Self-doubt is not proof you are a fraud. Often, it is a sign you are still growing. Here is a healthier, more honest definition of expertise.
Someone called me an expert recently, and quietly, inside, I flinched. Because there is still so much I have not done, so many gaps I can see clearly. The word felt too big for me. Then I noticed something that settled me, and I want to share it, because I suspect you have flinched at a word like that too.
The flinch
If you have ever been called an expert, a professional, a leader, anything that felt slightly too large, you know the feeling. A small voice says, if they only knew how much I am still working out. The praise arrives and something in you wants to correct it. For a while I treated that voice as honesty, even humility. Now I am not so sure it was telling me the truth.
The people who never flinch
The people who never question whether they are experts are usually the ones who have stopped growing. The ones who are completely certain, who wear the title with no discomfort, are very often the ones who quietly stopped learning years ago. Their confidence is not a sign of mastery. It is a sign that they have stopped meeting the edge of what they do not know. The doubt I felt was not proof I was a fraud. It was proof I was still moving.
A better definition
I had to rebuild my definition of the word, because the one I carried was impossible. I had believed an expert is someone who knows everything, and by that definition nobody qualifies. Here is the definition I hold now. Being an expert does not mean you know everything. It means three things. You have real skill, earned through actual work. You get results, consistently, for the people you serve. And when you meet something you do not yet know, you can figure it out. Skill, results, and the ability to close your own gaps. Not the absence of doubt.
Why this matters beyond a title
That same flinch stops people from acting. It is why capable people do not raise their prices, do not pitch the bigger client, do not call themselves what they already are. They are waiting to feel like an expert before they behave like one, and for the honest ones, that feeling never fully arrives. You do not become better before you act. You become better because you act.
So do not let your humility convince you that you are not skilled. Let it keep you growing instead. And ask yourself honestly: where has your own doubt been lying to you about how far you have actually come?
I write honestly about growth and doing the work every Saturday in The Saturday Clarity Newsletter. Subscribe here: https://open.substack.com/pub/akinyinkaemmanuel