefing (10.4MB)
What does Sir David mean by 'the moment of crisis'?
He's highlighting the fact that while climate scientists are becoming clearer about the need for a rapid response, the pace of international negotiations is grindingly slow.
The most recent talks - in Madrid last month - were branded a disappointment by the UN Secretary-General, the British government and others.
Decisions on key issues were put off and several countries including Australia and Brazil were accused of trying to dodge their commitments.

"We have to realize that this is not playing games," Sir David said.
"This is not just having a nice little debate, arguments and then coming away with a compromise.
"This is an urgent problem that has to be solved and, what's more, we know how to do it - that's the paradoxical thing, that we're refusing to take steps that we know have to be taken."
What are those steps?
Back in 2018, the UN climate science panel spelled out how the world could have a reasonable chance of avoiding the most dangerous temperature rises in the future.
It said that emissions of the gases heating the planet - from power stations and factories, vehicles and agriculture - should be almost halved by 2030.

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Australia has been badly hit by bushfires
Instead, the opposite is happening.
The release of those gases is still increasing rather than falling and the key gas, carbon dioxide, is now in the atmosphere at a level far above anything experienced in human history.
As Sir David put it: "Every year that passes makes those steps more and more difficult to achieve."
Why does this matter right now?
This year is seen as a vital opportunity to turn the tide on climate change.
The UK is hosting what's billed as a crucial UN summit, known as COP26, in Glasgow in November.
Ahead of that gathering, governments worldwide are coming under pressure to toughen their targets for cutting emissions.
That's because their current pledges do not go nearly far enough.

Assuming they are delivered as promised (and there's no guarantee of that), there could still be a rise in the global average temperature of more than 3C by the end of the century, compared to pre-industrial levels.
The latest assessment by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lays bare the dangers of that.
It suggests that a rise of anything above 1.5C would mean that coastal flooding, heatwaves and damage to coral reefs would become more severe.
And the latest figures show that the world has already warmed by just over 1C.
What happens next?
As things stand, further heating looks inevitable.
"We're already living in a changed world," according to Professor Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading, a scientist whose depictions of global warming have often gone viral on social media.
He uses bold coloured stripes to show how much each year's temperature is above or below average - different shades of red for warmer and blue for colder.



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Our Planet Matters: Climate change explained
The designs now adorn T-shirts, scarves and even a tram in Germany.
At the moment, Prof Hawkins uses dark red to denote the highest level of warming, but regions such as the Arctic Ocean have achieved maximum level year after year.
Such is the scale of change that he's having to search for new colours.
"I'm thinking about adding dark purple or even black", he told me, to convey future increases in temperature.
"People might think climate change is a distant prospect but we're seeing so many examples around the world, like in Australia, of new records and new extremes."

What else is on the environmental agenda this year?
The natural world, and whether we can stop harming it.
While most political attention will be on climate change, 2020 is also seen as potentially important for halting the damage human activity is having on ecosystems.
Sir David has a blunt explanation for why this matters: "We actually depend upon the natural world for every breath of air we take and every mouthful of food that we eat."
World leaders are being invited to the Chinese city of Kunming for a major conference on how to safeguard Nature.

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The northern white rhino (seen here) is down to just two animals, making it "functionally" extinct
A landmark report last year warned that as many as one million species of animals, insects and plants are threatened with extinction in the coming decades.
A more recent study found that the growth of cities, the clearing of forests for farming and the soaring demand for fish had significantly altered nearly three-quarters of the land and more than two-thirds of the oceans.
One of the scientists involved, Prof Andy Purvis of the Natural History Museum in London, says that by undermining important habitats, "we're hacking away at our safety net, we're trashing environments we depend on".
He points to the impact of everything from the use of palm oil in processed food and shampoo to the pressures created by fast fashion.
And while the need for conservation is understood in many developed countries, Prof Purvis says "we've exported the damage to countries too poor to handle the environmental cost of what they're selling to us".
The gathering in Kunming takes place in October, a month before the UN climate summit in Glasgow, confirming this year as crucial for our relations with the planet.
Follow Davidon Twitter.

