It might seem hard to relate to a NASA astronaut, no matter how much she loves her pet rescue dog, but it turns out you might have more in common than you think with Christina Koch. As a woman in midlife who’s at peak professional performance, she still experiences imposter syndrome — but she’s found ways to combat it that we can all learn from.

At 47, Christina has just become the first woman ever to travel to the far side of the moon, aboard the historic Artemis II space mission as part of a team who’ve travelled further from Earth than anyone in human history. But, despite her literally stratospheric success, the electrical engineer isn’t immune to the feelings that so many of us at this life stage can experience, even — or perhaps especially — when we’re objectively at our most competent.

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In an interview with Brilliant Star magazine last year, as she prepared for the milestone mission, Christina explained the concept of “stereotype threat” and how simple affirmations didn’t work for her. Instead, she learned to view herself through a different lens.

“I think there are a lot of challenges when you’re part of a group that’s not well represented around you when you’re going to your job every single day and you’re working through things,” she said. “I also think one of the biggest challenges is not really knowing what is difficult because you are part of an underrepresented group, or this is just difficult because it’s just difficult.”

Overcoming challenges

She went on: “I think just having that extra circuit always running in your mind, wondering what about this is harder because I’m a woman? I’m trying to communicate in this field where people are not used to seeing someone like me. Where I don’t necessarily hang out with my colleagues as much. We don’t identify as much in, say, our off hours, or I don’t get that time together. There are so many different things. And I think, kind of like a computer circuit, when you’re thinking about something all the time, it can take away your processing of everything else. So that’s a challenge in and of itself. But overall, I came up with different things that worked for me personally to overcome some of those challenges.”

She explains: “You hear people talk about giving yourself a pep talk, like, ‘All right, Christina, you’ve got this. You’re awesome. You’re really good at this.’ For some reason, that never really helped me in achieving the challenging thing. But I learned about this thing called stereotype threat, which means that people actually do worse when they think that they are being judged based on a stereotype.”

Stereotype threat

So, how did she combat it? She reveals: “I wouldn’t tell myself, “Christina, you are awesome.” I would tell myself, ‘Christina, everyone up in that evaluation room that’s watching you and evaluating you, they think you’re awesome. Every time you make a mistake, they’re just going to be like, ‘Oh, she’s got it. That was just a little thing. No big deal.’ And that actually really helped me a lot. I would just tell myself over and over again, ‘They know I’m really, really good at this.’ It didn’t matter that I didn’t actually believe that. But that was kind of something that helped me overcome some of those stereotypes that would creep in and have a negative effect on how I did.”

Stereotype threat is a psychological phenomenon where individuals feel at risk of conforming to negative stereotypes about their social group — whether gender, race, age or profession — which can then trigger anxiety and an increased cognitive load, and ultimately lead to a reduced performance. It’s why feeling like an imposter can be so damaging.

So, if an astronaut who’s just smashed through the glass ceiling in an actual rocket says something works, we’re listening. The trick isn’t convincing yourself you’re brilliant, it’s assuming everyone else has already noticed. This mindset shift might not take you to the actual moon, but it could help your confidence sky-rocket to infinity – and beyond!