How listening to the universe can help quiet your self-doubt | Michelle Thaller | Big Think

How listening to the universe can help quiet your self-doubt

New videos DAILY

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive video lessons from top thinkers and doers

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We all experience self-doubt — sometimes called 'imposter syndrome'.

NASA astronomer Michelle Thaller explains how the universe itself has been a salve for her fears.

The universe chooses people to be interested in, she says. What has the universe chosen you for?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MICHELLE THALLER

Dr. Michelle Thaller is an astronomer who studies binary stars and the life cycles of stars. She is Assistant Director of Science Communication at NASA. She went to college at Harvard University, completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif. then started working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Spitzer Space Telescope. After a hugely successful mission, she moved on to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), in the Washington D.C. area. In her offhours often puts on about 30lbs of Elizabethan garb and performs intricate Renaissance dances. For more information, visit

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

MICHELLE THALLER: I often get questions about what it's like being a woman in science, which has traditionally been a field dominated by men. And the interesting thing is the complexity of that to me because I grew up in the 1980s. I went to college in the 1990s. And that certainly was after the era, at least for the most part, where women were just told point blank, you shouldn't be here. You can't be a scientist. You don't belong here. That never happened to me. I never had anybody say to my face, in terms of a teacher, you're not welcome here. You don't belong here. And, in fact, when I was in college, some of the highest-performing students in my physics classes were women. They were certainly in the minority in terms of numbers. There were fewer of them in class compared to men, But they were doing very well. One of the things that's most surprising to me, and I've talked to a lot of my women colleagues about this is that I really didn't expect some of the biggest barriers to come from inside myself.

From the very start of my scientific career, and I'm talking about undergraduate, being a physics major. I grappled with almost crippling self-doubt. It was really hard to get myself into the class. I mean sometimes, I actually had to work myself up into a character. I'd sort of stand outside a classroom and think about how a physics student should feel or how they should behave. I felt very deeply that I didn't belong there, but that was coming from me. That didn't seem to be coming from anything external. Through most of my career in science-- and I'm talking about my education-- I was too scared to ask a single question. I spent my entire undergraduate and most of my graduate classes in the back of the class terrified. I was copying the notes. The teacher was deriving something on the blackboard. I was copying it down, but it could have been in a foreign language. I didn't understand it. And I was so embarrassed to admit that I was that lost and that far behind. I spent my entire scientific education being scared. And I look back and I think, why? It turns out-- I now have a doctorate in physics-- I can learn that. I can do physics. I can be successful at that. I'm not an idiot. So why was I so crippled and held back by my own fear and by my own shame at how I wasn't understanding this very quickly.

I've heard people use the term imposter syndrome. That for some reason, you're absolutely sure you don't belong here, and, in fact, you must have fooled people into letting you be here. I've had it pointed out that if you can pass comprehensive exams in physics, which I have, it probably means you belong here, probably means you learned the material. But it never felt that way. It always felt like maybe I had sort of pulled the wool over people's eyes, or I shouldn't be here and I've fooled people into thinking I belong here. And there was this sense of shame. And I'm going to admit this to you, I still feel that today. I feel that every single day I go to NASA, and I'm with these brilliant people all around me.

Every single day, I still feel like I don't belong, and it's been some kind of mistake that they let me in. Imagine your whole career being like that. Never feeling like you belong, and I'm not saying this is something that only happens to women. I'm sure this happens to men, too. But I've had to ask myself, why? It's true that society as a whole gives you lots of very sub...

For the full transcript, check out