What is climate change?
Climate-related words and phrases explained
How much warmer is your city?
What is your diet's carbon footprint?
Where we are in seven charts

This Is How To Overcome Impostor Syndrome: 4 Secrets From Research
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Eric Barker Unsubscribe
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Barking Up The Wrong Tree

January 16th, 2020


Before we commence with the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my first book become a Wall Street Journal bestseller! To check it out, click here.



This Is How To Overcome Impostor Syndrome: 4 Secrets From Research


(Click here to read on the blog)


Impostor Syndrome is like being a secret agent -- in the most depressing way imaginable.

No matter how hard you work, no matter how much you achieve, you still feel like a fraud. You still question your ability and you're waiting to be exposed. More formally, it's often referred to as "a failure to internalize success." You attribute your accomplishments to luck or insane amounts of effort, but never talent or skill.

Ask yourself these questions:

From The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It:
Do you chalk your success up to luck, timing or computer error?
Do you believe “if I can do it, anybody can”?
Do you agonize over the smallest flaws in your work?
Are your crushed by even constructive criticism, seeing it as evidence of your ineptness?
When you do succeed, do you secretly feel like you fooled them again?
Do you worry that it’s a matter of time before you’re “found out”?
If you're nodding your head, you're not alone. 70% of people have felt it at one time or another -- with some experiencing it chronically. And some very big names have been afflicted with it:

Albert Einstein:

...the exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler.
Maya Angelou:

I have written eleven books, but each time I think, “Uh-oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.”

I can only dream that I will one day reach their level of astounding fraudulence. Jeez, look how inferior my fraudulence is to theirs. I'm a fraud at being a fraud... Seriously, there's a lesson here: these two make it abundantly clear that no amount of achievement is going to convince you. That approach won't work.

And much of the advice we get isn't helpful either. Merely "telling yourself you're good enough" has all the scientific rigor of a Hallmark Card. Self-affirmations are as likely to cure this as they'd cure baldness. We need real answers, not platitudes.

Funny thing is there's a whole pile of scientific research that addresses this issue. It's called "self-efficacy." The concept was coined by Albert Bandura. He's widely considered the most influential living psychologist and one of the most cited of all time. If there was a Mount Rushmore for psychology, his face would be up there. Bandura's book is Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control.

Now I hate when people use phrases like "learning your own value" because while it sounds really nice, nobody explains how to actually do it.

Time to roll up your sleeves, bubba. We're gonna fix that.

Let’s get to it...


So What The Heck Is Self-Efficacy?

It's “perceived ability to succeed at a given task.” It's a belief, not an objective measure of ability. But it’s a thermonuclear powered belief and has an eye-popping effect on your life, whether you know what it is or not.

From Self-Efficacy:

Perceived self-efficacy refers to beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments… People’s beliefs in their efficacy affect almost everything they do: how they think, motivate themselves, feel, and behave.

It can even be more important than skill. No doubt, actual skills are critical. If you have self-efficacy but no real driving ability, I'm not getting in your Uber. But that said, if you don’t believe you can accomplish something, you probably won’t try. And even if you do try, when you meet resistance, you’ll give up.

And the effects of self-efficacy beliefs have been found in a staggering number of diverse arenas: academic grades, weight management, social behavior, health habits, occupational performance, etc.

From Self-Efficacy:

Where performance determines outcome, efficacy beliefs account for most of the variance in expected outcomes. When differences in efficacy beliefs are controlled, the outcomes expected for given performances make little or no independent contribution to prediction of behavior.

"Oh, so it's self-esteem and confidence."

That's not what I said. Don't put words in my mouth... Um, actually, I just put words in your mouth. ANYWAY, point is, self-efficacy is distinct from self-esteem and confidence, otherwise I promise I'd be writing a post on self-esteem and confidence because explaining new words is hard when old ones work fine.

Self-efficacy is your belief about your ability to accomplish a specific goal while self-esteem is a judgment of personal worth. My self-efficacy about my ability to eat ice cream might be high, but I don’t think that makes me a good person. And confidence is more generalized, while self-efficacy is task-specific. You can be a very confident person and still not have self-efficacy when it comes to performing an appendectomy.

So how does this relate to impostor syndrome? Well, impostor syndrome is fundamentally a belief issue. You could be saying, “I don’t have impostor syndrome, I actually suck at this and my results confirm that.” Instead, you're saying, "I'm aware my performance is solid but I don't believe it's due to talent."

Impostor syndrome is about your lack of belief in your skill at something. Having self-efficacy is a healthy amount of belief in your skill at something. If we increase the latter, we get rid of the former. We need to get you to believe that your ability -- not luck or mere hard work -- is the primary active ingredient in your success.

(To learn more about how you can lead a successful life, check out my bestselling book here.)

So how do we do boost self-efficacy? Bandura lays out 4 things that will do the job. They all have big, fancy academic sounding names that make my spellchecker go heavy on the red underlining. We're gonna translate them in to English-that-people-actually-speak because I don't like migraines any more than you do.

Let's start with the one that is, in general, most powerful...


1) Enactive Mastery Experience

When most people perform well they attribute it to skill on their part. (Maybe they are too inclined to attribute it to personal skill, but that's a topic for a different, much more cynical post.)

But if you're dealing with impostor syndrome, this natural tendency to assume you're a virtuoso is on the fritz. You do a great job and the default attribution bucket isn't skill -- it's luck, overwork or invisible elves that accomplished everything while you were napping.

Many interpret enactive mastery experience as "keep working hard and you'll see it's your natural ability that's causing the results." If that was true, impostor syndrome wouldn't exist. In fact, if you don't actively change your default attributions, merely seeing yourself succeed isn't going to fix impostor syndrome -- it's going to make it worse.

From Self-Efficacy:

...the impact of performance attainments on efficacy beliefs depends on what is made of those performances. The same level of performance success may raise, leave unaffected, or lower perceived self-efficacy depending on how various personal and situational contributors are interpreted and weighted (Bandura 1982a).

So what do we have to do? You need to notice the system you use. Your process. Yes, you have one. No, I have not been spying on you.

You probably take it for granted. Or it's a blur as you anxiously drive yourself crazy due to deadlines or trying to meet insanely high standards. It's probably habitual at this point and therefore often subconscious, like driving a car, but there are things you do each and every time that are producing these consistently good results. (And if you're not consistently getting good results then you don't have impostor syndrome, and I'm not getting in your Uber.) Everyone does not do these things you do in your process and that's one of the reasons not everyone gets the results you do.

Look at the system as separate from you. Like the recipe that makes a good cake. When you have a solid recipe, or good instructions, you feel in control. And what's control? It's the exact opposite of luck. When you recognize that you have a system, and the system is producing those results consistently, the depressing magical thinking of impostor syndrome fades. You have a new "why" that's responsible for those solid results.

What would your reaction be if I told you, "I took 10 weeks of tennis lessons and my tennis luck increased dramatically!" You'd laugh. Systems and training don't increase luck. They increase skill. You're just not noticing or acknowledging the system you use. (And if I was your system I'd be pissed that Mr. Luck and Ms. Overwork were undeservedly getting all the credit around here.)

When work is a blur it's easy to think you just got lucky. But I'm guessing you've noticed that people who are very confident about their abilities can often explain them to you. They're aware of their system. Step outside yourself and notice what you do that gets the results. As the great Carl Jung once said: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

And what if that doesn't convince you? Then set up an experiment. If you attribute your results to your lucky rabbit's foot but you can repeatedly achieve the same results without it, then it's hard to argue that dismembered mammal limbs are responsible for your success.

From Self-Efficacy:

When there is much subjectivity in judging the adequacy of one’s performances, as in social competency, an illusorily created low sense of efficacy endures despite repeated performance attainments that indicate personal capabilities (Newman & Goldfried, 1987). Dislodging a low sense of personal efficacy requires explicit, compelling feedback that forcefully disputes the preexisting disbelief in one’s capabilities.

"Oh, I'm a fraud. I only do well because of hard work." Fine. Set a time limit on how much effort you put in and see if the world comes crashing down. But before you start, think about your system and how you will do the things you always do in that shorter time frame.

If you get 90% of your usual results in half the time, that's not "hard work." That's talent.

(To learn the two-word morning ritual that will make you happy all day, click here.)

Okay, "enactive mastery blahbity blah" is the method that works best in general. But what's the method that works best for people who are unsure of themselves -- like people with impostor syndrome?


2) Vicarious Experience

In English: "Watching other talented people work."

If you're reading this, you take your skills for granted. When you see that people who do similar things to you do well and a much larger group of people who do not do those things fail, you'll realize your system works and there are other (inferior) methods that you're choosing not to use. This means you have control. Control means not-luck.

Problem is, when people with impostor syndrome look at others, they usually look at the wrong people. Often they compare themselves to people who have zero talent and have great difficulty finding their way out of the house every morning. Yeah, this makes you feel better but it doesn't convince you you're talented -- it just means you're not an idiot. Other times people with impostor syndrome compare themselves to the top 1% which acts like a fast acting injection of depression concentrate, and is utterly debilitating.

Instead, think Goldilocks: you're not looking to compare yourself to "too cold" or "too hot", you're looking for "just right." Bandura says you'll get the best results by observing others who are your peers or slightly better than you.

From Self-Efficacy:

Persons who are similar or slightly higher in ability provide the most informative comparative information for gauging one’s own capabilities (Festinger, 1954; Suls & Miller, 1977; Wood, 1989).

How does this help? Plain and simple: it's inspiring. "If they can do it, I can do it." They have a system. It works. You have a system (if you take the time to notice it) and it works. You'll probably see what they do is pretty similar to what you do. You both get good results and you're peers. It's not luck.

You can even leverage vicarious experience without the vicarious part: it's called "self-modeling." Watch yourself working successfully. Look at good work that you've done. Smart emails you've sent. Great presentations or reports you've put together. Anything that resonates with you and makes you say, "Hey, this is impressive work -- oh, and I'm the one who did it."

From Self-Efficacy:

Self-modeling has remarkably wide applicability and often succeeds with inveterate self-doubters where other instructional, modeling, and incentive approaches fail (Dowrick, 1991; Meharg & Wolterdorf, 1990). Apparently, it is hard to beat observed personal attainment as a self-persuader of capability.

Let your "best self" be your role model.

(To learn how to deal with passive-aggressive people, click here.)

We don't just want to watch others work, we also want to get help from our friends. But the trick is getting the right kind of support that will kill your impostor syndrome and not increase it...


3) Social Persuasion

Translation: support and encouragement. For people who have impostor syndrome, simply seeing results isn't enough to boost belief in their ability... but seeing results and having others praise them does the trick.

From Self-Efficacy:

...skill transmission and success feedback alone achieved little with individuals beset with strong doubts about their capabilities. But skill transmission with social validation of personal efficacy produced large benefits.

Tell your friends you're going through a tough time and could use their support. There are three tips from the research you'll want to keep in mind here:

1) If the positive feedback is insincere, you'll see right through it thanks to the negative, skeptical lens of impostor syndrome. It has to be legit praise.

2) Support from experts is preferable. Praise from someone who doesn't understand the arena is easily dismissed.

3) Positive feedback about your hard work is nice but them praising your ability is better. If you keep getting praised for your hard work, it's easy to conclude that you don't have talent.

From Self-Efficacy:

Evaluative feedback highlighting personal capabilities raises efficacy beliefs. Feedback that the children improved their capabilities through effort also enhances perceived efficacy, although not as much as being told that their progress shows they have ability for the activity.

You don't want white lies about your lightsaber abilities, you want sincere compliments. And you'd like them from Yoda. And it's nice to hear you worked hard but it's better to hear, "The Force is strong with this one."

(To learn the 4 harsh truths that will make you a better person, click here.)

We've covered systems, models, and support. What's left? Oh, feelings. You can never get away from the power of feelings, like it or not...


4) Emotional / Physiological States

Your feelings and moods matter. And if you think they don't matter then you're in real trouble because they're still influencing you and you're not even noticing it.

Not getting enough sleep, being hungry or just having a bad day can exacerbate impostor feelings, but unless you take the time to establish those are the underlying causes, you're just going to feel awful and default to blaming yourself for being a fraud.

From Self-Efficacy:

Mood activates the subset of memories congruent with it through an associative mood network. Thus, a negative mood activates thoughts of past failings, whereas a positive mood activates thoughts of past accomplishments… According to Teasdale (1988), negative episodes and depressed mood activate a global view of oneself as inadequate and worthless rather than just activating unhappy memories.

Here's the problem: we are absolutely terrible at figuring out the true causes of our feelings. You think you know why you're feeling something but it's just inference. You think you're cranky because of what your partner said but it's actually because you've been running on five hours of sleep for the past three nights.

But here's the upside: you can now use your knowledge of this emotional blurriness to your advantage. Since the cause and meaning of feelings is all about interpretation, you can choose to interpret them differently. The court of emotions has an appeals process.

If you can reframe the feelings into something transient or unrelated to the task at hand then your self-efficacy doesn't plummet.

From Self-Efficacy:

...if the meaning of an affective state is altered by attributing it to a nonemotional or transient irrelevant source, the state does not affect evaluative judgment because it is considered uninformative for the judgment at hand. For example, interviewers who attribute their accelerated heart rate to having rushed up a set of stairs are less likely to wonder about their capabilities to manage the interview situation than interviewers who read their pounding heart as a sign of distress.

Yes, you're fidgety before the big meeting. But that physical feeling has to be interpreted. You don't have to believe it's nervousness because you're a faker. It could be excitement or anticipation.

Reframe your feelings and you can reframe impostor syndrome... and that can reframe your life.

(To learn more about how to make friends as an adult, click here.)

Okay, we're all Bandura'd out. We covered a lot, time for the sum up -- and we'll also answer the looming question: even if you beat impostor syndrome today, how do you know that this newly found self-efficacy will last?


Sum Up

This is how to overcome impostor syndrome:
Enactive mastery experience: Recognize your system. Tennis lessons don't increase tennis luck.
Vicarious experience: If they can do it, you can do it.
Social persuasion: I, for one, happen to think The Force is very strong with you. So there.
Emotional/physiological states: Reframe feelings. You're not antsy because you want this blog post to end, you're just so very very excited to be reading it.
People are afraid that even if they develop self-efficacy they'll backslide into impostor feelings. Don't worry. If you really go out of your way to push hard on the 4 principles above, self-efficacy can become as stubbornly lodged in your brain as the feeling that you're a fraud is now.

I don't know about you but I'm all for positive feelings that are irrationally resistant to change.

From Self-Efficacy:

They continue to adhere to the fictitiously instilled efficacy beliefs even after the persuasory basis for those beliefs has been thoroughly discredited. Efficacy beliefs created arbitrarily survive behavioral experiences that contradict them for some time (Cervone & Palmer, 1990). Lawrence (1988) provides suggestive evidence that efficacy beliefs created by fictitious success may gain strength through a cognitive self-persuasion process.

The old saying is "fake it till you make it." But with impostor syndrome, you've already made it. The race is over. You won.

Now it's time for you to finally enjoy it.


***And if you want a daily insight, quote or laugh, you should follow me on Instagram here.***


Email Extras

Findings from around the internet...

+ Want to know which qualities made children more likely to earn more -- or less -- as adults? Click here.

+ Want to know what makes top performers different from most people? Click here.

+ Want to know if its better to tackle easy or hard tasks first? Click here.

+ Miss last week's post? Here you go: New Neuroscience Reveals 5 Secrets That Will Make You Emotionally Intelligent.

+ Want to know what makes kids more likely to experience burnout? Click here. (And many thanks to the great Dan Pink for some of the above links.)

+ You read to the end of the email. I appreciate it. (If you skipped down here you *are* an impostor. Tsk-tsk.) Crackerjack time: What happens when you ask the users of Reddit which accounts are bots? For the very clever answer, click here.

Thanks for reading!
Eric

PS: If a friend forwarded this to you, you can sign up to get the weekly email yourself here.

My Friends! My Friends!

Our man in the slot has disappeared!
Is it a miracle or Hockey magic!
Without our man in the slot this game will be tragic!
Our coach must be sleeping
behind the bench!
Please wake him up
And stop him from dreaming!
Wait! Wait!
Our man in the slot
Our player most Holy!
I see him now in front of their goalie!
He is taking his shot...
And by God what a shot!
Let us bow our heads and pray...
Hooray! Hooray!
It's not what I feared!
This game is not tragic!
This game is not weird!
With the magic of Hockey our man in the slot
Has re-appeared!
And scored the winning goal!

ATTENTION LEADERS IN WASHINGTON AND IRAN AND AROUND THE WORLD.

STOP THE BLOODSHED, PLEASE!
YOU WILL NEED ALL YOUR SOLDIERS TO HELP SAVE THE PLANET FROM FIRES AND FLOODING
CREATED BY CLIMATE CHANGE.
THEY WILL NEED PICKS AND SHOVELS AND MEDICAL SUPPLIES FOR THE WORK AHEAD AND
IF YOU WISH TO SLOW THE HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH ON THIS PLANET EARTH, SIMPLY RETURN TO THE CONCEPT OF
NON-VIOLENT BIRTH CONTROL WHERE BETTER EDUCATION SYSTEMS INCLUDE BIOLOGY AND SOCIAL FAMILY PLANNING METHODS
FOR BOTH SEXES.

CREATING WAR IS EASY COMPARED TO REBUILDING AFTER A DEVASTATING
EARTHQUAKE OR A TYPHOON OR A HURRICANE AND SO WHY CREATE MORE DEVASTATION WHEN
THERE IS SO MUCH ALREADY HAPPENING AROUND THE WORLD.
AUSTRALIA IS BURNING AND THEY COULD CERTAINLY USE A FEW MILLION UNARMED SOLDIERS TO HELP PUT
OUT THE FOREST FIRES, TODAY.

TODAY, SCIENCE IS PROVING HOW THE RISING TEMPERATURE OF THE PLANET IS MELTING OUR POLAR ICE CAPS AND CREATING
FLOODING IN MANY LOW LYING COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD. IN REACTION TO THIS YOUNG PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD ARE MAKING THIER
VOICES HEARD AND THEY ARE ACTIVATING TO STOP OUR INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION AND TO SLOW GLOBAL WARMING.
lISTEN TO THE CHILDREN, PLEASE!

GOVERNMENTS AROUND THE WORLD DO HAVE THE MILITARY ABILITY TO CREATE WARS AND TO MURDER EACH OTHER
BUT PLEASE LEAVE INNOCENT CHILDREN OUT OF YOUR WAR PLANS! I SUGGEST ONLY THE MOST VICIOUS MILITARY
LEADERS FACE UNARMED AGAINST EACH OTHER ON AN ABANDONED ISLAND IN ORDER TO TALK PEACE OR PLAY CHESS.
I ALSO SUGGEST THEY DO NOT LEAVE THE ISLAND UNTIL THEY HAVE SIGNED MULTIPLE AND BINDING PEACE TREATIES.
THANKS FOR READING!
SIGNED: NELSON RAGLIONE. DIRECTOR OF THE WORLD FRIENDLY PEACE AND ECOLOGY MOVEMENT. HUMAN4US2.BLOGSPOT.COM
WE ARE ALSO ON FACEBOOK.
P.S. THANK YOU GRETA THUNBERG!

THE GREAT GRETA THUNBERG.

REUTERS
WORLD NEWS
DECEMBER 9, 2019 / 9:40 AM / UPDATED 8 HOURS AGO
Activist Thunberg turns spotlight on indigenous struggle at climate summit
Isla Binnie

MADRID (Reuters) - Teen activist Greta Thunberg turned a spotlight on the struggles of the world’s indigenous peoples against climate change
on Monday, appearing at a U.N. summit alongside other young campaigners furious at the West’s failure to tackle the crisis.

Indigenous communities from the United States to South America and Australia have mounted increasingly vocal campaigns against new fossil fuel projects
in recent years, finding common cause with the young European activists inspired by Thunberg.

Pursued by a media scrum ever since arriving at the two-week conference last week after crossing the Atlantic by catamaran,
Thunberg stayed largely silent during her first official appearance at the summit, to allow a young Native American, a Ugandan,
a Philippine and a Pacific islander to speak.

“Their rights are being violated across the world and they are also among the ones being hit the most and the quickest by the climate and environmental emergency,”
Thunberg said of indigenous communities.

Indigenous activists argue that their communities contribute almost none of the fossil fuels emissions driving climate change,
but bear the brunt of extreme weather and loss of wildlife.

Rose Whipple, of the Santee Dakota, native to Minnesota in the United States, called for an approach based on tradition and technology.

“The climate crisis is a spiritual crisis for our entire world. Our solutions must weave science and spirituality and traditional ecological knowledge
with technology,” she said.

The meeting to address the implementation of a 2015 pact struck in Paris to limit temperature rises to well below 2 degrees celsius was shifted to Madrid
after riots over inequality broke out in Chile, which had been due to play host.

“While countries congratulate each other for their weak commitments the world is literally burning out,” said Chilean activist Angela Valenzuela.

The low-lying Marshall Islands became the first nation to comply with a requirement in the Paris Agreement to increase its planned emissions reductions in 2018,
a move bigger emitters are under pressure to follow by 2020.

Carlon Zackhras, representing the atoll nation, said rising sea levels threatened his home, which is only two meters above the waterline.

“We are having to deal with issues we did not create,” he said.

Editing by Matthew Green and Giles Elgood

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Dear Brittany Andrew-Amofah: 

 Our present school systems across Canada are based on providing a work-force for Canadian industrial companies.
Unless those companies are creating projects and systems that benefit our natural environment and do not destroy and pollute the environment, we are programming children to act as workers for polluting and dangerous industrial status-quo companies! 

 We need to provide new and better and different school environments where nature is the teacher and is helped along by University trained Botanists and Zoologists and Biologists.

 One project example is a large Glass Green House filled with birds and plants and children and computers that explain and describe the species of each plant and bird and of course, our own HomoSapient specie.

 
 Music would play in the Green-Houses to help grow the plants and the birds and the children.
They would include computers explaining what birds make what sounds and which instruments make what notes. Earphones would be provided for private listening.

 Our present status-quo school systems are based on the old imperial hierarchy and that must be changed if we are to protect Mother Earth. There are so many better non-political and non-exploitive methods of education that urgently need to be researched and implemented.
Thanks for reading!

Signed: Nelson Joseph Raglione
Director of the World Friendly Peace and Ecology Movement.. human4us2.blogspot.com